You Shall Be Filled

By Jentezen Franklin

Our American diets are loaded with sugars, toxins, processed foods, meats, etc. Yet it is possible for us to be eating large meals, be overweight, and still be malnourished.

In Colbert’s book Toxic Relief, he states, “We may be actually starving from a nutritional standpoint, while at the same time becoming grossly obese…Sadly, we really are digging our graves with our forks and knives!”1

In that sense, it is easy to see how our physical lives again parallel our spiritual lives. We can become overnourished on a hefty diet of church programs and activities, religious structure, and traditions of men and yet be severely undernourished when it comes to the deeper things of God.

Hero of the Faith: Charles Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, commonly known as C. H. Spurgeon (June 19, 1834-January 31, 1892), was a British Baptist preacher. Born in Kelvedon, Essex, his conversion to Christianity came in January 1850 at the age of fifteen. On his way to a scheduled appointment, a snow storm forced him to cut short his intended journey and turn in to a Primitive Methodist chapel in Colchester, where, in his own words: "God opened his heart to the salvation message."

He preached his first sermon in 1851 and, from the beginning of his ministry, his style and ability were noted far above average.

In 1852 he became pastor of the small Babtist church at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, and in 1854, after preaching three months on probation just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then and only 20, was called to the pastorate of London’s famed New Park Street Chapel, Southwark (formerly pastored by the Particular Baptist theologian John Gill). Within a few months of his call his powers as a preacher made him famous.