Spurgeon was called to a church at age 23 and was addressing crowds of 5,000 at 30. He wrote this:<\/p>\n
“Before any great achievement in my life, some measure of depression is very usual. Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London; my success appalled me and the thought of that career which seemed to be opening up, so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depths out of which I uttered my misery. I found no room for a Gloria in Excelsis. Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude? I would slip away to my village obscurity or prefer to emigrate to American and find a solitary nest in the backwoods. It was just then that the curtain was rising on my greatest life’s work and I dreaded what it might reveal to me. I hope I was not faithless! But I was timorous and filled with a sense of my own unfitness. This depression sweeps over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my life and ministry. Some of you are right at the door.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spurgeon was called to a church at age 23 and was addressing crowds of 5,000 at 30. He wrote this: “Before any great achievement in my life, some measure of depression is very usual. Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London; my success appalled me and the thought of that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1379,425,3091,929],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}