You will win as many souls as God gives you, but no one will be converted by your own power.
Interpretation
True conversion comes through divine influence, not human effort.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the belief that spiritual transformation in others is ultimately the result of divine intervention rather than simply human persuasion or ability. It suggests a humbling approach to influencing others, recognizing that true change comes from a higher power, and that one's role is to be a vessel rather than the source of power.
In practice
During a church sermon to emphasize reliance on God.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
If women are differentiated only by superficial physical attributes, men appear more individual and irreplaceable than they really are.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves, but it were much better to make such good provisions by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and of dying for it.
The word 'tolerance' once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest convictions in the public arena. Now it means those convictions are not even subject to rational debate.
Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of wisdom and compassionate living.
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