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There are countless examples in our own day of choosing to suffer for the purpose of Colossians 1:24—to fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions by presenting them to others through suffering.16 In late 1995, as I was working on the second edition of this book, a missionary letter describing such…

On January 8, 1956, five Auca Indians of Ecuador killed Jim Elliot and his four missionary companions as they were trying to bring the gospel to the Auca tribe of sixty people. Five young wives lost husbands and nine children lost their fathers. Elisabeth Elliot wrote that the world called it a nightmare…

As we grow older and our bodies weaken, we must learn from the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (who died in 1691) to redouble our efforts to find strength from spiritual joy, not natural supplies. He prayed, “May the Living God, who is the portion and rest of the saints, make these our carnal minds so…

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.4 It was when I was happiest that I longed most.… The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing … to find the place where all the beauty came from.5…

It was not easy for Mr. Taylor, in his changeful life, to make time for prayer and Bible study, but he knew that it was vital. Well do the writers remember traveling with him month after month in northern China, by cart and wheelbarrow with the poorest of inns at night. Often with only one large room…

The nature and depth of human pride are illuminated by comparing boasting with self©pity. Both are manifestations of pride. Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self©pity is the response of pride to suffering. Boasting says, “I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much.” Self©pity says,…

When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, Let us (said he) pour on him all we can: Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span. So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure: When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving…

Brother Andrew, who heads a ministry called Open Doors and who is most famous for his 1967 book, God’s Smuggler, describes Christ’s call in the mid-1990s like this: There’s not one door in the world closed where you want to witness for Jesus.… Show me a closed door and I will tell you how you can get…

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke of his time in prison, with all its pain, as a gift: It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes…

Malcolm Muggeridge, the Christian journalist who died in 1990, spoke for almost all serious biblical Christians who have lived long enough to wake up from the dreamworld of painlessness when he said: Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating…

But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or any thing—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others…

In The Simple Life, Vernard Eller delights himself in some of the great parables of Søren Kierkegaard. One of his favorites is the parable of the lighted carriage and starlit night. We could also call it the crisis of Christian Hedonism. It goes like this: When the prosperous man on a dark but starlit…

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems…

J. Campbell White: Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the…

He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day’s…

The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my…

One of the most moving and incredible accounts of suffering filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions is found in Sergei Kourdakov’s autobiography, The Persecutor. Kourdakov was commissioned by the Russian secret police to raid prayer gatherings and persecute believers with extraordinary brutality.…

During one season of persecution, a frenzied crowd in Smyrna cried out for a search to be made for Polycarp. He had moved to a town just outside the city, and three days before his death he had a dream from which he concluded, “I must needs be burned alive.” So when the search was finally made, instead…

George Otis Jr. shocked many at the second Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization in Manila in 1989 when he asked, “Is our failure to thrive in Muslim countries owing to the absence of martyrs? Can a covert church grow in strength? Does a young church need martyr models?” Fittingly, he concludes his…

I have never been the same since sitting at the feet of Richard Wurmbrand. It was literally at his feet. He took off his shoes and sat in a chair on the slightly raised platform at Grace Baptist Church in south Minneapolis. (I learned later it had to do with damage to his feet during the torture he had…

Suppose he got pneumonia from all this work and exposure. Would that have been “persecution”? Paul did not make a distinction between being beaten by rods or having a boating accident or being cold while traveling between towns. For him any suffering that befell him while serving Christ was part of the…

I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ. I appeal to you to renounce all you have to obtain life that satisfies your deepest longings. I appeal to you to count all things as rubbish for the surpassing value of standing in service of the King of kings. I appeal to you…

John Hyde, better known as “Praying Hyde,” led a life of incredibly intense prayer as a missionary to India at the turn of the century. Some thought him morose. But a story about him reveals the true spirit behind his life of sacrificial prayer. A worldly lady once thought she would have a little fun…

Brother Andrew, who heads a ministry called Open Doors and who is most famous for his 1967 book, God’s Smuggler, describes Christ’s call in the mid-1990s like this: There’s not one door in the world closed where you want to witness for Jesus.… Show me a closed door and I will tell you how you can get…

On December 4, 1857, David Livingstone, the great pioneer missionary to Africa, made a stirring appeal to the students of Cambridge University, showing that he had learned through years of experience what Jesus tried to teach Peter: For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed…