What do people see?

[Herald]

I share a passage from the book, "Lectures to My Students" - C.H. Spurgeon (Zondervan, 1954):

Recollect, as ministers, that your whole life, your whole pastoral life especially, will be affected by the vigour of your piety. If your zeal grows dull, you will not pray well in the pulpit; you will pray worse in the family, and worst in the study alone. When your soul becomes lean, your hearers, without knowing how or why, will find that your prayers in public have little savour for them; they will feel your barrenness, perhaps, before you perceive it yourself. Your discourses will next betray your declension. You may utter as well-chosen words, and as fitly-ordered sentences, as aforetime; but there will be other times, even as Samson did, but you will find that your great strength has departed. In your daily communion with your people, they will not be slow to mark the all-pervading decline of your graces. Sharp eyes will see the grey hairs here and there long before you do. Let a man be afflicted with a disease of the heart, and all evils are wrapped up in that one - stomach, lungs, viscera, muscles, and nerves will all suffer; and so, let a man have his heart weakened in spiritual things, and very soon his entire life will feel the withering influence. Moreover, as the result of your own decline, everyone of your hearers will suffer more or less; the vigorous amonst them will overcome the depressing tendency, but the weaker sort will be seriously damaged. It is with us and our hearers as it is with watches and the public clock; if our watch be wrong, very few will be mislead by it but ourselves; but if the Horse Guards or Greenwich Observatory should go amiss; half London would lose its reckoning. So it is with the minister; he is the parish-clock, many take their time from him, and he is a great measure accountable for all the sin which he occasions. This we cannot endure to think of brethren. It will not bear a moment's comfortable consideration, and yet it must be looked at that we may guard against it.

To the pastor and elder these words of C.H. Spurgeon should resonate, but should they be any less for the average Christian? I found this passage convicting. Spurgeon cuts through ritualism and the finer points of theology and goes right for the juglar. He is imploring the reader to examine themselves (2 Cor. 13:5) and to make their calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1:10). How often do we examine ourselves? Do you, my fellow PB brethren, find it easy to get lost in the world of theology while neglecting our spiritual well-being? To be sure all of us stumble from time to time. But where do our affections reside?

Just some thoughts to mull over on this fine Saturday.

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

[Edited on 5-6-2006 by BaptistInCrisis]

 

[Ivan]

Good post, Bill. Thanks.

It's been a long time since I read Spurgeon's "Lectures to My Students". I no longer owe it, but it's on my wishlist.