By the summer of 1856, Charles H. Spurgeon’s ministry was bearing so much fruit. Church membership was growing. People were being converted under his preaching. Young men were being trained for the ministry. Sermons were being sold by the thousands. And yet all would seemingly come to an end in the Surrey Gardens Music Hall Disaster. On the night of October 19, 1856, with the hall filled to capacity with 10,000 people, shouts of “Fire!” resulted in a stampede, and in the end, seven people died and many more were injured. As a result, Spurgeon fell into a deep depression. No one knew if he would ever preach again.
His ministry was going so well! He was being so fruitful! Why would God let something like this happen? We don’t know all the answers. But we have Jesus’s words from John 15:1–2 to explain the idea of what God may be up to in some of our most painful seasons:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
Approximately two years after facing that horrific disaster, Spurgeon preached on this passage. In that sermon, he gives four reasons why God the Vinedresser prunes his branches.
1. We Are Not Yet Perfect
Spurgeon says this,
If they were perfect, they would not need pruning; but the fact is there is much of original inbred sin remaining in the best of God’s people, so that whenever the sap within them is strong for the production of fruit, there is a tendency for that strength to turn into evil, and instead of good fruit evil is produced. . . . The fact is, it is very difficult to keep ourselves, when we are in a flourishing state, from producing wood instead of grapes. God grant us grace to keep us from this evil; and I do not know how the grace can come except by his judicious pruning. I say the fruit-bearing branches are not perfect because they bear a great deal that is not fruit, and, moreover, not one of them bears as much fruit as it ought to do.[1]
God has blessed you. He has gifted you. He has given you resources. And insofar as you are sanctified, you will take those talents and use them for good. But there is also still indwelling sin in you. So often, you can also take those talents and resources and produce what is not fruit. And it’s those wooden shoots, those fruitless stems that need to be pruned.
We have to be careful here. We can’t always read God’s providence, and we should not always try to connect a particular affliction with a particular sin. And yet, there can be a place for self-examination.
The idea here is not so much that we are connecting specific sins to specific suffering, but that if you encounter hardship, use that time for reflection, for self-examination. This could very well be God’s pruning. We are not yet perfect, so there is always room for us to humble ourselves and consider how we can grow before God.
God is a skillful Vinedresser. We are so easily impressed by our own fruitfulness. But He does not measure our fruitfulness according to our abilities but according to his power. He is conforming us to the image of Christ. And so, there is still much to prune.
2. God Loves Us
How easy it is to see our suffering as the result of God’s wrath! But Spurgeon writes,
You have no right to say, when a man is afflicted, that it is because he has done wrong; on the contrary, “every branch that bears fruit he prunes.” Only the branch that is good for something gets the pruning knife. Do not say of yourselves, or of other people, “That man must have been a great offender, or he would not have met with such a judgment.” Nonsense, who was a holier man than Job; but who was brought lower than he? Why, the fact is, it is because the Lord loves his people that he chastens them, not because of any anger that he hath towards them. But learn, beloved, especially you under trial, not to see an angry God in your pains or your losses, or your crosses; but instead thereof, see a husbandman, who thinks you a branch whom he estimates at so great a rate, that he will take the trouble to prune you, which he would not do if he had not a kind consideration towards you.[2]
If we are going to bear up under afflictions, we have to believe that God is in control and that God loves us. This trial we’re going through is not an accident. As painful as it is, God has loving purposes for us in this suffering.
It’s so easy to forget this when we’re suffering. Pain has this way of condemning us, reminding us of all that we’ve done wrong. Even as we examine ourselves, we can’t forget also to preach the gospel to ourselves. This pruning is not punitive, because “God cannot punish those for whom Jesus Christ has already been punished.”[3] It’s not condemnatory, because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
So yes, pruning can be a good time for self-examination. But not always. There may be some seasons of pain, when you will be so confused that it will be fine for you just to say, “I have no idea why this happened; I don’t understand what God is doing; But the bottom line is that I know Jesus loves me. Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him (Job 13:15).” And in those moments, what you need most of all is just rest in the gospel assurance of God’s love.
3. To Prepare the Way for the Word
How does God prune? This is an important question. Spurgeon says this,
Our Lord tells us what it is that prunes us. “Now,” he says, in the third verse of the chapter, “you are clean (or pruned) through the word which I have spoken unto you.” It is the Word that prunes the Christian, it is the truth that purges him, the Scripture, made living and powerful by the Holy Spirit, effectually cleanses the Christian.
If I may say so, affliction is the handle of the knife; affliction is the grindstone that sharpens up the word; affliction is the dresser which removes our soft garments, and lays bare the diseased flesh, so that the surgeon’s lancet may get at it; affliction makes us ready to feel the word, but the true pruner is the word in the hand of the Great Husbandman.[4]
Suffering and afflictions by themselves do not sanctify. For so many people, suffering only embitters them and leaves them in despair. But the way God uses suffering in the life of a Christian is by humbling us and making us more ready to hear and receive God’s promises. Suffering makes way for the Word of God to do its work in us, by the Spirit.
It’s when we are stripped of our earthly pride and our earthly comforts that we finally see how flimsy and fleeting these earthly securities are; and we then turn to the One who never changes, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So friend, don’t waste your suffering! Amid your difficulties, make sure you are abiding in Christ by having his Word abide in you. You may very well find these times of pruning to be filled with new insights and understanding of God’s Word. When suffering comes, don’t just buckle down and soldier on in your own strength. No, reflect on it through the lens of God’s Word. Pray. Abide in Christ. Call brothers and sisters to walk with you, to help bear your pain, and to gently point you to the truth.
4. So We Can Bear More Fruit
The purpose of the Vinedresser is that we would bear more fruit for His glory. Spurgeon puts it this way,
A good man, who feels the power of the word pruning him of this and that superfluity, sets to work, in the power of the Holy Ghost, to do more for Jesus. Before he was afflicted, he did not know how to be patient. He learns it at last—a hard lesson. Before he was poor, he did not know how to be humble, but he learns that. Before the word came with power, he did not know how to pray with his fellows, or to speak to sinners, or lay himself out for usefulness; but the more he is pruned, the more he serves his Lord.
There will be more in quality, too. The man may not pray more, but he will pray more earnestly; he may not preach more sermons, but he will preach them more thoroughly from his heart, with a greater unction. It may be that he will not be more in communion with God as to time, but it will be a closer communion; he will throw himself more thoroughly into the divine element of communion and will become more hearty in all that he does.[5]
The Surprising Secret to Spurgeon’s Ministry (And Yours)
As we think about the shaping influences on a figure like Spurgeon, we may wonder about the secret to his impactful preaching and ministry. Certainly, the centrality of gospel. Spurgeon would emphasize this. The gospel is the power of salvation for everyone who believes. And certainly, he would also emphasize that prayer is the engine of the church.
But if I may suggest another “secret” to Spurgeon’s ministry, I think it was his suffering. Suffering opened the way for God’s Word to land in his heart in a powerful way, and it equipped him to speak God’s Word to others. Spurgeon did not soar through his 40+ years of ministry. Rather, he mostly limped. Suffering wasn’t just a component of Spurgeon’s life. Rather, it was the cloud that hung over all his labors and accomplishments.
Throughout his ministry, a combination of overwork and illness would become a regular pattern. His doctors attributed his illness to kidney disease, which led to other painful ailments like gout and rheumatism. Gout would often lay him out, bringing sharp pain to his hands, feet, joints, lower back, muscles, and legs. At other times, he dealt with nerve pain, seizures, smallpox, sciatica, and other afflictions. As a preacher, Spurgeon carried all these ailments into the pulpit with him. For many weeks, his congregation received a visual sermon on suffering and perseverance as they watched their pastor struggle up the steps to the pulpit and preach through pain.
Spurgeon’s physical suffering often brought with it deep emotional pain. Doctors today might very well diagnose him with depression. Amid his many illnesses, he often wrestled with doubts and fears. He sometimes wondered if he would ever be able to preach again. He could imagine his congregation suffering, the orphanage collapsing, the college dissolving, and the enemies of God mocking. All these anxieties only compounded his physical suffering with emotional dread and discouragement, leading to more physical weakness. And yet at the bottom of it all, he experienced the bedrock of the hope and comfort of the gospel and the sovereignty of God.
Today, when you read Spurgeon’s sermons, you encounter the teaching of a brother in Christ who has walked through dark valleys, and who experienced God’s faithfulness in those valleys. And now, he is ready to share that comfort with others (2 Corinthians 1:3–4), including you.
Don’t be surprised by suffering. If you want to be fruitful, God may very well bring affliction to help you learn those lessons that we are so slow to learn. We certainly have to be careful in trying to read God’s hand. We can’t always connect a particular suffering with a particular outcome. But in God’s design, this is how he loves his people: by pruning them and making them fruitful.
Jesus gives us this amazing promise, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8).
We who once were wild branches, producing only poison and death, have been grafted into Christ, the True Vine, so that now, we can bear fruit that glorifies the Father, that shows to the watching world the glory and majesty and goodness and love of our heavenly Father. This is what we are to be about in this life, and this is what we will be about for all of eternity.
This article is adapted from a talk given at the Southeast Kansas Baptist Association Pastors’ Conference in August 2024.
[1] C. H. Spurgeon, “A Sharp Knife for the Vine Branches,” The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 13(Reformation Heritage Books, 2025), 561.
[2] Spurgeon, MTP, 13:562-563.
[3] Spurgeon, MTP, 13:562.
[4] Spurgeon, MTP, 13:562.
[5] Spurgeon, MTP, 13:563.
Your Only Comfort
Beloved nineteenth-century pastor Charles Spurgeon wrestled with dark depression, debilitating illness, personal sorrow, and ministerial trials. Suffering was not just a component of his life—it was the dark cloud that hung over all his labors and accomplishments. Your Only Comfort draws from Spurgeon’s best teachings on suffering to bring that comfort to a new generation.
Compiled by Geoffrey Chang, curator of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
