BE CONTENT TO SPEAK IN A COTTAGE
January 6, 1850, was bitterly cold in Colchester, England, a hard-biting blizzard keeping most worshipers at home. At the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Artillery Street, only about a dozen showed up. When it became apparent that even the pastor would not arrive, an unlettered man rose and spoke haltingly from Isaiah 45:22, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." Then the crowd dispersed, thinking the day’s service a loss--not realizing that a fifteen-year-old boy had ducked into the room to escape the snowstorm, and, hearing the sermon, had been converted.
Years later that boy, Charles Spurgeon wrote: "Don’t hold back because you cannot preach in St. Paul’s; be content to talk to one or two in a cottage. You may cook in small pots as well as in big ones. Little pigeons can carry great messages. Even a little dog can bark at a thief, wake up the master, and save the house...Do what you do right thoroughly, pray over it heartily, and leave the result to God."
(Source: Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations and Quotes. From a sermon by Clayton Beck, "Common Men with an Uncommon Opportunity" 1/16/2009)