Do Not Be Dismayed

The Christian’s life is no child’s play. All who have gone on pilgrimage to the celestial city have found a rough road, sloughs of despond and hills of difficulty, giants to fight and tempters to shun. Hence there are two perils to which Christians are exposed; the one is that under heavy pressure they should start away from the path which they ought to pursue - the other is lest they should grow fearful of failure, and so become faint-hearted in their holy course....

There is really nothing to be depressed about, there is no real danger, you are safe while God lives, and while Christ pleads, and while the Spirit of God dwells in you; therefore be not dismayed, nor even dream of fear. Be not timorous and unbelieving, but play the man; “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Brave Waiting," delivered August 26, 1877. Image by nosha on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The source of fear

Adam never was afraid of his God till he had broken his commands. When the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of day, and Adam heard the Almighty’s foot-fall, he hastened to commune with God as a dear child talks with a loving father. But the moment he had touched the fruit that was forbidden, he ran away and hid himself, and when God said, “Where art thou, Adam?” Adam came cringing and trembling, for he was afraid of God. It is sin, consciousness of sin, that “makes cowards of us all.” Though he who made us is a consuming fire, and we should always have a holy awe of him, yet the fear that gendereth bondage would never have come into our spirit if we had not first of all transgressed his law. Sin is the mother of the fear which hath torment.

From a sermon entitled "Away With Fear," delivered April 10, 1870. Image by David Hopkins under Creative Commons License.

Our little anxieties

I would, with special earnestness, beg you to believe that God is in little things. It is the little troubles of life that annoy us the most. A man can put up with the loss of a dear friend sometimes better than he can with the burning of his fingers with a coal, or some little accident that may occur to him. The little stones in the sandal make the traveler limp; while great stones do him little hurt, for he soon leaps over them. Believe that God arranges the littles. Take the little troubles as they come; remember them to your God, because they come from God. Believe that nothing is little to God which concerns his people; to him, indeed, your greatest concerns may be said to be little; and your little anxieties are not too mean for his notice.

The very hairs of your head are all numbered; you may, therefore, pray to him about your smallest griefs. If not a sparrow lighteth upon the ground without your Father, you have reason to see that the smallest events in your career are arranged by him, and it should be your joy to accept them as they come, and not make them causes of offense, either to others or to yourselves. This is a truth on which you may rely implicitly, and exercise yourselves continually, until you lull the sharpest pains, calm the most feverish excitements, and obtain the sweetest repose that a spirit weary, but restless, can indulge in. It is the antidote of fear. I commend this positive certainty to you with the utmost confidence. Everything in the future is appointed by God. As men you will account it reasonable; as disciples you will believe it, for it is plainly revealed; and as Christians I trust you may rejoice in it heartily, for it must be a theme of rejoicing that all is in the hand of the great King. The Lord is King; let his people rejoice!

From a sermon entitled "A Safe Prospective," delivered July 8, 1869. Image by Bala under Creative Commons License.

Fear will magnify your trouble

I remember well, one night, having been preaching the word in a country village, I was walking home alone along a lonely footpath. I do not know what it was that ailed me, but I was prepared to be alarmed, when of a surety I saw something standing in the hedge, ghastly, giant-like, and with outstretched arms. Surely, I thought, for once I have come across the supernatural; here is some restless spirit performing its midnight march beneath the moon, or some demon of the pit. I deliberated with myself a moment, and having no faith in ghosts, I plucked up courage, and resolved to solve the mystery. The monster stood on the other side of a ditch, right in the hedge. I jumped the ditch, and found myself grasping an old tree, which some waggish body had taken pains to color with a little whitewash, with a view to frighten simpletons. That old tree has served me a good turn full often, for I have learned to leap at difficulties, and find them vanish or turn to triumphs.

Half our afflictions are only appalling in prospect because we do not know what they are; and if we will but in faith patiently await them, they will be but light and transient. Thus, by chasing away the gloom of our dark imagination, God often makes darkness light before us. Much, again, of the darkness which does really exist is exaggerated. There is some cause for alarm, but not one half the cause which your fancy pictures. “All these things are against me,” says Jacob: “Joseph is not, Simeon is not; and now ye will take Benjamin away.” There was something in this complaint. Joseph was not with his father, Simeon was kept in ward; but the old man had pictured Joseph devoured of an evil beast, and Simeon given up to be a perpetual slave in a foreign land.

His fears had magnified the trouble which existed. And, believer, so probably it is with you. You shall find that the load which seems now to be far too ponderous for you to lift, shall be easily carried on the shoulders which divine grace shall strengthen if you have but confidence enough to venture upon the task. That cross is not made of iron, it is only a wooden one; it may be painted with iron colors, but iron it is not; it has been carried, ay, and a weightier one by far, has been carried by other men aforetime - shoulder it like a man, shoulder it like a man of God. Take up your cross daily, and go forward with your Master, and you shall find that mountains shrink to molehills, giants are seen to be but dwarfs, dragons and griffins are but bats and owls, and the leviathan himself a defeated foe.

From a sermon entitled "Joyful Transformations," delivered December 27, 1868. Image by Thomas & Dianne Jones under Creative Commons License.

Fear not, for I am with thee

We sometimes speak and think very lightly of doubts and fears; but such is not God’s estimate of them. Our heavenly Father evidently considers them to be great evils, extremely mischievous to us, and exceedingly dishonorable to himself, for he very frequently forbids our fears, and as often affords us the most potent remedies for them. “Fear not” is a frequent utterance of the divine mouth. “I am with thee” is the fervent, soul-cheering argument to support it. Unless the Lord had judged our fears to be a great evil, he would not so often have forbidden them, or have provided such a heavenly quietus for them.

I pray that my dear brethren and sisters who are cast down, may have grace to struggle with their despondency, and to overcome it. Martin Luther used to say, that to comfort a desponding spirit is as difficult as to raise the dead; but, then, we have a God who both raises the dead from their graves and his people from their despair. “Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” May the oil of joy be exchanged for mourning by many sorrowing ones this morning!

From a sermon entitled "The Sweet Harp of Consolation," delivered July 14, 1867. Image by James Jordan under Creative Commons License.

Be anxious for nothing

Do you see that Christian there with the sparkling eye, and the light footstep, the man who is swift to run upon his Master’s errands? That man has many troubles, but when he wakes in the morning if he retains remembrance of them, he bows his knee and leaves them with his God: he goes home, and the day has had much of sorrow in it, but he shakes the weight from his own shoulder and leaves his burden upon God. That man, with all his troubles, is more blessed than yonder professor, who has very little to vex him except that he vexes himself, by making every little thing a ground for fretfulness, magnifying every small mischance into a strange calamity, and by losing all patience, when all things suit not his proud will and dainty taste. Oh brethren! It is an ill thing for Christians to be sad. Let them rejoice, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” but they never can so long as they indulge in anxious cares.

From a sermon entitled "A Cure For Care," delivered January 12, 1862. Flickr photo by Hans Splinter; some rights reserved.

The moment you cease to believe

While he had faith, Peter walked on the waves of the sea. That was a splendid walk; I almost envy him treading upon the billows. Why, if Peter’s faith had continued, he might have walked across the Atlantic to America. But presently there came a billow behind him, and he said, “That will sweep me away;” and then another before, and he cried out, “That will overwhelm me;” and he thought-how could I be so presumptuous as to be walking on than top of these waves? Down goes Peter. Faith was Peter’s life-buoy; faith was Peter’s charm-it kept him up; but unbelief sent him down. Do you know that you and I, all our lifetime, will have to walk on the water? A Christian’s life is always walking on water-mine is -and every wave would swallow and devour him but faith makes him stand. The moment you cease to believe, that moment distress comes in, and down you go. Oh! Wherefore dost thou doubt, then?

Faith fosters every virtue; unbelief murders every one. Thousands of prayers have been strangled in their infancy by unbelief. Unbelief has been guilty of infanticide; it has murdered many an infant petition, many a song of praise that would have swelled the chorus of the skies, has been stifled by an unbelieving murmur, many a noble enterprise conceived in the heart has been blighted ere it could come forth, by unbelief; many a man would have been a missionary; would have stood and preached his Master’s gospel boldly; but he had unbelief. Once make a giant unbelieving, and he becomes a dwarf: Faith is the Samsonian lock of the Christian; cut it off, and you may put out his eyes -and he can do nothing.

From a sermon entitled "The Sin of Unbelief," delivered January 14, 1855.

Photo by Adam Baker; some rights reserved.

Dare to draw near to God

...Why is it that so many of us dare not indulge in close access to our God? We pray, but it is often to a distant God, as to one who stands upon a mountain beyond our reach! How few of us come like a child to his Father, and lay hold on God as one who is near to us by ties of divine affinity. The most of Christians, I fear, are outer court worshippers. They stand in the place of the priests, but they never come to stand where the high priest stood, within the veil. Luther was a man who used familiarities with God, and if some of us had heard Luther praying, we should have been shocked — “Oh,” we should have said, “how dare he talk thus with God?” But Luther knew that he was completely justified, that there was no sin on him, and therefore he did not tremble when he stood near to the holy, the perfect, and the just.

If I know that there is no sin remaining, but that all has been washed away, why need I fear? I may go the throne of God, and cry, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? Not God, for he hath justified, nor Christ, for he hath died.” Once let the soul have perfect peace through believing in its perfect purity in Christ, and the nearness of our access will be perfectly wonderful. The boldness of our fellowship will make us look with wonder, and even Christians will be astonished that we dare to indulge in such a holy familiarity with God, and talk so plainly with our Father; and with our friend. There is guilt still upon the conscience of many professors [i.e., those who profess Christ], and it is proved by the fact that they fear to have a near approach to God.

From a sermon entitled "Perfect Cleansing," delivered April 7, 1861.

Photo by mike138; some rights reserved.

The fear of man brings a snare

The fear of man has brought a snare to some of the greatest believers who have ever lived; and any child of God, whenever he fears the face of man, loses some of the dignity which appertains to that relationship. What a grand man Abraham was! Whenever I read his life I look up to him with astonishment and wish I had such faith as would make me resemble him in that respect. He marches across the page of history with such quiet stately dignity that kings and princes are dwarfed beside his great figure. How nobly did he say to the king of Sodom, “I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, lest thou shouldest say I have made Abram rich;” but oh, how small did he look when he said to Abimelech concerning his wife, “She is my sister.” She was his sister in a sense; there was some truth in what he said, but she was more than his sister so he was uttering a falsehood, for which he was rightly rebuked by the heathen prince.

You have in David another instance of how the fear of man can bring the mighty down. How brave he is as he goes out to slay Goliath, and how grandly he behaves when twice he spares the life of his sleeping enemy! Yet see him there at Gath when the servants of Achish frightened him so that he “feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.” The fear of man had brought down Israel’s future monarch to drivel like a madman.

Equally sad is the case of Elijah, that grandest of men, as I may truly call him. You see him in his grandeur as he cries “Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape;” and as he brings them down to the brook Kishon and slays them there, and then as he goes to the top of Carmel and prays till the rain descends upon the parched land. Yet after the excitement is over he is afraid of a woman, Jezebel, and the great Elias shrinks down into a frightened man who runs away and cries, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.” So you see that “the fear of man bringeth a snare” even to the best of men; it drags them down from their high places and hurls them into the dust. Therefore may God preserve us from it!

From a sermon delivered on March 29, 1874