A Quick Word on Prayer from Spurgeon
Charles Spurgeon is known as the “Prince of Preachers” but his ministry was also marked by a powerful prayer ministry. The church he lead, The Metropolitan Tabernacle, had a weekly prayer meeting on Monday nights that was attended by more than a thousand!
Spurgeon has many powerful things to say about prayer, I simply want to pass on a couple points of wisdom today.
1- Long prayers are not better than short prayers.
Listen to Spurgeon challenge long, eloquent prayers in a manner similar to the Lord, “Long prayers either consist of repetitions, or else of unnecessary explanations which God does not require; or else they degenerate into downright preaching’s, so that there is no difference between the praying and the preaching, except that in the one the minister has his eyes shut, and in the other he keeps them open. It is not necessary in prayer to rehearse the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism.”[1]
Spurgeon addressed the threat of long prayers several times. He was deeply committed to a church prayer meeting. This meant he had to fight the dangers of the religious regiments of repetition and the dangers of pride in public prayer. He wrote, “Not length but strength is desirable. A sense of need is a mighty teacher of brevity. If our prayers had less of the tail feathers of pride and more wing they would be all the better. Verbiage is to devotion as chaff to wheat.”[2]
2- Praying is not for public consumption.
Spurgeon followed the Lord Jesus’ example in addressing the dangers of public piety. Spurgeon echoes the Sermon on the Mount’s instructions, “The less prayer is observed on earth, the more it is observed in heaven.”[3]
I am praying that our lives would grow in prayer day by day… but not for the sake of other’s opinions !
Even in the prayer meeting, prayer is not focused on those around us. As Spurgeon wrote, “Prayer is the natural outgushing of a soul in communion with Jesus.”[4]
[1] C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: A Selection from Addresses Delivered to the Students of the Pastors’ College, Metropolitan Tabernacle. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1977), 63.
[2] C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896), 29.
[3] C.H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Containing Sermons Preached and Revised, vol. 30 (Pilgrim Publications, 1969), 136.
[4] C.H. Spurgeon The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Containing Sermons Preached and Revised, vol. 34 (Pilgrim Publications, 1969), 14.