Let the minister have a place in your heart. Mention his name at your family
altar, and in your prayer closet. You expect him to come before you day
after day, to teach you the things of the kingdom, and exhort and stir up
your pure minds by way of remembrance. If he be a true minister, there will
be work to be done in this matter. He cannot write his sermon and read it to
you; he does not believe Christ said, “Go and read the gospel to every
creature.”
Do you know the cares of a minister? Do you know the trouble he has with his
own church-how the erring ones do grieve him, how even the righteous ones do
vex his spirit by their infirmities-how there will always be some great
trouble in the hearts of some of his people? And he is the reservoir of all:
they come to him with all their grief; he is to “weep with them that weep.”
And in the pulpit what is his work? God is my witness, I scarcely ever
prepare for my pulpit with pleasure: study for the pulpit is to me the most
irksome work in the world. I have never come into this house that I know of
with a smile upon mine heart; I may have sometimes gone out with one; but
never have I had one when I entered. Preach, preach, twice a day I can and
will do, but still there is a travailing in preparation for it, and even the
utterance is not always accompanied with joy and gladness, and God knows
that if it were not for the good that we trust is to be accomplished by the
preaching of the Word, it is no happiness to a man’s life to be well known.
It robs him of all comfort to be from morning to night pressed for labor, to
have no rest for the sole of his foot or for his brain-to bear every
burden-to have people asking, as they do in the country, when they want to
get into a cart, “Will the cart hold the weight?” -never thinking whether
the horse can drag it; to have them asking, “Will you preach at such a
place? you are preaching twice, couldn’t you manage to get to such a place,
and preach again?” Every one else has a limit; the minister has none, until
he kills himself and is condemned as imprudent. If you are determined to do
your duty in that place to which God has called you, you need the prayers of
your people, that you may be able to do the work, and you will need their
abundant prayers that you may be sustained in it.
I bless God that I have a valiant corps of men, who day without night
besiege God’s throne on my behalf. I would speak to you, my brethren and
sisters, again, and beseech you, by our loving days that are past, by all
the hard fighting that we have had side by side with each other, not to
cease to pray now. The time was when in hours of trouble, you and I have
bended our knees together in God’s house and we have prayed to God that he
would give us a blessing. You remember how great and sore troubles did roll
over our head-how men did ride over us. We went through fire and through
water, and now let us not cease to pray. Let us still cry out unto the
living God, that he may give us a blessing.
Oh! may God help me, if you cease to pray for me! Let me know the day when
you cease your prayers, and I must cease to preach. Let me know when you
intend to cease your prayers, and I shall cry, “O my God, give me this day
my tomb, and let me slumber in the dust.”
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1870
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
“Jesus knows me, this I love”