Spurgeon on Faith.

I have just started to read C.H. Spurgeon's All-Round Ministry. In this book we have collected and preserved for us, some of Spurgeon's addresses to pastors at the annual conference held at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Here is an excerpt from the first address: Faith. I trust you will find as inspiring and encouraging as I did. I suggest you read through it several times slowly so as to absorb all that is being said, then read like you are preaching it, with passion, boldness and zeal so as to capture the determination of the such a resolute faith!


"First, we have faith in God. We believe "that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." We do not believe in the powers of nature operating themselves apart from the constant emanations of power from the Great and Mighty One, who is the Sustainer as well as the Creator of all things. Far be it from us to banish God from His own universe. Neither do we believe in a merely nominal deity, as those do who make all things to be God...We know the Lord as a distinct personal existence, a real God, infinitely more real than the things which are seen and handled, more real even than ourselves, for we are but shadows, He alone is the I AM, abiding the same for ever and ever.

We believe in a God of purposes and plans, who has not left a blind fate to tyrannize over the world, much less an aimless chance to rock it to and fro. We are not fatalists, neither are we doubters of providence and predestination. We are believers in a God "who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." We do not conceive of the Lord as having gone away from the world, and left it and the inhabitants thereof to themselves; we believe in Him as continually presiding in all the affairs of life.

We, by faith, perceive the hand of the Lord giving to every blade of grass its own drop of dew, and to every young raven its meat. We see the present power of God in the flight of every sparrow, and hear His goodness in the song of every lark.

We believe that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof;" and we go forth into it, not as into the domains of Satan where light comes not, nor into a chaos where rule is unknown, nor into a boiling sea where fate's resistless billows shipwreck mortals at their will; but we walk boldly on, having God within us and around us, living and moving and having our being in Him, and so, by faith, we dwell in a temple of providence and grace wherein everything doth speak of His glory.

We believe in a present God wherever we may be, and a working and operating God accomplishing His own purposes steadfastly and surely in all matters, places and times; working out His designs as much in what seemeth evil as in that which is manifestly good; in all things driving on in His eternal chariot towards the goal which infinite wisdom has chosen, never slackening His pace nor drawing the rein, but for ever, according to the eternal strength that is in Him, speeding forward without pause.

We believe in this God as being faithful to everything that He has spoken, a God who can neither lie nor change. The God of Abraham is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and He is our God this day. We do not believe in the ever-shifting views of the Divine Being which differing philosophies are adopting; the God of the Hebrews is our God, -- Jehovah...the Mighty One, the covenant keeping God, -- "this God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our Guide even unto death."

(An All-Round Ministry, C.H. Spurgeon, Pgs 4-6. Banner of Truth Trust.)