“All of you, my brethren, who desire to be useful must learn that in self-sinking your usefulness will be found. Do not seek to be great; try to grow less and less. He who becomes least is greatest of all. The way to rise in the peerage of the church is to go down. Do not take what you have a right to take; do not covet the position which you feel you might righteously assume; but take the lowest room, do the meanest service, be willing to be anything or nothing so that God is glorified. Be ready to be stuck in any corner, or stowed away in any lumber-room, if such should be the will of God; and then the probability is that you will be largely and honourably used. The way to success in the kingdom is by a constant sense of personal unworthiness and weakness. ‘When I am weak, then am I strong.’ By death with Christ we come to live with him; by being crucified with him we reign; by perfect self-surrender we obtain all things; he that saveth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth it for Christ’s sake shall find it both here and hereafter.” p. 365
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Proof of Our Ministry,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 30, (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1973), pp. 361-372. Delivered on Lord’s Day morning, June 29, 1884, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
