ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PASTORS (BY SPURGEON)
In order to prevent custom and routine from being enthroned among us, it will be well to vary the order of service as much as possible. Whatever the free Spirit moves us to do, that let us do at once.
I was not till lately aware of the extent to which the control of deacons has been allowed to intrude upon ministers in certain benighted churches. I have always been accustomed to conducting religious services in the way I have thought most suitable and edifying, and I never have heard so much as a word of objection, although I trust I can say I live on the dearest intimacy with my officers; but a brother minister told me this morning, that on one occasion, he prayed in the morning service at the commencement instead of giving out a hymn, and when he retired into the vestry, after service, the deacons informed him that they would have no innovations.
We hitherto understood that Baptist churches are not under bondage to traditions and fixed rules as to modes of worship, and yet these poor creatures, these would-be lords, who cry out loudly enough against a liturgy, would bind their minister with rubrics made by custom. It is time that such nonsense was forever silenced. We claim to conduct service as the Holy Spirit moves us, and as we judge best. We will not be bound to sing here and pray there but will vary the order of service to prevent monotony.
SERMON ILLUSTRATION (BY SPURGEON)
Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe how God helps people grow.
I frequently find that when men are being educated for the ministry, the hardest thing is to set them going. They are like bats on the ground. If once a bat gets on the earth, he cannot fly until he creeps to the top of a stone and gets a little above the earth. Then he gets wings and can fly well enough. So there are many who have not gotten their energies aroused. They have talent but it is asleep, and we need a kind of railway whistle to blow in their ears to make them start up and rub away the film from their eyes so that they may see.
Now, it is just so with men when the Spirit of God begins to teach them. He excites their interest in the things that he wishes them to learn; he shows them that these things have a personal bearing on their soul’s present and eternal welfare. He so brings precious truth home that what the man thought was utterly indifferent yesterday, he now begins to esteem inestimably precious. “Theology!” he said, “Of what use can it be to me?” But now the knowledge of Christ and him crucified has become to him the most desirable and excellent of all the sciences. The Holy Spirit awakens his interest.
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