Prayer Answered, Love Nourished

Spurgeon invites believers to look backward through their lives and count up the answers to prayer they have received, using seven angles of reflection: how God answered even their cold, doubting, infrequent, and poorly-worded prayers; how he met a vast variety of requests covering soul, body, family, business, and church; how he bore with prayers offered dozens of times a day without ever complaining; how he answered even trivial requests with fatherly kindness; how his timing was always exactly right — never too early, never too late; and how in special seasons of crisis he delivered them in ways that cannot be forgotten. The cumulative weight of this retrospect is meant to produce love: not a sentimental feeling but a deep, grateful attachment to a God who has been unfailingly faithful to people who have been inconsistent, unbelieving, and forgetful — a love that moves Spurgeon to personal confession of how his own cold-heartedness grieves him when he remembers specific deliverances including his own breakdown in health and the disaster at the Surrey Hall. He closes with three lessons that should flow from this memorial: if God heard our voice in prayer, we owe him our voice in praise; if he listened to us, we must listen to him and obey; and if he answered us, we must go tell others who have never prayed that the same God is waiting to hear them too.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on February 27th, 1859.