Campus Journal: Save Time… Pray
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was England’s best-known preacher for most of the second half of the 19th century. He began preaching at age 16, and by his mid-twenties he was pastor of what we would call today a ‘megachurch.’ Metropolitan Tabernacle, a 5,000-seat Baptist church in London, became his major pulpit. His sermons were powerful and practical, and his daily devotional writings have inspired thousands of Christians in their walk of faith. The selection for this edition’s Timeless Classics is from the booklet Devotions and Prayers of Charles H. Spurgeon (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1960)
Sometimes we think we are too busy to pray. That is a great mistake, for praying is a saving of time. You remember [Martin] Luther’s remark, ‘I have so much to do today that I shall never get through it with less than 3 hours of prayer.’
If we have no time to pray, we must make time, for if God has given us time for secondary duties, He must have given us time for primary ones. To draw near to Him is a primary duty, and we must let nothing set it to one side. There is no real need to sacrifice any duty; we have time enough for all if we are not idle. And indeed, the one will help the other instead of clashing with it.
When Edward Payson [a preacher renowned in the 1800s for his faithfulness in prayer] was a student at college, he found he had so much to do to attend his classes and prepare for examinations that he could not spend as much time as he should in prayer. But at last, waking up to the feeling that he was going backward [spiritually] through his habits, he took due time for devotion. He asserts in his diary that he did more in his studies in a single week, after he had spent time with God in prayer, than he had accomplished in 12 months before. –Spurgeon
