Spurgeon's Challenge To Work Hard

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the renowned preacher of London in the 1800s, was not only a gifted leader, but was a hard worker.

For instance, each week he:

• preached several times,
• trained pastors in the pastor’s college,
• wrote many letters (“I’m immersed to my chin in letters”),
• led an elders’ meeting,
• conducted a prayer meeting,
• counseled numbers of new believers preparing for baptism,
• read from volumes of Puritan theology,
• edited both his printed sermon and 'The Sword and the Trowel' magazine,
• wrote a few chapters in one of his 150 books,
• squared off against some heresy,
• buried a few members,
• entertained many guests,
• and visited his orphans at the orphan home established by the church.

“A man cannot be idle and yet have Christ’s sweet company,” he once wrote. “Christ is a quick walker, and when His people would talk with Him they must travel quickly too, or else they will soon lose His company.”

Spurgeon stated that he believed in Adam Clark’s adage: “Kill yourself with labour, and then pray yourself alive again.”

Spurgeon wore himself out with his labours, dying at the age of 57.

But would he have it any other way?

“If I have any message to give from my own bed of sickness, it would be this—if you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are obliged to lie still, work while you can.

If you desire to make a sick bed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with mournful reflections that you wasted time while you were in health and strength.

People said to me years ago, ‘You will break your constitution down with preaching ten times a week,’ and the like.

Well, if I have done so I am glad of it. I would do the same again. If I had fifty constitutions I would rejoice to break them down in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You young men that are strong, overcome the wicked one and fight for the Lord while you can.

You will never regret having done all that lies in you for our blessed Lord and Master.

Crowd as much as you can into every day, and postpone no work till tomorrow.

‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.’”

Spurgeon presents to us a massive challenge to, 'Do Something More For God'!