Never mind who sees, if God approves. If he smiles, be content. We cannot be always sure when we are most useful. A certain minister with very great difficulty reached a place where he had promised to preach. There was deep snow upon the ground, therefore only one hearer came. However, he preached as zealously as if there had been a thousand. Years after, when he was traveling in that same part of the country, he met a man who had been the founder of a church in the village, and from it scores of others had been established. The man came to see him, and said, “I have good reason to remember you, sir, for I was once your only hearer; and what has been done here has been brought about instrumentally through my conversion under that sermon.” We cannot estimate our success. One child in the Sabbath-school converted may turn out to be worth five hundred, because he may be the means of bringing ten thousand to Christ.
It is not the acreage you sow; it is the multiplication which God gives to the seed which will make up the harvest. You have less to do with being successful than with being faithful. Your main comfort is that in your labor, you are not alone, for God, the eternal One, who guides the marches of the stars, is with you.
– Charles H. Spurgeon, The Sword and the Trowel, April 1, 1871