God asks for your weakness

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 The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 37, sermon number 2,209, "The best strengthening medicine."

"If we were by faith to begin, humbly waiting upon the Lord for words, and taking hold upon divine strength, might we not accomplish far more than we now do?"



I have heard of one brought to Christ, who was a very great sinner—of so stiff a neck that he never would be approached by anybody who aimed at his conversion. He hated the very mention of religion. He answered all appeals very coarsely.

But one of his neighbours felt forced to go to him very early in the morning and to say to him, “I beg your pardon for intruding so early, but I lay awake all last night thinking about you; and I cannot rest till I tell you something.” He answered, “What were you thinking about me for? I don’t want any of your thoughts.”

“Oh,” said the other, “I felt so sorry to think that, if you were to die, you would die without hope, that I was obliged to come to you.” The bearish man grumbled, “Mind your own business.” “But,” said the other, “it is my business. I think my heart will break unless I see you saved.” All the answer was, “Go away with you. Don’t come here with your cant.”

The brother went home weeping; but he was not the only one who felt his heart breaking. The bearish one went away from his forge, and said to his wife, “I can always answer these religious fellows. I do not care for your parsons a bit; but that neighbour of ours has been in here and he says he shall break his heart unless I am converted; and that beats me.”

He was beaten. Out of a sort of kindly pity for his neighbour’s weak-mindedness, with a mixture of an unacknowledged feeling on his own account, he went to hear the preaching of the Word, and was brought to Jesus. “But,” says one, “I know if I were to try to speak to any of my neighbours, I should break down.”

Friend, I am not careful in that matter, nor need you be. If you are in real earnest, you might possibly do more by a break-down than by anything else. Only break the ice, and begin; and you shall find my text to be true in your case also, and out of weakness you, too, shall be made strong.

God does not need your strength; he has more than enough of power of his own. He asks your weakness: he has none of that himself, and he is longing, therefore, to take your weakness, and use it as the instrument in his own mighty hand. Will you not yield your weakness to him, and receive his strength?

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