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Insignificance
Into Influence |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan Now I want you to know, brothers, that
what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel. Philippians 1:12 One freezing February day in the 1800s, crowds of people gathered on a snow-covered field twelve miles west of Dublin, Ireland. Two men had been feuding, and their dispute had become the talk of the town. Now they had determined to settle the manner by staging a duel. By nightfall, one of the men was dead. His name was John D’Esterre; and the winner of the duel was a famous Irish politician named Daniel O’Connell. John D’Esterre left behind a young wife named Jane. Only eighteen years old, she already had two small children to support. There was little money in the bank, and immediately after the death of her husband, the bailiffs arrived at her home to seize and appropriate all her husband’s goods. When they left, they told her they were also going to confiscate her husband’s corpse and sell it to the hospital mortuary to pay some of the remaining debts. With the help of some friends, Jane snuck her husband’s body out of the city that night and hastily buried him in an unmarked grave by lantern light. Knowing her creditors would never leave her in peace, she decided to flee into Scotland, and there she settled down in the little village of Ecclefachan where she sunk into a deep depression. One day she took a novel down to the river to read for awhile, but her heart wasn’t in reading. She was too distracted and distraught. Sitting there, her self-pity deepened to dangerous levels, and she contemplated suicide. Suddenly Jane heard a noise coming from the other side of the river. It was a young ploughman who had entered his field and was commencing his work. As he welded the plow behind the animals, he began whistling Christian hymns. The youth was well-known in the area, in fact, for being a “hymn-whistler.” Jane watched him, and something about his spirit and attitude touched her. She had two small children dependant on her. She was healthy and had her whole life in front of her. If a simply ploughman could display such cheer and enthusiasm for the mundane work of his life, why should not she? Armed with a new perspective, she returned to Dublin where, shortly afterward, she attended a service at St. George’s Church and heard a sermon from John 3:16. Soon she trusted Jesus Christ as her Savior. Jane grew in faith, and God gave her an unusual burden. She began to pray earnestly for her children and for the next twelve generations who would follower her. One day the Lord brought a new man into Jane’s life, a very wealthy man named Captain John Guinness, and the two were married. Jane continued raising her children and praying for her twelve subsequent generations. She asked God to provide a continuing Christian witness in the world through her descendants. The result? Her son, Grattan, gave away his fortune and became a minister. He preached to thousands and helped trigger the huge 1859 revival in Ireland in which as many as 100,000 people came to Christ in one year. The largest buildings in Ireland could not hold the crowds coming to hear him preach. From his descendants alone (not to mention the other extending branches of the family tree) have come a host of Christian workers who have traveled the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Even today, the name of Dr. Os Guinness is known around the world. Born to missionary parents in China, he was been a statesman for Christ in his generation. As I read the remarkable story of Jane Guinness, three thoughts came to mind. First, the power of influence. Here we have a woman and twelve ensuing generations, all of them changed simply because of a ploughboy who was whistling Christian hymns as he worked. The lad never knew the intense power of the simple unconscious influence he was exerting. It reminds us that people are watching us whether we know it or not, and even our simplest acts of Christian witness and kindness can change this world when God is involved. The second thing that impressed me was the power of a parent’s prayers. We underestimate the power of earnest, consistent praying for our children and grandchildren. There’s no force on earth like the prayers of a parent, or grandparent, or great-grandparent. The third thing that impressed me was the way God took a series of tragedies and turned them into tools for the expanding of His kingdom. He took gloomy, hopeless circumstances and used them as a means of bringing the Good News of Christ to hundreds of thousands of people for over twelve generations in history.[1] That’s the theme of today’s message. In our series of sermons so far, we’ve learned that: Ø Romans 8:28 tells us that all things work together for our good. Ø Genesis 5:20 tells us that all things work together for the good of others. Ø Ephesians 1:11-12 tell us that all things work together in conformity with the purpose of God’s will. Ø Now Philippians 1:12 tells us that all things work together for the advancing of the Gospel. Let’s read exactly what Paul told the Philippians: Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly (Philippians 1:12-14, NIV). Notice that first phrase: The things that have happened to me. Alexander Maclaren said, “That is Paul’s minimizing euphemism for the grim realities of imprisonment.”[2] What had happened to Paul? He had been planning a fourth missionary trip that would take him into Western Europe. In just ten remarkable years, he had effectively evangelized the major cities of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. He and his associates had planted churches in Philippi, Ephesus, Corinth, and in many other cities. The entire province of Asia Minor had been targeted in a major missionary campaign. He had attempted to plant a church in Athens, the ancient capital of the Hellenistic world. Now he had wanted to press the frontiers of the Gospel westward, past Italy, past Rome, and on toward Spain, Gaul, and Britain. But just at the moment when his dreams were about to burst into reality, he was seized in Jerusalem, incarcerated in Caesarea, and placed under house arrest in Rome. Now he was literally sitting in chain while his dreams of evangelizing Western Europe were slowly fading away. Time was passing him by. His health wasn’t good, and there was no quick ending in sight to his legal problems. Furthermore, it was a terrifying thing to be a political prisoner in the iron-like vice of the ancient empire of Rome, to be at the mercy of an Emperor and at the mercy of the most brutal soldiers the world had thus far produced. Yet Paul’s simple phrase summarizing all of this is simply: “The things that have happened to me.” I think he used that simple phrase for two reasons. First, he didn’t feel like going into great detail. He wasn’t one to share every facet of his problems with someone else. He belonged to the old school that said, “It isn’t necessarily wise for me to waste my time by giving endless inventories of all my problems to others.” Our tendency today is to ventilate every detail of every burden. Of course, we do sometimes need to unload our hearts to an old and trusted friend. But Paul was very discreet and reserved in detailing his situation. He wasn’t overly anxious, and he didn’t want others to be either. He was trusting God and rejoicing. I think there was another reason why he used the simple phrase, the things that have happened to me. It was for the same reason that he referred to his serious illness or disease as the thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul never told us what his thorn in the flesh was. He didn’t describe it in excruciating detail, and Christian scholars have been curious for nearly two thousand years as to the nature of Paul’s malady. Why didn’t he tell us? In this passage, why doesn’t he describe the specific nature of the things that had happened to him? I believe Paul sometimes dealt in personal generalities that we might more easily apply his lessons to our lives. Few of us will ever have the
exact disease that afflicted Paul, but all of us will face sickness and
disease. Few of us will ever be
thrown into a Roman prison, but all of us will have negative things happening
to us. This is a universal
phrase—the things that have
happened to me. It is a
euphemism for the disasters and tragedies and difficulties and troubles of life. What are the things that have happened
to you? You didn’t cause
them, at least not knowingly or deliberately. You didn’t want them. You didn’t ask for them. They just happened. They came uninvited and unwelcomed
like a bunch of thugs that showed up at the party, elbowed their way in, and
were loathe to leave. Like an
infestation of termites that suddenly takes over your house. Like a handful of cancer cells that
suddenly invade your body. All of
us can identify with this deceptively simple phrase: the
things that have happened to me. But suddenly our whole
perception changes when we read the rest of the sentence: Now
I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served
to advance the Gospel. This word that is translated here advance was a Greek word—prokope—that was used in Bible times for pioneers cutting their way through forests, pressing onward and opening new frontiers. It was used of an army advancing over land and across mountains, pressing forward to conquer new territory. And the word Gospel is a word that means the Good News that God became a man named Jesus Christ who died and rose again to reconcile the human race to Himself and to give you and me everlasting life through the forgiveness gained by the shedding of His blood. Paul was saying: My shattered dreams, my demolished plans, my hopes for taking the Gospel to Western Europe, my incarceration, my Roman prison, my chains and confinement… all of this has fallen out rather for the furtherance of the Gospel. The devil tried to hinder the Gospel, but God turned the tables on him. The very things he had planned to hinder the Gospel actually helped it on its way. So here is the principle: God not only works all things out for our good and for the good of others, He not only works all things out according to the council of His will, He also works all things out for the furtherance of the Gospel. He takes the circumstances of life and makes the platforms and arenas in which the Gospel can be shared. He takes our bad news and turns it into opportunities for sharing the Good News. In this text in Philippians 1, Paul demonstrates for us three ways in which the Gospel has been advanced It Puts Souls in Our Pathway First, problems put souls in
our pathways. Paul was claiming
that as a result of his problems he had found a whole new audience for his
message. His circumstances
actually helped him in his great purpose of evangelizing the lost. Look at verses 12-13: Now
I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served
to advance the Gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole
palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of his imprisonment, Paul had gained access into two groups that were very difficult to reach with the Gospel. In fact, these two groups were, humanly speaking, off limits to any kind of evangelistic effort. The first group was the Palace Guard, or the Praetorian Guard. These were the Imperial Troops, an army within the army, consisting of 9,000 elite soldiers who personally served the Roman Emperor. It had been instituted by Caesar Augustus. Because he was a high profile political prisoner, Paul was entrusted into the keeping of the Praetorian Guard, and he was apparently chained, wrist-to-wrist, with an endlessly rotating number of these soldiers, probably several a day, in shifts. Can you imagine being chained wrist-to-wrist with the apostle Paul for hours at a time? As these men got to know him, as he shared his testimony, as he wrote his letters, as he counseled those who came to him, as he prayed with his friends, as he preached to small groups, one soldier after another came to faith in Christ and the Gospel was spreading among the top echelons of the Roman Army. Then there was another group
being saved. Paul simply calls
them “everyone else” here in verse 13: As
a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone
else that I am in chains. Everyone else was a term that
certainly included (but was not limited to) members of the royal
household. We know that because
of something Paul wrote at the end of this book of Philippians: Al
the saints send you greetings, especially those of Caesar’s household. So the great lesson of Philippians 1:12-13 is that God has His purposes for our lives when our dreams are shattered, when our plans are changed, and when trouble and limitations come into our lives. He intends His children to consider these times as special opportunities to evangelize. Isobel Kuhn was a missionary to China who became well known as a writer of Christian classics. Her last book, written as she was dying of cancer, is entitled In the Arena. I’ve thumbed through my paperback copy so many times the pages are coming out now and I have to secure it with a rubber band. In it she looked back over her life and described various obstacles, difficulties, and heartbreaks she had encountered; and she said that by the grace of God she had come to realize that all of them had become platforms and arenas in which God could be glorified and His Word spread to those who needed it. This little book has twelve chapters, and I am going to list them for you: 1. Obstacles 2. Uncongenial Work 3. Secret Choices 4. Crossed Nature 5. Frustrations 6. Extinguished Candle-flames 7. Small Harassments 8. Taut Nerves 9. Seeming Defeat 10. Between the Scissors’ Knives 11. Stranded at the World’s End 12. Dread Disease All those things in our lives become platforms for the Gospel. A couple of weeks ago, as I drove to Louisville to see my grandchildren, just as I crossed the state line into Kentucky, I felt a pop and a puff, and suddenly my car lurched to one side and developed a frightening texture to its forward progress. I was barely able to reach the right shoulder of the road, and it wasn’t much of a shoulder. I couldn’t possibly open my driver’s-side door because of the trucks and cars racing blindly over a little hill and across a bridge on the interstate. To remain in the car was dangerous, and with great effort I crawled across the seat and got out of my car, squeezing between the driver’s-side door and the guard-rail. I called the automobile club and waited for help to arrive. After a while, a patrol car pulled up. It was the local sheriff’s deputy. He told me that he wanted to say with me until help arrived because it was such a dangerous spot, that I’d be safer in the car with him with his flashing lights. So I spent about forty-five minutes in his car waiting for the tow truck to arrive. It gave me a chance to talk with him about his family, about his little boy, about his soul. Later I sent him a set of the two children’s books I’d written for him to use with his son. What seemed to be a major inconvenience turned out to be an opportunity for witnessing. Something similar happened to me several years ago in Gatlinburg. I walked out of our hotel room to find that someone had shattered the window of my car during the night, apparently with a baseball bat or some such device. The hotel refused to assume any liability, and I was very upset; but there was nothing I could do except to find a glass replacement dealer. By and by a young man named Jim came out with his truck to repair the damage. I was just fuming; but I was very grateful for this young man. I watched with admiration as Jim systematically disassembled the van’s door, removed the splinters of glass, and slipped a new window into place. His young assistant resembled him, and I asked if they were related. “He’s my little brother,” said Jim. “He’s filling in till I can find someone to replace my co-worker who died last week. He had a wife and two kids. Just forty-two. Died of a heart attack.” That gave me an opening to gently and carefully share a word of Gospel witness with Jim, to talk with him about the brevity and the uncertainty of life, and to share with him our need for a Savior. I realized that an apparent random act of destruction was actually a divine appointment for the sharing of the Gospel. Over and over, it we train ourselves to see it, our worst problems become our best pulpits. The great Dutch Christian and holocaust survivor, Corrie ten Boom, once wrote an article entitled “My Unforgettable Christmas.” It was Christmas of 1944, and she was in the hospital barracks of Ravensbruck, the Nazi prison camp. There were Christmas trees here and there in the streets between the barracks, but underneath them were the bodies of dead prisoners who had been thrown out. Corrie had tried to talk to some of her fellow sufferers about Christmas, but they were in no mood for it, and finally she had decided to just keep quiet. In the middle of the night, she heard a child calling out, “Mommy! Come to Oelie. Oelie feels so alone.” Corrie went and found the child, who turned out not to be so young after all, but who was feeble-minded. Oelie was emaciated, and a bandage of toilet paper covered an incision from surgery on her back. Through that long, dark night, Corrie stayed with Oelie and told her about Jesus, how he came to earth as a baby at Christmas, how He loved us, how He died for our sins, how He had risen from the death, and how He was now in heaven preparing a beautiful house for us. Oelie learned to trust Christ as her Savior and how to pray to Him and how to gain strength from Him. And in writing out the story years later, Corrie ten Boom added these words: “Then I knew why I had to spend this Christmas in Ravensbruck.”[3] Somehow in the wonder-working providence of God, our worst problems become our best pulpits. I’ve never forgotten about something that happened to my friend who is now in heaven, Evelyn Hersey, missionary to Japan. For years she had sought to win a certain man to Christ. She eventually developed cancer and returned to America for medical treatments. As she was dying, she called her Japanese friend and said, “Don’t worry about me, for I’m bound for heaven. I just want you to know that we love you and I’ll be praying for you.” The man shortly afterward became a Christian. He said, “How could I fail to trust a Savior who gave my friend the kindness and love to pray for me even when she was sick and dying?” Another friend and former TDF member, Celecia Cutts, once told me of a time when she was sitting in a church service and the minister asked, “Will those of you who are willing to do anything necessary to lead others to Christ please raise your hands?” Celecia cautiously lifted her hand. While returning from nursing school a few days later, Celecia saw another driver coming toward her, trying to pass an eighteen-wheeler. She swerved. Her car slammed into the truck and rolled over three times before careening down an embankment. For days, Celecia hovered between coma and consciousness. Her mother sat by her bed, holding her hand and praying. In the same semi-private room, another mother sat by her diseased daughter, listening. By the time Celecia recovered, her mother had won both the other mother and her daughter to the Lord. God turns tragedies into testimonies, and uses emergencies for evangelism. If that’s true, what do we need to do? There are three important ingredients that we’ve got to throw into the bowl. First, memorize some verse or series of verses that will enable you to share Christ with someone. Learn a simple plan of salvation. It can be as extensive as our FAITH outline that we teach in our outreach classes, or as simple as Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ His Son. Even if it is only one bullet, keep the revolver of your testimony ready for firing. Second, train yourself to look
at life’s situations as opportunities to witness. One of the first things to ask
yourself in a moment of difficulty is:
“Is there someone here that God wants me to reach?” We see this attitude in Paul’s
on heart when we underline ten words in a subsequent verse. Notice the words Paul used in the last
half of verse 16: I am put here for
the defense of the Gospel. He said, “I am put,” as though God had deliberately placed him where he was. It’s no accident that we find ourselves in tough places. It’s not a mistake on God’s part when we’re confronted with difficulties. Paul said, “God put me here.” Why? For the defense of the Gospel. To explain and share and defend the Good News. So learn to look at life’s situations through that set of eyeglasses; it makes a huge difference in our attitude. And third, go ahead and open your mouth. If you get half a chance, say a word for the Lord. The Bible says, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” And fourth, don’t underestimate how God can eventually use even a simple witness—like the whistling of a ploughboy. Our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Or as Peter put it: In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord,
and always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the
reason for the hope that is within you. Here’s another example. In the summer of 1979, the Christian organization, Campus Crusade for Christ, sponsored a retreat for the wives of staff members. It was in Northern Colorado, near Estes Park. By mid-afternoon, it had begun to rain; and at 7:35 p.m., the National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Suddenly the bottom fell out of the sky, and over eleven inches of rain fell in just four hours. The narrow canyon where the women were meeting was filled with a deluge of water twenty feet high. One hundred thirty-nine people died in the Big Thompson flood, including seven of the Campus Crusade staff wives. Several weeks later, as the Campus Crusade family mourned for those they had lost, someone hit on a unique and novel idea to honor them. It was decided to make their last moments on earth a tribute to the faithfulness of God. With the full approval of their families, Campus Crusade placed ads in the major newspapers across America. The advertisement said: “These seven women lost their lives in the Colorado flood, but they are still alive and they have a message for you.” Those ads reached approximately 150 million people around the world, and thousands of people wrote back to say they had received Jesus Christ as Savior as a result of the tragic loss of those seven women. The American ambassador of an overseas country got in touch to say that his life had been changed by the words he read, and he later helped open that foreign nation to the work of Campus Crusade. We see things like this over and over in the two thousand year sweep of Christianity. Nothing creates revival or spreads the Gospel like those negative events orchestrated by the devil, but co-opted and used by the Lord for the spreading of the Gospel. Suffering puts a new set of people in our pathway. It Puts Strength in our People Second, it puts courage in those who are watching us. As we study the book of Philippians, it becomes apparent that one of the major themes of the this letter is joy and rejoicing. Though he is imprisoned, Paul wrote a letter that radiates joy in every chapter. If you’ve never before tried this, read through the book with a pencil or pen, underlining every reference in Philippians to joy and rejoicing. Why can Paul, imprisoned as he was, exude such an atmosphere of joy and rejoicing? Part of the reason is that he was focused on the way the Lord was using the very circumstances that appeared to be miserable and hopeless. In his little commentary on
Philippians, Warren Wiersbe said, “The secret is this… look on
your circumstances as God-given opportunities for the furtherance of the
Gospel, and… rejoice about what God
is going to do instead of complaining about what God did not do.” Well as we continue our study of this passage, the apostle is going on to say that there is another great evangelistic result coming from the things that had happened to him. It puts stamina in our people. It motivates them to share Christ themselves, and to do it more courageously and fearlessly. Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has
really served to advance the Gospel.
As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and
to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the
brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more
courageously and fearlessly. Notice the words he uses. Not all, but most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God—and to do it with renewed boldness. The Amplified Bible puts it: “And [also] most of the brethren have derived fresh confidence in the Lord because of my chains, and are much more bold to speak and publish fearlessly the Word of God—acting with more freedom and indifference to the consequences.” I don’t know if this is true for you, but very often I find that nothing motives me like seeing the example of someone else. Many years ago in Scotland, the nefarious churchman, Cardinal David Beaton, began persecuting Lutheran and Protestant preachers and condemning evangelical Christians to the stake. One of those who died was Patrick Hamilton, who was burned to a crisp. What he didn’t realize is that he was making heroes and martyrs and saints out of ordinary, everyday Christians. He was providing these heroic men and women a powerful platform for their testimony. One man finally came up to Cardinal Beaton and told him that he was ruining his own cause, and he gave the cardinal this advice: “If you burn any more you should burn them in low cellars, for the smoke of Mr. Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon.”[4] That reminds me of the famous saying about John Wycliffe. He was called the “Morning Star of the Reformation” because he started preaching the pure Gospel in the midst of corrupt days. He would have been burned at the stake himself had he not died first of natural causes. He was buried in the churchyard, but forty-one years later, he was still hated by his enemies who ordered that his bones be exhumed and burned and thrown into a nearby brook known as the Swift River. As an ancient biographer wrote, "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook conveyed his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas and they into the main ocean. And so the ashes of Wycliffe are symbolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world." Whenever we stand for Christ at a difficult time, it not only evangelizes the lost, it motives the saved. The influence of our witness is like smoke that infects as many as it blows upon. It’s like the ashes of Wycliffe that spreads to every land on earth. Now, in our text, Paul went on
to say that not everyone who started sharing Christ did so from the purest of
motives. Verse 15ff says: It
is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of
goodwill. The latter do so in
love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the Gospel. The former preach Christ out of
selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for
me while I am in chains. Now, we really don’t know who these people were who were preaching Christ out of selfish ambition. They were not Judaizers or false teachers, because they seem to have been preaching the pure Gospel; they were just doing it from impure motives. Even in the city of Rome with Paul himself there in chains he had his critics within the church. He was saying, in effect, “My imprisonment has created a real flurry of activity here in Rome, and Christians—even my critics—are having a greater opportunity to preach and to witness. Whether their motives are pure or not, at least Christ is being preached, and because of that I’m just sitting here rejoicing. But what does it matter? I think that’s a great
question, and I’ve learned to adopt this philosophy at different
times. I like the way it’s
put here in the NIV. We have
little disagreements, we get our feelings hurt, we notice someone doing
something from an inferior motivation, we see something that makes us want to
react. Maybe we should just
say: But what does it matter?
The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives
or true, Christ is preached. And
because of this I rejoice. So trials and troubles in our lives bring people into our pathways. They allow us to provide a motivating example to others. And there is a third thing here, a third way in which the imprisonment of the apostle Paul served to advance the Gospel. It isn’t in the text, it is the text. It Puts Ink in our Pens Paul’s imprisonment put ink in his pen and created the occasion in which he penned his famous prison epistles, including Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians. The devil thought he was shutting Paul up, and instead he created a situation in which Paul ministered to the ages. Who can ever calculate how many millions have come to Christ through sermons based in the Prison Epistles? If it had not been for this disruption, this disaster, we would never have had some of our greatest passages of Scripture. We would not have had the passage in Philippians 2 that says: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and because obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and has given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11, NKJV) We would not have the passage in Philippians 3 that says: Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14, NKJV). We would not have the passage in Philippians 4 that says: Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:4-5). And we would not have equally precious verses in those other letters that Paul wrote from his prison cell. It’s like John Bunyan. It was exceedingly cruel what they did to him, tearing him away from his family and his little blind daughter, just because he wanted to preach as a Baptist minister. He nearly rotted in Bedford Jail for his faith in Christ. He was there for years. But out of his imprisonment came over sixty books, including the immortal classic Pilgrim’s Progress, that has helped take Christianity to the ends of the earth and into many a heart. In my research into the history of hymnology, I discovered—this did not really surprise me—that many of our greatest hymns were written by men and women who were encountering a period of suffering in life. A good example is Luther Bridges’ great Gospel song, “He Keeps Me Singing.” Bridges was an old-time evangelist whose wife and three children perished in a fire. When he received news of their deaths, he just about went out of his mind, but he found strength in the word of God and out of that experience he wrote: There’s within my heart a melody,
Jesus whispers sweet and low: “Fear not, I am with thee; peace be
still, in all of life’s ebb and flow. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know, Fills my every longing, keeps me singing
as I go. And I encourage every one of us to keep a journal, write letters, write poems, express your testimony in pen and ink, send out e-mails. Find every way you can to share your testimony of God’s faithfulness and to tell others of how He keeps you singing. Our testimonies are forged and crafted in the trials of life, our pain has an evangelistic purpose in God’s hands, our problems become His pulpits, and the things that happen to us turn out rather for the furtherance of the Gospel. ____________________________________ 1 This story is told by Derick Bingham in his little booklet, A Guinness with a Difference: The Story of the Whistling Ploughboy of Eccefechan. Copies can be obtained from TBF Thompson Ministries, 12 Killyvally Road Carvagh, Co Londonderry, N Ireland BT51 5JZ. 2Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of the Holy Scriptures: Second Corinthians VII to End, Galatians, and Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982), p. 212. 3 “My Unforgettable Christmas” by Corrie ten Boom, in Moody Monthly Magazine, December, 1976, p. 27. 4Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of the Holy Scriptures: Second Corinthians VII to End,
Galatians, and Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982), p. 215. In the original quotation the word
“reek” is used.
Maclaren put the word “smoke” is parenthesis to update the
term for his readers. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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[1] This story is told by Derick Bingham in his little booklet, A Guinness with a Difference: The Story of the Whistling Ploughboy of Eccefechan. Copies can be obtained from TBF Thompson Ministries, 12 Killyvally Road Carvagh, Co Londonderry, N Ireland BT51 5JZ.
[2] Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of the Holy Scriptures: Second Corinthians VII to End, Galatians, and Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982), p. 212.
[3] “My Unforgettable Christmas” by Corrie ten Boom, in Moody Monthly Magazine, December, 1976, p. 27.
[4] Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of the Holy Scriptures: Second Corinthians VII to End, Galatians, and Philippians (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1982), p. 215. In the original quotation the word “reek” is used. Maclaren put the word “smoke” is parenthesis to update the term for his readers.