Pray with Spurgeon

WEEKEND EDITION

I hope you enjoy this preview of the Weekend Edition. The Weekend Edition is sent each Saturday exclusively for Pray with Spurgeon Plus subscribers.

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PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH (BY SPURGEON)

Prepare your heart to gather with your church on Sunday. Join Spurgeon in prayer for the saints and sinners who will hear God's Word at your church tomorrow.

Lord, bless this people, this our beloved church. You have been very gracious to us; be gracious to us still. Oh that we had health and strength to labor here as our heart desires: may it please you yet to give us these! But if not, use what there is of us until the last is gone, and be pleased always to find someone to go in and out before this people, to feed them with knowledge and understanding. “Father, glorify your name.”

May we not be ashamed to be old fashioned and to be thought fanatical. May we not wish to be thought cultured, nor aim to keep with the times. May we be side by side with you, oh bleeding Savior and be content to be rejected, be willing to take up unpopular truth, and to hold fast despised teachings of sacred writings even to the end. Oh make us faithful—faithful unto death.

Amen.

SPURGEON’S LETTERS

Spurgeon’s letters are really encouraging devotional readings. Today, we’ll read a letter that Spurgeon sent in 1854 to accept the call to serve as the Pastor of the New Park Street Chapel in London. Spurgeon would serve this congregation (and expand it greatly) for the rest of his life.

Dearly beloved in Christ Jesus,

I have received your unanimous invitation, as contained in a resolution passed by you on the 19th instant, desiring me to accept the pastorate among you. No lengthened reply is required; there is but one answer to so loving and cordial an invitation. I ACCEPT IT. I have not been perplexed as to what my reply should be, for many things constrain me thus to answer.

I sought not to come to you, for I was the minister of an obscure but affectionate people; I never solicited advancement. The first note of invitation from your deacons came quite unlooked-for, and I trembled at the idea of preaching in London. I could not understand how it had come about, and even now I am in the hands of our covenant God, whose wisdom directs all things. He shall choose for me; and so far as I can judge, this is His choice.

I feel it to be a high honor to be the Pastor of a people who can mention glorious names as my predecessors, and I entreat of you to remember me in prayer, that I may realize the solemn responsibility of my trust. Remember my youth and inexperience, and pray that these may not hinder my usefulness. I trust also that the remembrance of these will lead you to forgive mistakes I may make, or unguarded words I may utter.

I am yours to serve in the gospel,

Charles Spurgeon

WISDOM FROM SPURGEON: WILL GOD EVER FORGET ME?

This section of the Weekend Edition will include Spurgeon’s answers to timely questions. Respond to this email with your questions.

Sometimes, you and I get into a sad condition and we imagine that God has forgotten us, so I want to show you that, if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord gives to us an answer similar to that which he gave to sorrowful Zion, “I have graven you upon the palms of my hands.”

Now, what is it, dear friends, that makes it so certain that God cannot forget his people? Well, first, God remembers his eternal love for his people, and his remembrance of them is constant because of that love.

Next, God’s suffering love secures his memory of us. Those nails that fastened him to the cross were the graving tools, and he leaned hard while the iron pierced through flesh, and nerve, and vein. Yet the graving of which our text speaks is more than that, for the Lord himself says, “I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.” The sufferings of Christ for us were such that never, by any possibility, can he forget us. Since he has died for us, he will never cast us away.