Pray with Spurgeon

WEEKEND EDITION

Enjoy this preview of the Weekend Edition, sent each Saturday exclusively for Pray with Spurgeon Plus subscribers.

If you want to receive the Weekend Edition every Saturday (and support the newsletter!), upgrade your subscription here.

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, look with great grace, we pray, upon the slaves of sin that are present here this morning; break their chains. Save this people. We know there are some in this congregation who are currently “poisoned by bitterness and bound by wickedness” (Acts 8:23). Move, divine Spirit, over this audience, and fetch out from among us those who do not know God, that they may know themselves and their God this day. Make this to be a profitable, soul-winning Sunday, one of the high days on which heaven’s bells shall ring out more sweetly than ever, because many and many a prodigal child has come back to the Father’s house to make the Father glad.

Amen.

SPURGEON’S LETTERS

Spurgeon’s letters are really encouraging devotional readings. Today, we’ll read a letter that Spurgeon sent to ask for donations for his Pastors’ College.

Dear friend,

Time has speedily brought around the annual occasion upon which I trouble you about the Pastors’ College. You never treat it as a trouble, but respond cheerfully, and therefore I do very earnestly invite you to the Annual Supper, which is scheduled for Wednesday, May 5, at the College.

I give my daily thoughts to this work of aiding my Master’s young servants to know the way of God more perfectly and to preach it with greater clearness. As the result of years of this work, we have sent out more than 700 men into the field at home and abroad. Among these have been some of the most successful soul-winners of the day, and we are not ashamed of the larger number who make up the rank and file. The Lord has very unmistakably blessed this service and he continues to do so, although it is not without its trials and disappointments.

Friends have often been so supportive at the Supper to help me that I already feel overwhelmed with gratitude; but I must remind them that each year brings new necessities, and that we shall be glad of the same help as we received last year, namely, some £2,000.

When times are bad, they will not be improved by stinting our gifts to the cause of God. When we have great losses, it is wise to make sure of something by laying it up where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. But I will not plead; but only say, Do come. George Palmer, Esq., of Reading, has most cheerfully consented to be our chairman, and he will be glad to be well supported. Do not give the tickets to others if you cannot come yourself, unless it be to generous friends who will really help the object.

Yours ever heartily,

Charles Spurgeon

WISDOM FROM SPURGEON: WHAT WILL HAPPEN THIS YEAR? DO WE HAVE ANY POWER TO CHANGE IT?

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

What will 1876 be? We reply, “it will be what the divine purpose has ordained;” and with equal truth we assert that it will also be what the church of God shall resolve to make it. We do not attempt to reconcile these two answers—they are both true and therefore do agree, whether we think so or not. In the year 1876, God has not appointed a blessing for an idle, prayerless, insensible church, be sure of that. Neither will he in 1876 use agencies which will cast a slur upon the servants whom he has already sent upon his business, fling discredit upon his church, and dishearten his persevering and believing people. He will work as he has always done, in his own way, by the preaching of his gospel, accompanied by the prayers of his saints. He will neither change the seed nor give us a harvest without sowing, nor excuse us from breaking up the fallow ground and plowing the soil with diligent labor. It is quite clear that nations are not to be enlightened with a flash, nor cities sensationalized into religion in a month. We shall have to teach, and teach, and teach, right on. Work must be done in the vineyard still, bread must be cast on the waters, sowing with tears must still go on; and the end is not by-and-by.