ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)
Habitual communion with God must be maintained, or our public prayers will be vapid or formal. If there be no melting of the glacier high up in the ravines of the mountain, there will be no descending rivulets to cheer the plain. Private prayer is the drill ground for our more public exercises, neither can we long neglect it without being out of order when before the people.
He who has been by communion with God prepared to minister to the people, is usually of all men present the most fit to engage in prayer.
SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)
Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe the power and pleasure of God’s Word.
A young man who had never read his Bible was tempted to do so and led to change by the gift of a bookmark presented to him by a relative. The gift was made on the condition that it should be put into his Bible, but should never stop two days in one place. He meant to shift it and not to read the book, but his eye glanced on a text. After awhile he became interested, by and by he became converted, and then the bookmark was moved with growing pleasure.
I am afraid that even some professing Christians cannot say that they shift their bookmark every day. Probably of all the books printed, the most widely circulated and the least read volume is the word of God. Books about the Bible are read, I fear, more than the Book itself.
RESOURCE FOR PASTORS
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THANKS FOR READING
Brothers,
We don’t have the resources or strength we need to follow God or live fruitfully, let alone minister and help others to follow God. We need prayer — it is not a formality that we insert into the transition points in our service; it is a necessity. We need prayer. So let’s devote ourselves to it.
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Blessings to your ministry,
Doug H.
Creator of SpurgeonBooks
Preaching Pastor of Pillar Church of Washington DC