Charles Spurgeon was a man who expected and experienced God's blessing in preaching. Once, in his preaching he said, “You know the story I tell of my first student, Mr. Medhurst. He went out to preach on Tower Hill, Sunday after Sunday. He was not then my student; but one of the young men in the church. He came to me, and said, ‘I have been out preaching now for several months on tower Hill, and I have not seen one conversion.’
I said to him, rather sharply, ‘Do you expect God is going to bless you every time you choose to open your mouth?’
He answered, ‘Oh! No, sir; I do not expect him to do that.’
‘Then,’ I replied, ‘that is why you do not get a blessing.’
We ought to expect a blessing. God has said, ‘My Word shall not return unto me void’ and it will not. We ought to look for a harvest.”1
Preaching Illustrations from Church History by Ron Prosise (p. 164)