Travailing for Souls part4
September 3rd, 1871
by
C. H. SPURGEON
(1834-1892)
Once more, there is a great benefit in the law which makes travail
necessary to spiritual birth, because it secures all the glory to God. If
you want to be lowered in your own esteem, try to convert a child. I
would like those brethren who believe so much in free will, and the
natural goodness of the human heart, to try some children that I could
bring to them, and see whether they could break their hearts and make
them love the Saviour. Why, sir, you never think yourself so great a
fool as after trying in your own strength to bring a sinner to the
Saviour. Oh! How often have I come back defeated from arguing with
an awakened person whom I have sought to comfort: I did think I had
some measure of skill in handling sorrowful cases, but I have been
compelled to say to myself, "What a simpleton I am! God the Holy
Ghost must take this case in hand, for I am foiled." When one has tried
in a sermon to reach a certain person who is living in sin, you learn
afterwards that he enjoyed the sermon which he ought to have smarted
under; then, you say, "Ah, now I see what a weak worm I am, and if
good be done, God shall have the glory." Your longing, then, that
others should be saved, and your vehemence of spirit, shall secure to
God all the glory of his own work; and this is what the Lord is aiming
at, for his glory he will not give to another, nor his praise to an armof
flesh.
And now, having established the fact, and shown the reasons for it, let
us notice how this travail shows itself.
Usually when God intends greatly to bless a church, it will begin in this
way:--Two or three persons in it are distressed at the low state of
affairs, and become troubled even to anguish. Perhaps they do not
speak to one another, or know of their common grief, but they begin to
pray with flaming desire and untiring importunity. The passion to see
the church revived rules them. They think of it when they go to rest,
they dream of it on their bed, they muse on it in the streets. This one
thing eats them up. They suffer great heaviness and continual sorrow in
heart for perishing sinners; they travail in birth for souls. I have
happened to become the centre of certain brethren in this church; one
of them said to me the other day, "O sir, I pray day and night for God
to prosper our church; I long to see greater things; God is blessing us,
but we want much more." I saw the deep earnestness of the man's soul,
and I thanked him and thanked God heartily, thinking it to be a sure
sign of a coming blessing. Sometime after, another friend, who
probably now hears me speak, but who did not know any thing about
the other, felt the same yearning, and must needs let me know it; he too
is anxious, longing, begging, crying, for a revival; and thus from three
or four quarters I have had the same message, and I feel hopeful
because of these tokens for good. When the sun rises the mountain tops
first catch the light, and those who constantly live near to God will be
the first to feel the influence of the coming refreshing. The Lord give
me a dozen importunate pleaders and lovers of souls, and by his grace
we will shake all London from end to end yet. The work would go on
without the mass of you, Christians; many of you only hinder the
march of the army; but give us a dozen lion-like, lamb-like men,
burning with intense love to Christ and souls, and nothing will be
impossible to their faith. The most of us are not worthy to unloose the
shoe-latches of ardent saints. I often feel I am not so myself, but I
aspire and long to be reckoned among them. Oh, may God give us this
first sign of the travail in the earnest ones and twos.
By degrees the individuals are drawn together bysacred affinity, and
the prayer-meetings become very different. The brother who talked
twenty minutes of what he called prayer, and yet never asked for a
single thing, gives up his oration and falls to pleading with many tears
and broken sentences: while the friend who used to relate his
experience and go through the doctrines of grace, and call that a prayer,
forgets that rigmarole and begins agonizing before the throne. And not
only this, but little knots here and there come together in their cottages,
and in their little rooms cry mightily to God. The result will be that the
minister, even if he does not know of the feeling in the hearts of his
people, will grow fervent himself. He will preach more evangelically,
more tenderly, more earnestly. He will be no longer formal, or cold, or
stereotyped; he will be all alive. Meanwhile, not with the preacher only
will be the blessing, but with his hearers who love the Lord. One will
be trying a plan for getting in the young people; another will be
looking after the strangers in the aisles, who come only now and then.
One brother will make a vehement attempt to preach the gospel at the
corner of the street; another will open a room down a dark court;
another will visit lodging-houses and hospitals; all sorts of holy plans
will be invented, and zeal will break out in many directions. All this
will be spontaneous, nothing will be forced. If you want to get up a
revival, as the term is, you can do it, just as you can grow tasteless
strawberries in winter, by artificial heat. There are ways and means of
doing that kind of thing but the genuine work of God needs no such
planning and scheming; it is altogether spontaneous. If you see a
snowdrop next February in your garden, you will feel persuaded that
spring is on the way; the artificial-flower maker could put as many
snow-drops there as you please, but that would be no index of coming
spring. So you may get up an apparent zeal which will be no proof of
God's blessing; but when fervor comes of itself, without human
direction or control, then is it of the Lord. When men's hearts heave
and break, like the mould of the garden under the influence of the
reviving life which lay buried there, then in very deed a benediction is
on the way. Travail is no mockery, but a real agony of the whole
nature. May such be seen in this our church, and throughout the whole
Israel of God.
II. Now, with great brevity, let us consider that THE RESULT IS
OFTEN VERY SURPRISING. It is frequently surprising for rapidity.
"As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children." God's
works are not tied by time. The more spiritual a force is the less it lies
within the chains of time. The electric current, which has a greater
nearness to the spiritual than the grosser forms of materialism, is
inconceivably rapid from that very reason, and by it time is all but
annihilated. The influences of the Spirit of God are a force most
spiritual, and more quick than any thing beneath the sun. As soon as we
agonize in soul the Holy Spirit can, if he pleases, convert the person for
whom we have pleaded. While we are yet speaking he hears, and
before we call he answers. Some calculate the expected progress of a
church by arithmetic; and I think I have heard of arithmetical sermons
in which there have been ingenious calculations as to how many
missionaries it would take to convert the world, and how much cash
would be demanded. Now, there is no room here for the application of
mathematics; spiritual forces are not calculable by an arithmetic which
is most at home in the material universe. A truth which is calculated to
strike the mind of one man to-day may readily enough produce a like
effect upon a million minds to-morrow. The preaching which moves
one heart needs not be altered to tell upon ten thousand. With God's
Spirit our present instrumentalities will suffice to win the world to
Jesus; without him, ten thousand times as much apparent force would
be only so much weakness. The spread of truth, moreover, is not
reckonable by time. During the ten years which ended in 1870, such
wondrous changes were wrought throughout the world that no prophet
would have been believed had he foretold them. Reforms have been
accomplished in England, in the United States, in Germany, in Spain,
in Italy, which according to ordinary reckoning, would have occupied
at least one hundred years. Things which concern the mind cannot be
subjected to those regulations of time which govern steamboats and
railways; in such matters God's messengers are flames of fire. The
Spirit of God is able to operate upon the minds of men instantaneously:
witness the case of Paul. Between now and to-morrow morning he
could excite holy thought in all the minds of all the thousand millions
of the sons of Adam; and if prayer were mighty enough, and strong
enough, why should it not be done on some bright day? We are not
straitened in him, we are straitened in our own bowels. All the fault lies
there. Oh for the travail that would produce immediate results.
Travailing for Souls part1 C. H. SPURGEON
No comments:
Post a Comment