Pray with Spurgeon

Daily Newsletter from SpurgeonBooks

We’re going to try something new! This week, our prayers and Scripture readings each day will focus on God the Holy Spirit.

Over the next five days, we will praise the Holy Spirit and ask him to move in our lives. Next week, we’ll highlight a different theme. Invite a friend to pray with you by sending them this link.

DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)

Glorious God the Holy Spirit, it is the flower of our being to worship you. This is the crown and glory of life, to adore and worship the life-giver from whom all good things come. Worship has often been to us as a bath in heavenly pleasure, and we have come out of it refreshed and comforted, blessed, and filled with heavenly delight.

Oh for the Holy Spirit’s power to help us in prayer now! Breathe upon us, oh divine Spirit, and let that breath cause us to forget the world, but bring us into the fullest life in the contemplation of God and heaven. Blessed God, Father, Son, and Spirit, our whole spirit would revere you. Give us such a clear knowledge of your goodness, that we might not be overawed with your greatness.

Amen.

VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)

“Therefore I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

In church services in Corinth, anyone who wanted to talk, would talk. I supposed that there were some people who even spoke blasphemy. They professed to be under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and yet they stood up and called Jesus accursed. Where there is no rule nor order, there is pretty sure to be something very mischievous before long. Paul gives them to understand that this kind of talk could not go unrebuked. If a man really knows Jesus as his Lord, and he declares that truth, then you may fully accept it as being in harmony with the teaching of the Spirit of God.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

As we prepare to spend this week focusing on God the Holy Spirit, I wanted to share some reflections on who the Holy Spirit is.

God the Holy Spirit is not a thing or a force or a feeling. The Nicene Creed, an ancient Christian confession, calls him “the Lord, the giver of life.” How should this confession shape our faith in him?

We worship him as LORD. He reigns with authority over all of creation. He has power over all creation — including hearts, which he can soften and harden as he sees fit.

We worship him as the LIFE-GIVER. We would never have become Christians if the Holy Spirit hadn’t intervened, awakened our dead hearts, opened our blind eyes, and caused us to be born again. The Holy Spirit began our Christian life, and he continues to give life each day by empowering us to put off sin and put on righteousness. We have no hope in sanctification apart from his help.

Don’t neglect the Holy Spirit — he is God. Worship him, love him, trust him forever.

(If you want to learn more about who God the Spirit is, start by reading John 14–16, where Jesus promises the Spirit to his disciples.