Appreciating What Suffering Teaches – Part 13: Readings – 5

All the way from Syria to Rome I have been chained to a detachment of soldiers who have behaved like animals towards me. I tried giving them money, but the more I gave them the more roughly they treated me. Quite honestly, they are like a pack of leopards, enjoying their role as hunters, with me as their prey.

Well, that has some advantages. I may as well get used to “leopards” now—it will be lions, and real ones at that, when I get to Rome. So I can make some progress towards preparing myself spiritually and mentally for what lies ahead.

All I pray is that when the moment comes the lions will be quick about it. Some Christians have suffered torments because the animals have toyed with them. If my lions are like that, I shall antagonize them!

Forgive me for writing like this, but I do know what is best for me. No power, human or spiritual, must hinder my coming to Jesus Christ. So whether the way be fire, or crucifixion, or wild beasts in the arena, or the mangling of my whole body, I can bear it, provided I am assured it is the way to him.

And it is! All the riches and power in the world cannot compare with that. So far as I am concerned, to die in Jesus Christ is better than to be king of the whole wide world! Do not try to tempt me to stay here by offering me the world and its attractions. Just let me make my way upward to that pure and undiluted light For only when I get there will I truly be a man.

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100 Days in the Arena, Ignatius of Antioch (c. A.D. 35-c. 107), David Winter, Harold Shaw, Day 37.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Appreciating What Suffering Teaches – Part 12: Readings – 4

John Wesley wanted other people to have this feeling too. Whitefield had it. They had both become ministers of the Church of England and began preaching in the churches about the new birth, but the religious life of the Church had grown so cold that the members were blistered by the heat of this preaching and closed the pulpits to the Methodists. What then? “If the churches are closed, we will preach out of doors,” said Whitefield and Wesley. They went to the people … at the mouths of the coal pits as the miners went down or came up from work, to the villages of England. …

The common people heard them gladly, and sometimes the audiences were as many as twenty and thirty thousand. But hoodlums tried to break up the meetings, by blowing horns, ringing bells, or hiring the town crier to bawl in front of the preacher. Sometimes cattle were driven into the congregation. Once a mob burst into the house where Wesley was staying. He walked into the thickest of them and called for a chair. “My heart was filled with love,” he writes, “my eyes with tears, and my mouth with arguments. … They were amazed, they were ashamed, they melted down, they devoured every word. What a turn was this!” Wesley thanked God for getting together such a congregation of drunkards, swearers, arid Sabbathbreakers.

Sometimes the bullies got caught in their own traps. Once a man in the crowd lifted his hand to throw a stone when another thrown from behind caught him right between the fingers. Another came with pockets full of rotten eggs. Wesley writes, “A young man coming unawares clapped his hands on each side, and mashed them all at once.” And sometimes the bullies were themselves overcome by the man they were trying to crush. When a mob was nearly on the point of killing Wesley and a stout club had just missed his head, he began quietly to pray. Suddenly then the leader of the mob turned and said, “Sir, I will spend my life for you: follow me and not one soul here shall touch a hair of your head.” They got out safely and that man became a leader in Methodism.

Wesley rode up and down England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, preaching in the fields and visiting the jails. He always traveled on horseback. In seven months he covered 2,400 miles and during his life 225,000 miles. Sometimes he made 90 miles in one day. He rode with a loose rein—that was the best way, he said, to keep a horse from stumbling, and as he rode he read history, poetry, philosophy, in English, in Latin, and in Greek.

By and by the tide turned and people began to admire him. Mayors offered him the freedom of the cities in which he had been mobbed. In his eighty-fifth year on visiting a certain town he wrote: “The last time I was here … I was taken prisoner … but how is the tide turned! High and low now lined the street, from one end of the town to the other, out of stark love and kindness. …”

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The Church of Our Fathers, Roland H. Bainton, Charles Scribner’s Sons, pages 192-193.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Appreciating What Suffering Teaches – Part 11: Readings – 3

I beheld, then, that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill Difficulty, at the bottom of which was a spring. There were also in the same place two other ways besides that which came straight from the gate: one turned to the left hand, and the other to the right, at the bottom of the hill; but the narrow way lay right up the hill, and the name of the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty. Christian now went to the spring, and drank thereof to refresh himself; and then he began to go up the hill, saying—

 ‘The hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up heart, let’s neither faint nor fear;
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.’

The other two also came to the foot of the hill; but when they saw that the hill was steep and high, and that there were two other ways to go—and supposing also that these two ways might meet again with that up which Christian went, on the other side of the hill—therefore they were resolved to go in those ways. Now the name of one of those ways was Danger, and the name of the other Destruction. So the one took the way which is called Danger, which led him into a great wood; and the other took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him into a wide field, full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no more.

I looked then after Christian, to see him go up the hill, where I perceived he fell from running to going, and from going to clambering upon his hands and his knees, because of the steepness of the place. Now, about the midway to the top of the hill was a pleasant arbor, made by the Lord of the hill for the refreshment of weary travelers. Thither, therefore, Christian got, where also he sat down to rest him. Then he pulled his roll out of his bosom, and read therein to his comfort.

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The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan, Collins, pages 56-57.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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I had lunch this past Monday with a student at a nearby college. From his conversation, I believe the Lord is calling him into the ministry.

I offered to team-preach with him in the near future, and he readily accepted my invitation. I liked his enthusiastic response.

Over the years, I have had the great delight of seeing God single out this person and that one, then another and another for His Kingdom work. Most of these have been young men, but the number also includes women and even a few individuals who were really up there in years.

Before my Monday ended I also ran into a ministry leader who always calls me his mentor. I’m not sure I ever pictured myself playing that role in his life. But I did meet with him a number of times when he was transitioning from a business role to full-time Christian work. Now he is well-established in his new role, and I would call him a colleague in the work of the Lord.

“What’s the deal?” he chided me. “Once I’m up to my ears in this new calling, you don’t have time for me anymore!”

I laughed out loud and got my calendar, all the time pleased that he wanted to spend additional time together.

Do you have people who are your “Timothys”? I’m sure most of you do.

If not, I’d recommend that you make this a high-level prayer priority, because to me it’s one of the truly pleasant aspects of our calling.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy