Lift Up Your Day
Lift Up Your Day with Pastor Rodney Coe — a 5-minute Christian devotional podcast for the heart that needs lifting.
Every Take 5 episode is a true story from history and Scripture about ordinary people God used to do extraordinary things. Pastor Rodney Coe — author of 5 books, devotional writer, and pastor — tells the stories warm, well-paced, and pointed at the part of your day that needs the most lifting.
You'll meet missionaries saved by angels (John Paton), a watchmaker's daughter who forgave a Nazi guard (Corrie ten Boom), a Tennessee farm boy who took a hill in the Argonne (Alvin York), a Senate chaplain who wasn't ready (Peter Marshall), a man who walked with God at 4 a.m. (George Washington Carver), and more.
Each episode ends the same way: "And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day."
Free 7-day devotional When Worry Won't Let Go at rodneycoe.com/worry-devotional. Books and blog at rodneycoe.com.
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Lift Up Your Day
Charles Spurgeon: The Sadness He Couldn't Preach Away
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The greatest preacher of the 1800s wept in the dark, and he never hid it.
On a single night in 1856, a false cry of fire sent a packed London crowd into a deadly stampede while 22-year-old Charles Spurgeon stood helpless on the platform. Seven people died. The memory haunted him for the rest of his life.
The Prince of Preachers, the man who drew six thousand listeners every Sunday, spent his years battling a depression he could not always explain. He refused to fake a holy smile. He spoke openly of dungeons beneath the castle of Despair, and he admitted he had been in them.
So he learned to do what the psalmist did. He talked back to his own heart.
"Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him." Psalm 42:11.
He did not wait to feel hope before he spoke it. He spoke it until it came.
If you carry a sadness you cannot explain, hear this. Your heavy feelings are not proof of a failing faith. Nothing was wrong with Spurgeon's faith. Nothing is wrong with yours.
Keep looking up,
Pastor Rodney
October 19, 1856. The Surrey Gardens Music Hall in London is packed past the breaking point. Nearly 12,000 people have crammed inside, and thousands more press against the doors outside. All to hear a 22-year-old preacher named Charles Spurgeon. He has barely opened in prayer when someone in the gallery screams one word, fire. There is no fire, but the panic is real. The crowd stampedes for the exits. And in the crush, seven people are trampled to death. Dozens more are injured. And young Spurgeon, already the most famous preacher in England, is carried from the platform in a state of collapse, broken in a way that will follow him to his grave. Stay with me. You're going to want to hear the rest of the story. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today, the secret sorrow of the greatest preacher of his age and the hope he found in the dark. We remember Charles Spurgeon as the Prince of Preachers, 6,000 people every Sunday, sermons still in print more than a century later, a booming voice and a faith that looked like solid granite. What we forget is that he was a man, well acquainted with grief. That night at Surrey Gardens never left him. For the rest of his life, the memory of those seven deaths could rise up and crush him without warning. He battled what he plainly called depression. He did not dress it up, he did not hide it behind a holy face. He said once that there are dungeons beneath the castle of despair, and he had been in them. He had reasons on the surface, he carried gout that twisted his body in pain. He carried the weight of a massive church, an orphanage, a college, and the constant attacks of critics. But Spurgeon was honest enough to admit that sometimes the sadness came with no reason at all. He called it a causeless depression, a heaviness that settled on him like fog and would not lift. Here is what makes him worth hearing. He never pretended he had preached it away. A man who moved thousands with his words could not always move his own soul out of the shadows, and he refused to lie about it. Instead, he learned to preach to himself. He would take the words of Psalm 42 and say them over his own heart. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God. He did not wait to feel hope before he spoke it. He spoke it until it came. If you're a believer who struggles with a sadness you cannot explain, I want you to hear this clearly. You're in good company. The man who may have loved Jesus more visibly than anyone in his century still wept in the dark. Your faith is not failing because your feelings are heavy. Spurgeon would tell you that the same God who is real on your bright days is just as real on the gray ones. Listen to how the psalmist talks to himself in Psalm forty two eleven. Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him. Notice he's not waiting for the feeling. He is preaching to the feeling. He is reminding his own soul what is still true. You can do the same. When the fog rolls in, you do not have to lie and say it's not there. You can look at it honestly and still say, I will yet praise him. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.