Soul winner - Spurgeon - IX - Chapters 9 & 10

Required reading
Soul winner by C.H. Spurgeon (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read Chapter 9 (The cost of being a soul winner) and Chapter 10 (The soul-winner's reward)

My summary
In Chapter 9 Spurgeon encourages us to count the cost of being a soul winner.  He shares how much he once suffered and how that experience was used to bring salvation to one particular man.  Spurgeon therefore says 'You must go into the fire if you are to pull others out of it, and you will have to dive into the floods if you are to draw others out of the water.'

Then in Chapter 10 Spurgeon outlines some of the rewards of soul-winning.  There is reward:
(i) as we have a vent for the inward fires;
(ii) as we are reminded of our own lost estate and our own turning to salvation;
(iii) as we have the gratitude and affection of those we bring to Christ;
(iv) as we please God.

What grabbed me
Spurgeon's Chapter on counting the cost was sobering, particularly that we will often experience many painful trials in order to be able to sympathise with the lost: 'Men are usually won to Christ by suitable instruments, and this suitability often lies in the power to sympathize. A key opens a door because it fits the wards of the lock; an earnest address touches the heart because it meets the state of that heart. You and I have to be made into all sorts of shapes to suit all forms of mind and heart...Come, brethren, and lay your all on the altar! Give yourselves up, you workers, into the Lord's hand. You who have delicacy and refinement, may have to be shocked into the power to benefit the coarse and ignorant. You who are wise and educated, may have to be made fools of, that you may win fools to Jesus; for fools need saving, and many of them will not be saved except by means which men of culture cannot admire.'

We must be shaped into all men if we are to win all men.  And that is costly.

Next week's reading
Read Chapter 11 (The soul-winner's life and work).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.