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Note: You are receiving this email because you subscribed to my weekly newsletter.
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Here's a thought, a quote, and a resource I wanted to share with you this Thursday.
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The American missionary Adoniram Judson lived in Burma, or Myanmar, from 1812, until his death in 1850. During that time, hhe was imprisoned, tortured, and kept in shackles. After the death of his first wife, Ann, he was so depressed that he sat daily beside her tomb. Three years later, he wrote: “God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in him, but I cannot find him.”
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He kept working at translating the Bible. When he died, it’s estimated that there were only somewhere between twelve and twenty-five professing Christians in the country when he died, and there were not churches to speak of.
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At the 150th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into the Burmese language, Paul Borthwick was addressing a group that was celebrating Judson's work. Just before he got up to speak, he noticed in small print on the first page the words: "Translated by Rev. A. Judson." Borthwick turned to his interpreter, a Burmese man named Matthew Hia Win, and asked him, "Matthew, what do you know of this man?" Matthew began to weep as he said,
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“We know him—we know how he loved the Burmese people, how he suffered for the gospel because of us, out of love for us. He died a pauper, but left the Bible for us. When he died, there were few believers, but today there are over 600,000 of us, and every single one of us traces our spiritual heritage to one man: the Rev. Adoniram Judson.”
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But Adoniram Judson never saw it.
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That will be the case for some of us. We may be called to invest our lives in ministries for which we do not see much immediate fruit. Who knows what God will do with our faithfulness that will last into eternity?
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Adapted from Julia Cameron, editor, Christ Our Reconciler (InterVarsity Press, 2012), pp. 200-201
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“The rule that governs my life is this: anything that dims my vision of Christ, or takes away my taste for Bible study, or cramps my prayer life, or makes Christian work difficult, is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it.”
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Ray Ortlund’s new book The Death of Porn is a gift to the church. You can read my review here. I’ve ordered copies to pass out to men at our church.
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