Are you enthusiastic to serve Jesus?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon compares the passion and enthusiasm of an American naturalist, Audubon who was a celebrated ornithologist, with the need for Christians to have passion and enthusiasm to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

You may perhaps have read the life of Audubon, the celebrated American naturalist. He spent the major part of his life in preparing a very valuable work on the birds of America. He tracked these birds into their remotest haunts, painted them from nature, lived in the cane brakes, swamps and prairies – even among the native Americans exposed to all kinds of dangers – and all simply to become a complete ornithologist.

When he was in Paris collecting subscriptions for his new work, his diary was full of wretchedness – there was nothing in Paris for him; and the only bright dream that he had was when he saw the stock pigeons building their nests in the Garden of the Tuileries. The broad streets, the magnificent palaces, the pictures of the Louvre, these were all nothing to him – the stock pigeons everything.

He came to London, and he was equally dull there. Not a single incident shows a comfortable frame of mind, till he sees one day a flock of wild geese passing over the city. He wrote in a London paper on birds; and he says,

While I was writing, I think I hear the rustle of wings of pigeons in the back woods of America.

The man’s soul was full of birds, nothing but birds; and of course he became a great naturalist. He lived, and was willing to die, for birds.

We need to muster Christians who live only for Christ, and desire nothing but opportunities for promoting His glory – opportunities for spreading His truth, opportunities for winning by power those whom Jesus has redeemed by His precious blood. Men and women of one idea – these are they that shall do exploits in the camp of Israel.

We need red-hot men and women, white-hot men and women – men and women who glow with intense heat; men whom you cannot approach without feeling that your heart is growing warmer… It will be a great day for the church when the members of all our churches arrive at such a glorious state of heat as that.