Sermon Illustration on the Importance of Prayer in the Local Church

John MacArthur gave this well-known, but needed to be repeated incident from the life of Charles Spurgeon. “Many years ago five young college students made their way to London to hear Charles Haddon Spurgeon preach. Arriving early at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, they found the doors still locked. While they waited on the steps, a man approached them. ‘Would you like to see the heating apparatus of this church?’ he asked. That was not what they had come for, but they agreed to go with him. He led them into the building, down a long flight of stairs, and into a hallway. At the end of the hallway he opened a door into a large room filled with seven hundred people on their knees praying. ‘That,’ said their guide (who was none other than Spurgeon himself”, ‘is the heating apparatus of this church’ (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Acts 1-12, page 285).