Bare Meetings

Below is a section of a Charles Spurgeon sermon from 1856 (he was only 22 years old)!!

The sermon is based on a text in Habakkuk 3:2 “O Lord, revive your work.”

I am putting on this blog because it sounds a little…..familiar don’t you think?

Once you’re done with laughing out loud, you may weep in silence……

Charles Spurgeon said,

“Look at our prayer meetings, with only an exception here and there, there are, possibly, six old women present;  scarcely ever do enough male members come to pray even four times a year.

Prayer meetings they are called; they ought to be called “bare meetings”, for they are barely attended…….

…. Let me ask you, instead of grumbling at your minister, instead of finding fault with the different parts of the Church, let me ask you to cry out, “O Lord, revive your work.”

“Oh!” one says, “Oh, that we had another minister!  Oh, that we had another kind of worhip!  Oh, that we had a different sort of preaching!”

Just as if that were the simple solution; but my prayer is, “Oh, that the Lord would come into the hearts of the men you have!  Oh, that he would make the forms you use to be full of power!”

You don’t need fresh ways or new structures; you need life in those that you have.

There is a locomotive on the railroad tracks; but the train will not move.  “Bring another locomotive,” one says, “and another, and another.”  The locomotives are brought, but the train still does not move.  Light the fire and get up more steam, that is what you need; not new engines.

We do not need new ministers, or new plans, or new ways, though many might be invented, to make the Church better; we only need life and fire in those we have.

with the very man who has emptied your Church, the very same person that weakened your prayer meetings, God can yet make the Church to be crowded to the doors, and give thousands of souls to that very man.

It is not a new man that is needed; it is the life of God in him.  Don’t be crying for something new; it will no more solve your problem than what you now have.

Cry out, “O Lord, revive your work.”

And he said all this and more in

Not much change there then!

Press on, brothers and sisters, and preach the Gospel as the singular urgent priority.