Pray with Spurgeon

WEEKEND EDITION

I hope you enjoy this preview of the new Weekend Edition of Pray with Spurgeon.

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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.

Oh Lord God, we earnestly seek your help in truly worshiping you. We thank you for this occasion and bless your name for setting apart this sacred season. Lord, would you please shut the door on the distractions of the world for us? Help us forget our worries and concerns. Enable us to rise above the worldly tendencies that weigh us down. May the allure of earthly things fade away, and may you draw us close to yourself.

Amen.

SPURGEON’S LETTERS

Spurgeon’s letters are really encouraging devotional readings. Today, we’ll read a note that Spurgeon sent to his future wife on January 11, 1855 — one year before their wedding.

My dearest,

I loved you once, but feared you might not be an heir of heaven. God in his mercy showed me that you were indeed elect. I then thought I might without sin reveal my affection to you, but up to the time I saw your note, I could not imagine that you had seen such great sights, and were so thoroughly versed in soul-knowledge. God is good, very good, infinitely good. Oh, how I prize this last gift, because I now know, more than ever, that the giver loves the gift, and so I may love it, too, but only in subservience to his. Dear purchase of the Savior’s blood, you are to me a Savior’s gift, and my heart is full to overflowing with the thought of such continued goodness. I do not marvel at his goodness, for it is just like him; but I cannot but lift up the voice of joy at his manifold mercies

Yours, with pure and holy affection, as well as terrestrial love,

Charles Spurgeon

WISDOM FROM SPURGEON: WHY DO PEOPLE ABANDON THE FAITH?

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

“They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us.” (1 John 2:19)

There is a separating process always going on in the professing church, and the most effective winnowing fan of all is a faithful ministry. After a while, some of our hearers do not like what we say; it is too personal, too cutting, too searching. They want to listen to that kind of preaching that will allow them to go on comfortably in their sins, and to have the reputation of living even while they are dead.

How constantly our Lord’s teaching kept on sifting his disciples! After one of his utterances concerning human inability apart from divine grace, we read, “From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him” (John 6:66). As he continually brought out some of the deeper truths as his disciples were able to bear them, there were certain of the mixed multitude that had joined with his followers who went off this way and that way. It is always so, and so must it be, under the faithful preaching of the Word. You must not be astonished or grieved when it is so.