An all-round ministry - Spurgeon - XII - Chapter 7 commenced

Required reading
An all-round ministry by CH Spurgeon (Available from Amazon or free here) - Commence Chapter 7 (Strength in weakness) by reading up to the paragraphs: 'Hitherto, we have been going round the text, after the example of Rowland Hill; now let us come fairly up to it: "When I am weak, then am I strong."I. Here is, first, A DEPRESSING EXPERIENCE: "When I am weak."'

My summary
Today Spurgeon begins to expound the text from 2 Corinthians 12:10: 'When I am weak, then am I strong.'

Firstly Spurgeon looks at how the text is not true in every sense in which it might be read.  Many are weak and yet not strong:
(i) through failure of consecration;
(ii) in communion with God;
(iii) in faith;
(iv) in spiritual life.

Secondly there is another form in which the text is clearly true.  When I am strong then I am weak if I am:
(i) a preacher who has no burdens;
(ii) a brother who talks much of his own holiness.

What grabbed me
Very helpful advice: 'It would be a dreadful thing to be a pastor without cares. I do not address any such, I am happy to believe; but I do address some who, as pastors, are overloaded with cares, and overweighed with sorrows. Perhaps the largeness of your church, or, more likely, the smallness of it, may be to you a daily trouble. Do not ask to be otherwise than troubled. The shepherd who can always go to bed regularly at night, and who is able to say, "I do not have much trouble with my flock," is not the man to be envied. He coolly says, "A few lambs died last winter; we must expect that kind of thing. It is true that some sheep died of starvation; but if the meadows failed, I could not help that." That is the kind of shepherd who deserves to be eaten by the next wolf; but the man who is able to say with Jacob, "In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night," is the true shepherd. He is most irregular as to his rest; the only thing regular about him is his labor and his disappointment, and yet faith makes him a happy man. When you grow very weak as a pastor, and your charge utterly overcomes you, do not repine at such weakness, for then you will be at your full strength; but when you are strong as a pastor, and say, "I think that, to be a minister, is an easy matter," you may depend upon it that you are weak.'

Feeling loaded down is a good thing!

Next week's reading
Conclude Chapter 7 (Strength in weakness).

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