Giving for Jesus by Spurgeon

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1873

Giving for Jesus.

By Spurgeon

Certain Moravian missionaries, in the old times of slavery, went to one of the West India Islands to preach, and they found they could not be permitted to teach there unless they themselves became slaves; and they did so—they sold themselves into bondage, never to return, that they might save slaves’ souls. We have heard of another pair of holy men who actually submitted to be confined in a lazar-house, that they might save the souls of lepers, knowing as they did that they would never be permitted to come out again. They went there to take the leprosy, and to die if by so doing they might save souls.

I have read of one, Thome de Jesu, who went to Barbary amongst the Christian captives, and there lived and died in banishment and bondage, that he might cheer his brethren and preach Jesus to them. Brethren, we have never reached to such devotion; we fall far short of what Jesus deserves. We give him little, we give him what we are ashamed not to give him. Often we give him our zeal for a day or two, and then grow cool; we wake up on a sudden, and then sleep all the more soundly. We seem to-day as if we would set the world on fire, and to-morrow we scarce keep our own lamp trimmed. We vow at one time that we will push the church before us and drag the world after us, and by-and-by we ourselves are like Pharaoh’s chariots with the wheels taken off, and drag along right heavily. Oh! for a spark of the love of Christ in the soul! Oh! for a living flame from off Calvary’s altar, to set our whole nature blazing with divine enthusiasm for the Christ who gave himself for us that we might live! Henceforth, take upon yourselves in the solemn intent of your soul this deep resolve: “I will unloose the latchets of his shoes; I will seek out the little things, the mean things, the humble things, and I will do them as unto the Lord, and not unto men, and may he accept me even as he has saved me through his precious blood.”—Spurgeon.