“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” – 1 Cor. 15:58
Dr. James Merritt said, “I want to tell you about a man named Robert Eaglen .. a deacon in his church in Colchester, England. He woke up one Sunday morning in January. The ground was blanketed with a foot of snow. He started to turn over and go back to sleep, but he thought to himself, ‘I’m one of the deacons in my church. If the deacon’s don’t go, who will go?’ He put on his boots, hat, and coat and walked six miles to church. He was right. Most of the members did stay home. As a matter of fact, even the pastor didn’t show up. Only thirteen people were at church—twelve members and a thirteen year old boy he had never seen before.
Somebody said ‘Why don’t we just sing a little bit and go home. We don’t have a preacher.’ But Robert Eaglen said ‘It’s foolish for us to come all this way and not have a worship service.’ ‘Who’s going to preach?’ they asked. Impulsively, Robert said, ‘I’ll preach.’ He’d never preached in his life. He got up and did not know what he was going to preach. I’m sure that’s happened to some of us on Sunday nights, as well, but he didn’t have a clue what he was going to be preaching. In his quiet time the day before he had been reading in Isaiah, so he turned to Isaiah 45:22, ‘Look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.’ Later he recalled, ‘I preached maybe twelve minutes, and I must have said fifty times ‘Look to Jesus.’ ‘It was all he knew to say. ‘Look to Jesus.’ He got through with saying ‘Look to Jesus’ about fifty times. He looked at that little thirteen year old boy and said ‘Young man, if you’ll look to Jesus you’ll be saved.’ And they had prayer and left.
That boy, years later, wrote these words: ‘I did look, and then and there the cloud on my heart lifted, the darkness rolled away. At that moment I saw the sun, I accepted Christ into my heart, and I was born again.’ That thirteen year old boy was Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
I thank God that Robert Eaglen didn’t get up that day and preach a message on ‘How to be Up When the Weather is Down.’ Thank God he didn’t get up and say ‘Let me talk to you today about how to glow in the snow.’ Thank God he didn’t get up and preach a sermon called ‘Snow White and the Eleven Disciples.’ Thank God, he preached the Word. He shared the gospel with a thirteen year old boy and gave that boy an opportunity to be saved. We don’t need to follow fads, fashions, or flakes.”
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346
