Imaginary Trouble

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  The following excerpt is from "Jesus Christ--'The Breaker,' " a sermon preached on 23 April, 1856 at Queen's Square Chapel, Brighton.

“It is not dying that is the great difficulty; it is living.”

What foolish people even many Christians are! There is an old proverbs which says, ‘Never cross a bridge before you come to it.’ How many Christians are filled with sorrow on account of imaginary troubles! Many timid Christians have a trouble manufactory in their own houses; they sit from morning to night endeavouring to make trouble for themselves. We have quite enough real trials to bear; and if we make any more of our own, we have no promise that God will give us grace to bear our self-made sorrows. How unwise are those people who crowd a whole year’s troubles into a single day!

The brave Spartan ranged his little troop in a narrow pass, Thermopylae, and slew his enemies as they came up one or two at a time. If he had been foolish enough to have ventured into the plain to fight that mighty host of Persians all at once, he would soon have been overcome. Believer, stand in the narrow path of today; as thy troubles come, by divine grace slay them one by one; but, I beseech thee, never go into the broad plain of tomorrow, lest thou be overwhelmed by the vast hosts. Troubles usually come one or two at a time, and when they do come, it is for us to have at them, strong in the strength of Jehovah, and so to destroy them. If thou puttest together the troubles of a year, and seekest to bear them in a day, how canst thou expect to have grace sufficient? Thou didst ask this morning, ‘Give us this day our daily bread;’ dost thou want all at once a month’s supply? Thou hast the promise: ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days so shall thy strength be.’ Dost thou expect a year’s strength in a single day? Believe me, my fellow-Christian, thy cup of sorrow will be quite full enough without thine additions. Let this cheer thee wheresoever thou art going: ‘The Breaker is come up before them: they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them.’ Oh, methinks it is sweet to go anywhere where Christ has gone before! Pilgrims in the Holy Land delight in spots where they can find traces of the Saviour. Christians may find a Holy Land in all their experiences of sorrow, for their Saviour was ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.’ Sorrowing Christian, in all those gloomy Gethsemanes of thine, thou dost hold fellowship with Jesus Christ thy Lord and Saviour! Cheer up, Christian! Take heart, man! Courage, O believer! ‘The Breaker is come up before them,’ ‘and the Lord on the head of them.’

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