ChosenRebel's Blog

Wednesday is for Prayer

“In April 1831, Charles Simeon was seventy-one years old. He had been the pastor of Trinity Church in Cambridge, England, for forty-nine years. One afternoon his friend Joseph Gurney asked him how he had surmounted persecution and outlasted all the great prejudice against him in his many years of ministry. He said to Gurney:

My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ’s sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory.”

—-John Piper in The Roots of Endurance, p. 77 quoting 
 H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London: InterVarsity, 1948), pp. 155-156.

“Lord, all my ‘suffering’ and all its sources are trivial compared to Your long-suffering endurance of the cross on behalf of me. Help me to never grumble or complain about setbacks, disappointments, and physical limitations. Make me a man whose eyes are always focused on the You, my glorious Head, who has endured, and conquered, and secured the ultimate victory. In Your matchless, death-and-disease conquering name, I ask it. Amen.”