Oh, My Achin’ Stomach!

I woke up in the middle of the night Monday night with a certain "urgency" that let me know I was in for a totally miserable day ahead. Montezuma's Revenge (at least that's what they call it in Mexico) has returned with a vengeance. I am weak as water and have not had anything to eat all day besides a banana and some tea. I even had to leave my classes an hour early, though thankfully I was able to rush through the material with both groups before I had to leave.

In my misery I laid in bed all day reading a book by John Piper called "Filling up the Afflictions of Christ." The book is about some men who paid the ultimate price for the gospel. As I lay there with my tummy ache feeling totally sorry for myself I read the heroic stories of John Tyndale who was burned at the stake for publishing the Bible in English, John G. Paton who took the gospel to cannibals in the South Pacific, and Adoniram Judson, who was imprisoned, criticized by his family and church, and lost two wives and countless children to disease as he ministered among the people of Burma (Myanmar).

These men took to heart Jesus' words in John 12: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will bear little fruit. And unless a man despises his life in this world, he will lose it for eternity." No threat to their lives, disease, deprivation, loss of loved ones, or anything else could keep them from what God called them to do in spreading the gospel.

Feeling despondent myself today because of my sickness, I was convicted by something Adorinam Judson said about persevering:

Beware of the greater reaction which will take place after you have acquired the language, and become fatigued and worn out with preaching the gospel to a disobedient and gainsaying people. You will sometimes long for a quiet retreat, where you can find respite from the tug of toiling at native work – the incessant, intolerable friction of the missionary grindstone. And Satan will sympathize with you in this matter; and he will present some chapel of ease, in which to officiate in your native tongue, some government situation, some professorship or editorship, some literary or scientific pursuit…anything,
in a word, that will help you, without too much surrender of character, to slip out of real missionary work. Such a temptation will form the crisis of your disease. If your spiritual constitution can sustain it, you recover; if not, you die.

As John Piper says, "God knows there are times to flee and times to stand." My hope is that when that time comes in my life I will know exactly what to do. At the very least I pray that when the crisis comes I will be guided more by the ways of God and the witness of these men, and less by the worldly ways of comfort and security.