And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” Mark 10:35-40 Sometimes the will of God is like a diamond; the more you turn it in the light of Jesus Christ the more prisms you see. One of the things that God has said to grant to us, on top of believing in Christ, is suffering. Philippians 1:29 says exactly that, "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake." Sometimes suffering, depression, and the like can be a faceless, nameless thing. It comes like a cold wind and you try to grab hold of it and it passes right through your fingers. I've often wondered about those moments in my life and I've tried to live with them in the view that God was working all things for good for the one who loves Him. I recently ran across this excerpt from Charles Spurgeon about suffering and thought it would be something worth sharing with you to remind you about one "prism" of your suffering as a Christian. Chapter 9 of The Soul Winner entitled "The Cost of Being A Soul Winner"...

"No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything." 2 Timothy 2:4-6 I've caught a glimpse of him a few times now on my way to church. Early in the morning. Full gear. Wide open. Strange though, there was no fire. There was no alarm. There was no one in danger. The station was calm and the fire trucks were in the bay. What was this guy doing? He was acting in a way that was consistent with his belief. That's what he was doing. What did he believe? He believed that one day someones life would be on the line and he would have to be ready to act. He couldn't be weak. He couldn't afford to put it off another day. It wasn't if there was going to be a fire, but when. He truly believed in fire. He truly believed fire kills. He truly believed life was precious. He truly believed that if he stayed behind in the station that those lives would perish. More than all of those he believed that the mandate of the fire station and its captain was to be honored, because those mandates were and always will be good. He had a sincere devotion to the captain and his mandate. Therefore he moved. I would like to share with you a fictitious story to illustrate a point. An experienced firefighter was recently charged with grave neglect of duty. Prosecutors maintained that he had abandoned his responsibility when he failed to release rescue equipment. This resulted in the needless and tragic deaths of a family of five. Eyewitnesses were sickened when they discovered that the reason the firefighter remained locked in the emergency vehicle was simply because he was testing a new, hi-tech, CD player which, he maintained, he had bought as a gift...

The second half of a sermon preached by Spurgeon on Lord's-day Morning, March 24th, 1866. He addressed two types of people in the sermon. The first group he called "THOSE WHO ARE AVOWEDLY DISOBEDIENT TO GOD" and the second group he called "THE DECEPTIVELY SUBMISSIVE." This is well worth the read. I pray it challenge you. Here is the text of his sermon. "But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him."—Matthew 21:28-32. Bear with me a little time while I speak to the second character, THE DECEPTIVELY SUBMISSIVE, by far the most numerous everywhere in England, probably the most numerous in this assembly. Oh! you, my own regular hearers, you who have heard my voice these thirteen years many of you are in this class. You have said to the Great Father, "I go, sir!" but you have not gone. Let me sorrowfully sketch your portraits: you have regularly frequented a place of worship, and you would shudder to waste a single Sunday in an excursion, or in any form of Sabbath breaking. Outwardly you have said," I go, sir." When the hymn is given out, you stand up and sing, and yet you do not sing with the heart. When I say, "Let us pray!" you cover your faces, but you do not pray with real prayer. You utter a polite, respectful...

Brethren, the whole ruin and current, and tenor and spirit of the gospel influences us to compassion. Ye are debtors, for what were ye if compassion had not come to your rescue? Divine compassion, all undeserved and free, has redeemed you from your vain conversation. Surely those who receive mercy should show mercy; those who owe all they have to the pity of God, should not be pitiless to their brethren. The Savior never for a moment tolerates the self-righteous isolation which would make you despise the prodigal, and cavil at his restoration, much less the Cainite spirit which cries, "Am I my brother's keeper?" No doctrine is rightly received by you if it freezes the genial current of your Christian compassion. You may know the truth of the doctrine, but you do not know the doctrine in truth if it makes you gaze on the wrath to come without emotions of pity for immortal souls. You shall find everywhere throughout the gospel that it rings of brotherly love, tender mercy, and weeping pity. If you have indeed received it in its power, the love of Christ will melt your spirit to compassion for those who are despising Christ, and sealing their own destruction. Let me beseech you to believe that it is needful as well as justifiable that you should feel compassion for the sons of men. You all desire to glorify Christ by becoming soul-winners—I hope you do—and be it remembered that, other things being equal, he is the fittest in God's hand to win souls who pities souls most. I believe he preaches best who loves best, and in the Sunday-school and in private life each soul-seeker shall have the blessing very much in proportion to his yearning for it. Paul becomes a savior of many because his heart's desire and prayer to God is that they may be saved. If you can live without souls being converted, you shall live without their being converted; but if your soul breaketh for the longing that it hath towards Christ's glory and the conversion of the ungodly, if like her...

For awhile fascinated by the siren voice of vain philosophy and affected culture, many of the churches have drawn perilously near to the rocks of heresy and doubt, but divine grace is visiting them, and they will shake off the spell.Everywhere there is a cry for the gospel, for men who will preach it in the love of it, for ministers who will live it, and inoculate others with its life: the church is growing sick of essayists, and asks for men of God. She is weary of word-spinners, and pretenders to deep thought, and she cries for men full of the Holy Spirit, who are lovers of the word and not speakers only. Soul-winners will soon be in demand, and your genteel essayists will have to carry their dry goods to another market. Sane men do not need fiddlers, while the life-boat is being manned to save yonder perishing ones from the devouring deep.-Charles Spurgeon, from January 1873's Sword and Trowel essay. You can download the entire essay here. It's worth the read....

And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. (Mark 1:17) Only by coming after Jesus can we obtain our heart's desire and be really useful to our fellow men. Oh, how we long to be successful fishers for Jesus! We would sacrifice our lives to win souls. But we are tempted to try methods which Jesus would never have tried. Shall we yield to this suggestion of the enemy? If so, we may splash the water, but we shall never take the fish. We must follow after Jesus if we would succeed. Sensational methods, entertainment, and so forth—are these coming after Jesus? Can we imagine the Lord Jesus drawing a congregation by such means as are now commonly used? What is the result of such expedients? The result is nothing which Jesus will count up at the last great day. We must keep to our preaching as our Master did, for by this means souls are saved. We must preach our Lord's doctrine and proclaim a full and free gospel, for this is the net in which souls are taken, We must preach with His gentleness, boldness, and love, for this is the secret of success with human hearts. We must work under divine anointing, depending upon the sacred Spirit. Thus, coming after Jesus, and not running before Him, not aside from Him, we shall be fishers of men. -C.H. Spurgeon...

“Remember, awakening is not salvation. A man may know that he is lost, and yet he may never be saved. He may be made thoughtful, and yet he may die in his sins. If you find out that you are a bankrupt, the consideration of your debts will not pay them.” -C.H. Spurgeon...

The following excerpt is from "Our Manifesto," a message given to an assembly of ministers of the gospel, on Friday Morning, 25 April 1890. "My dear Brethren, do not try to make the gospel tasteful to carnal minds. Hide not the offense of the cross, lest you make it of none effect. The angles and corners of the gospel are its strength: to pare them off is to deprive it of power. Toning down is not the increase of strength, but the death of it. Why, even among the sects, you must have noticed that their distinguishing points are the horns of their power; and when these are practically omitted, the sect is effete. Learn, then, that if you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead. If you remove grace out of the gospel, the gospel is gone. If the people do not like the doctrine of grace, give them all the more of it. Whenever its enemies rail at a certain kind of gun, a wise military power will provide more of such artillery. A great general, going in before his king, stumbled over his own sword. "I see," said the king, "your sword in is the way." The warrior answered, "Your majesty's enemies have often felt the same." That our gospel offends the King's enemies is no regret to us." -C.H. Spurgeon Repost: http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-offense-of-cross.html...

"I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."—1 Corinthians 9:22. Paul's great object was not merely to instruct and to improve, but to save. Anything short of this would have disappointed him; he would have men renewed in heart, forgiven, sanctified, in fact, saved. Have our Christian labours been aimed at anything below this great point? Then let us amend our ways, for of what avail will it be at the last great day to have taught and moralized men if they appear before God unsaved? Blood-red will our skirts be if through life we have sought inferior objects, and forgotten that men needed to be saved. Paul knew the ruin of man's natural state, and did not try to educate him, but to save him; he saw men sinking to hell, and did not talk of refining them, but of saving from the wrath to come. To compass their salvation, he gave himself up with untiring zeal to telling abroad the gospel, to warning and beseeching men to be reconciled to God. His prayers were importunate and his labours incessant. To save souls was his consuming passion, his ambition, his calling. He became a servant to all men, toiling for his race, feeling a woe within him if he preached not the gospel. He laid aside his preferences to prevent prejudice; he submitted his will in things indifferent, and if men would but receive the gospel, he raised no questions about forms or ceremonies: the gospel was the one all-important business with him. If he might save some he would be content. This was the crown for which he strove, the sole and sufficient reward of all his labours and self-denials. Dear reader, have you and I lived to win souls at this noble rate? Are we possessed with the same all-absorbing desire? If not, why not? Jesus died for sinners, cannot we live for them? Where is our tenderness? Where our love to Christ, if we seek not His honour in the salvation of men? O that the Lord would saturate...

Do not believe that the common Christianity of the present age will carry anybody to heaven. It is a counterfeit and a sham. It does not make men to differ from their fellows, it pretends to faith and has none, talks about love and does not show it, brags of truth and evaporates it into thin air in its latitudinarian charity. God give us back the real thing—stimuli, strong belief in the gospel, real faith in Jesus, real prayer to him, real spiritual power. Then again there will be persecution, but it will only blow away the chaff and leave the pure wheat! The world likes us better because we like the world better; it calls us friends because we doff our colors and sheathe our swords and play the craven; but if we preach and live the gospel in the old apostolic way, we shall soon have the devil roaring round the camp and the seed of the serpent hissing on all sides, but we fear not, for "the Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." --C.H. Spurgeon...

God meant to have a speaking church: not a church that would fight with the sword—with that weapon we have nought to do—but a church that should have a sword proceeding out of its mouth, whose one weapon should be the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I should think from what I know of some preachers that when they had their Pentecost the influence put upon them in the form of tongues of flowers; but the apostolic Pentecost knew not flowers, but flames. What fine preaching we have nowadays! What new thoughts, and poetical turns! This is not the style of the Holy Ghost. Soft and gentle is the flow of smooth speech which tells of the dignity of man, the grandeur of the century, the toning down of all punishment for sin, and the probable restoration of all lost spirits, including the arch-fiend himself. This is the Satanic ministry, subtle as the serpent, bland as his seducing words to Eve. The Holy Ghost calls us not to this mode of speech. Fire, intensity, zeal, passion as much as you will, but as for aiming at effect by polished phrases and brilliant periods—these are fitter for those who would deceive men than for those who would tell them the message of the Most High. The style of the Holy Ghost is one which conveys the truth to the mind in the most forcible manner,—it is plain but flaming, simple but consuming. The Holy Spirit has never written a cold period throughout the whole Bible, and never did he speak by a man a lifeless word, but evermore he gives and blesses the tongue of fire. --CH Spurgeon...

Remember how your fathers, in times gone by, defended God's truth, and blush, ye cowards, who are afraid to maintain it!Remember that our Bible is a blood-stained book; the blood of martyrs is on the Bible, the blood of translators and confessors. The pool of holy baptism, in which many of you have been baptized, is a blood-stained pool: full many have had to die for the vindication of that baptism which is "the answer of a good conscience toward God."The doctrines which we preach to you are doctrines that have been baptized in blood,—swords have been drawn to slay the confessors of them; and there is not a truth which has not been sealed by them at the stake, or the block, or far away on the lofty mountains, where they have been slain by hundreds. It is but a little duty we have to discharge compared with theirs. They were called to maintain the truth when they had to die for it; you only have to maintain the truth when taunt and jeer, ignominious names and contemptuous epithets are all you have to endure for it.What! do you expect easy lives? While some have led through seas of blood, and have fought to win the prize, are you wearied with a slight skirmish on dry land? What would you do if God should suffer persecuting days to overtake you? O craven spirits, ye would flee away, and disown your profession!Be ye the pillar and ground of the truth. Let the blood of martyrs, let the voices of confessors, speak to you. Remember how they held fast the truth, how they preserved it, and handed it down to us from generation to generation; and by their noble example, I beseech you, be steadfast and faithful, tread valiantly and firmly in their steps, acquit yourselves like men,—like men of God, I implore you!Shall we not have some champions, in these times, who will deal sternly with heresies for the love of the truth,—men who will stand like rocks in the center of the sea, so that, when all others shake, they...

"The brilliance of the gospel light is dimmed by error. The clearness of the testimony is spoiled when doubtful voices are scattered among the people, and those who ought to preach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are telling out for doctrines the imaginations of men, and the inventions of the age.Instead of revelation, we have philosophy, falsely so-called; instead of divine infallibility, we have surmises and larger hopes. The gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is taught as the production of progress, a growth, a thing to be amended and corrected year by year. It is an ill day, both for the church and the world, when the trumpet does not give a certain sound; for who shall prepare himself for the battle?" C.H. Spurgeon...

"He that winneth souls is wise.” —Proverbs 11:30       "He does not say that he who talks about winning souls is wise, since to lay down rules for others is a very simple thing, but to carry them out one’s self is far more difficult." C.H. Spurgeon...

"You may know the truth of the doctrine, but you do not know the doctrine in truth if it makes you gaze on the wrath to come without emotions of pity for immortal souls." Charles Spurgeon I’ve had people often tell me, “Do as I say, not as I do.” I have often pondered that and I have come to the conclusion that anyone who says that has a contradiction of belief and practice. What they are truly saying is, “I know what is right, but I want to follow what my own heart says, so that justifies my actions and somehow by telling you to do what is right that also helps me justify my actions.” What a contradiction! For they preach but do not practice. Jesus said in Matthew 23:1-3, “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses\' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” I also know men who are so very careful and precise in their theology as to walk as it were on eggshells with every word of their doctrine to make sure they are in line with God’s word. I am one of them. I know men who debate singular meanings of one word for hours, even using the original languages and definitions, in an attempt to get a right understanding of truly what God’s word is saying. I am one of them. I know men who exhort that the Gospel is the only means by which men can be saved and they would affirm in their heart that it is every Christians duty to preach the Gospel to all creation (Mark 16:15). I am one of them. Here is what I don’t understand. If you, as a Christian, care so much about right doctrine as to spend hours pouring over God’s word, over every “jot and tittle” as to make a surety of your belief as to exactly what the Gospel is in its content and you neglect intentionally and regularly going...