Charles spurgeon quotes

The Word of God is a lamp by night, a light by day, and a delight at all times.

You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.

A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian.

The glory of God's faithfulness is that no sin of ours has ever made Him unfaithful.

Do not despair, dear heart, but come to the Lord with all your jagged wounds, black bruises, and running sores. He alone can heal, and He delights to do it. It is our Lord's office to bind up the brokenhearted, and He is gloriously at home at it.

The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.

One of the greatest rewards that we ever receive for serving God is the permission to do still more for Him.

My friends, it is one thing to go to church or chapel; it is quite another thing to go to God.

Do not flatter yourselves: if you go to places of worship merely to look about you or to hear music, you are not worshipping God.

Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality...plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way...Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it. Believe that you have the blessing, and go forth to your work in full assurance of it. Go from your knees singing, because the promise is fulfilled: thus will your prayer be answered...the strength [not length] of your prayer...wins...God; and the strength of prayer lies in your faith in the promise which you pleaded before the Lord.

Be not proud of race, face, place, or grace.

Only the prayer which comes from our heart can get to God's heart.

My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, HE is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am or shall be or feel or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. Hallelujah!

Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might.

The Word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.

We are never, never so much in danger of being proud as when we think we are humble.

Every hour of every day, God is richly blessing us; both when we sleep and when we wake His mercy waits upon us.

God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart. When you are so weak that you cannot do much more than cry, you coin diamonds with both your eyes. The sweetest prayers God ever hears are the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but his love.

If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him, for you are worse than he thinks you to be.

To pray is to mount on eagle's wings above the clouds and get into the clear heaven where God dwelleth.

It is not a matter of time so much as a matter of heart; if you have the heart to pray, you will find the time.

If heaven were by merit, it would never be heaven to me, for if I were in it I should say, "I am sure I am here by mistake; I am sure this is not my place; I have no claim to it." But if it be of grace and not of works, then we may walk into heaven with boldness.

I know of no better thermometer to your spiritual temperature than this, the measure of the intensity of your prayer.

The work of God's Holy Spirit begins with bruising. In order to be saved, the fallow ground must be plowed up, the hard heart must be broken, the rock must be split apart.

We cannot always trace God's hand but we can always trust God's heart.

I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church.

If you wish to know God, you must know his Word. If you wish to perceive His power, you must see how He works by his Word. If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word.

The early morning hour should be dedicated to praise: do not the birds set us the example?

Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.

God helps those who cannot help themselves.

There is no form of sinfulness to which you are addicted which Christ cannot remove.

A man says to me, 'Can you explain the seven trumpets of the Revelation?' No, but I can blow one in your ear, and warn you to escape from the wrath to come.

If you have no wish to bring others to heaven, you are not going there yourself.

Some go to church to take a walk; some go there to laugh and talk. Some go there to meet a friend; some go there their time to spend. Some go there to meet a lover; some go there a fault to cover. Some go there for speculation; some go there for observation. Some go there to doze and nod; the wise go there to worship God.

We must all learn to hear what we do not like. The question is not, 'Is it pleasant?' but, 'Is it true?'

Nearness to God brings likeness to God. The more you see God the more of God will be seen in you.

Whenever God means to make a man great, he always breaks him in pieces first.

The more you read the Bible; and the more you meditate on it, the more you will be astonished with it.

God alone can do what seems impossible. This is the promise of his grace: 'I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten' (Joel 2:25). God can give back all those years of sorrow, and you will be the better for them. God will grind sunlight out of your black nights. In the oven of affliction, grace will prepare the bread of delight. Someday you will thank God for all your sadness.

You cannot be Christ’s servant if you are not willing to follow him, cross and all. What do you crave? A crown? Then it must be a crown of thorns if you are to be like him. Do you want to be lifted up? So you shall, but it will be upon a cross.

You will never know the fullness of Christ until you know the emptiness of everything but Christ.

Let me revel in this one thought: before God made the heavens and the earth, He set His love upon me.

Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. Great faith must have great trials.

God gave me this great book to preach from, and if He has put anything in it you think is not fit, go and complain to Him, not to me. I am simply his servant, and if His errand that I am to tell is objectionable, I cannot help it.

Prayer and praise are the oars by which a man may row his boat into the deep waters of the knowledge of Christ.

Doth not all nature around me praise God? If I were silent, I should be an exception to the universe. Doth not the thunder praise Him as it rolls like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not the mountains praise Him when the woods upon their summits wave in adoration? Doth not the lightning write His name in letters of fire? Hath not the whole earth a voice? And shall I, can I, silent be?

The word of God is always most precious to the man who most lives upon it.

When Satan cannot get a great sin in he will let a little one in, like the thief who goes and finds shutters all coated with iron and bolted inside. At last he sees a little window in a chamber. He cannot get in, so he puts a little boy in, that he may go round and open the back door. So the devil has always his little sins to carry about with him to go and open back doors for him, and we let one in and say, 'O, it is only a little one.' Yes, but how that little one becomes the ruin of the entire man!

Unless you have forgiven others you read your own death warrant when you repeat the Lord's Prayer

If you profess to be a Christian, yet find full satisfaction in worldly pleasures and pursuits, your profession is false.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer. I must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me. I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend. I must be holy for His sake. How can I live in sin when He has died to save me from it?

A prayerless church member is a hindrance. He is in the body like a rotting bone or a decayed tooth. Before long, since he does not contribute to the benefit of his brethren, he will become a danger and a sorrow to them. Neglect of private prayer is the locust which devours the strength of the church.

The Bible is not the light of the world, it is the light of the Church. But the world does not read the Bible, the world reads Christians! “You are the light of the world.”

Hold everything earthly with a loose hand, but grasp eternal things with a death-like grip

Give me great sinners to make great saints! They are glorious raw material for Grace to work upon and when you do get them saved, they will shake the very gates of Hell!

It was God's word that made us; is it any wonder that His word should sustain us?

He who does not serve God where he is would not serve God anywhere else.

Faith is the accepting of what God gives. Faith is the believing what God says. Faith is the trusting to what Jesus has done. Only do this and you are saved, as surely as you are alive!

Discernment is not a matter of telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

A person who is really saved by Grace does not need to be told that he is under solemn obligations to serve Christ. The new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself, body, soul, and spirit, to the Lord.

There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory.

A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats

Satan always hates Christian fellowship; it is his policy to keep Christians apart. Anything which can divide saints from one another he delights in. He attaches far more importance to godly intercourse than we do. Since union is strength, he does his best to promote separation.

The more holy a man becomes, the more conscious he is of unholiness.

Atheism is a strange thing. Even the devils never fell into that vice.

Right is right though all condemn, and wrong is wrong though all approve.

Wherever Jesus may lead us, He goes before us. If we don't know where we are going, we know with whom we go.

Whatever a man depends upon, whatever rules his mind, whatever governs his affections, whatever is the chief object of his delight, is his god.

If you cannot trust God for the temporal, how dare you trust him for the eternal?

My entire theology can be condensed into four words, 'JESUS DIED FOR ME'.

To trust God in the light is nothing, but trust him in the dark-that is faith.

Jesus wept, but He never complained.

The tears of affliction are often needed to keep the eye of faith bright.

We live charmed lives if we are living in the center of God's will. All the attacks that Satan can hurl against us are not only powerless to harm us, but are turned into blessing on the way.

You and your sins must separate, or you and your God will never come together.

When you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.

You must keep all earthy treasures out of your heart, and let Christ be your treasure, and let Him have your heart.

Christians are not so much in danger when they are persecuted as when they are admired.

I have a great need for Christ: I have a great Christ for my need.

We are one in Christ; let us be friends with one another; but let us never be friends with one another’s error. If I be wrong, rebuke me sternly; I can bear it, and bear it cheerfully; and if ye be wrong, expect the like measure from me, and neither peace nor parley with your mistakes.

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?

We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously He once waited for us.

Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.

Anything is a blessing which makes us pray.

You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: he who counts the stars, and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting his own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature he ever made, or the only saint he ever loved. Approach him and be at peace.

My faith rests not in what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is doing for me.

Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Jesus Christ to keep you out of hell.

It is the whole business of the whole church to preach the whole gospel to the whole world.

God gave us sleep to remind us we are not him.

If Christ is not all to you He is nothing to you. He will never go into partnership as a part Saviour of men. If He be something He must be everything, and if He be not everything He is nothing to you.

God is our portion, Christ our companion, the Spirit our Comforter, Earth our lodge, and Heaven is our home.

Time is short. Eternity is long. It is only reasonable that this short life be lived in the light of eternity.

If you can sin and not weep over it, you are an heir of Hell. If you can go into sin, and afterwards feel satisfied to have done so, you are on the road to destruction. If there are no prickings of conscience, no inward torments, no bleeding wounds; if you have no throbs and heavings of a bosom that cannot rest; if your soul never feels filled with wormwood and gall when you know you have done evil, you are no child of God.

Avoid a sugared gospel as you would shun sugar of lead. Seek the gospel which rips up and tears and cuts and wounds and hacks and even kills, for that is the gospel that makes alive again. And when you have found it, give good heed to it. Let it enter into your inmost being. As the rain soaks into the ground, so pray the Lord to let his gospel soak into your soul.

I believe the hard heartest, most cross grained and most unloving Christians in all the world are those who have not had much trouble in their life. And those that are the most sympathizing, loving and Christlike are generally those who have the most affliction. The worse thing that can happen to any of us is to have a path made too smooth. One of the greatest blessings the Lord ever gave us was a cross.

The Word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

When joy and prayer are married, their first born child is gratitude.

When we come to the end of self we come to the beginning of Christ.

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.

When a man is saved by divine grace, he is not wholly cleansed from the corruption of his heart. When we believe in Jesus Christ all our sins are pardoned; yet the power of sin, albeit that it is weakened and kept under by the dominion of the new-born nature which God doth infuse into our souls, doth not cease, but still tarrieth in us, and will do so to our dying day.

Every growth of spiritual life, from the first tender shoot until now, has been the work of the Holy Spirit.... The only way to more life is the Holy Spirit. You will not even know that you want more unless He works in you to desire it.... The Spirit of God must come and make the letter alive, transfer it to your heart, set it on fire, and make it burn within you, or else its divine force and majesty will be hid from your eyes.... Prayer is the creation of the Holy Spirit. We cannot do without prayer, and we cannot pray without the Holy Spirit.

When your will is God's will, you will have your will.

His eyes never slumber, and His hands never rest; His heart never ceases to beat with love, and His shoulders are never weary of carrying His people's burdens.

When you think of what you are, and despair; think also of what He is, and take heart.

When God places a burden upon you, He places His arms underneath you.

There may be some sins of which a man cannot speak, but there is no sin which the blood of Christ cannot wash away.

When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good.

There must be a divorce between you and sin, or there can be no marriage between you and Christ.

Child of God, you cost Christ too much for him to forget you.

You cannot preach conviction of sin unless you have suffered it. You cannot preach repentance unless you have practiced it. You cannot preach faith unless you have exercised it. True preaching is artesian; it wells up from the great depths of the soul. If Christ has not made a well within us, there will be no outflow from us.

Within the Scripture there is a balm for every wound, a salve for every sore.

You and I cannot be useful if we want to be sweet as honey in the mouths of men. God will never bless us if we wish to please men, that they may think well of us. Are you willing to tell them what will break your own heart in the telling and break theirs in the hearing? If not, you are not fit to serve the Lord. You must be willing to go and speak for God, though you will be rejected.

God has so made man's heart that nothing can ever fill it but God himself.

Look to the cross, and hate your sin, for sin nailed your Well Beloved to the tree. Look up to the cross, and you will kill sin, for the strength of Jesus' love will make you strong to put down your tendencies to sin.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

Anger does a man more hurt than that which made him angry.

It's a good thing God chose me before I was born, because he surely would not have afterwards.

I heard the story of a man, a blasphemer...an atheist, who was converted singularly by a sinful action of his. He had written on a piece of paper, "God is nowhere," and ordered his child to read it, for he would make him an atheist too. The child spelled it, "God is n-o-w h-e-r-e. God is now here." It was a truth instead of a lie, and the arrow pierced the man's own heart.

Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.

The more of heaven there is in our lives, the less of earth we shall covet.