The thing I find most fascinating about myself is that I really enjoy reading. My biggest challenge is that I don't often make it a priority nor a discipline in my life. Although, I seem to find myself blanked in a good reading quite often in the past 10 years of my life. I empathize with those that enjoy acquiring knowledge but reading is just not the path that inspires you. This is why I like to share little excerpts of what I am reading.
This excerpt is from a talk given by John Piper at a Bethlehem Conference for Pastors in 1989.
Mediations on the Life of Charles Simeon; a pioneer for us current workers for Christ.
In April, 1831, Charles Simeon was 71 years old. He had been the pastor of Trinity Church, Cambridge, England, for 49 years. He was asked one afternoon by his friend, Joseph Gurney, how he had surmounted persecution and outlasted all the great prejudice against him in his 49- year ministry. He said to Gurney, "My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake.
His Life and Times and Theological Commitment.
Let me orient you with some facts about his life and times. His Life and Times and Theological Commitment
Let me orient you with some facts about his life and times. When Simeon was born in 1759, Jonathan Edwards had just died the year before. The Wesleys and Whitefield were still alive, and so the Methodist awakening was in full swing. Simeon would live for 77 years, from 1758 to 1836. So he lived through the American Revolution, the French Revolution and not quite into the decade of the telegraph and the railroad. His father was a wealthy attorney, but no believer. We know nothing of his mother. She probably died early, so that he never knew her.
At seven, he went to England's premier boarding school, The Royal College of Eton. He was there for 12 years, and was known as a homely, fancy- dressing, athletic show off. The atmosphere was irreligious and degenerate in many ways. Looking back late in life, he said that he would be tempted to take the life of his son than to let him see the vice he had seen at Eton. He said later he only knew one religious book besides the Bible in those 12 years, namely The Whole Duty of Man, a devotional book of the 17th century. Whitefield thought that book was so bad that once, when he caught an orphan with a copy of it in Georgia, he made him throw it in the fire. William Cowper said it was a "repository of self- righteous and pharisaical lumber." That, in fact, would be a good description of Simeon's life to that point.
At 19 he went to Cambridge. And in the first four months God brought him from darkness to light. The amazing thing about this is that God did it against the remarkable odds of having no other Christian around. Cambridge was so destitute of evangelical faith that, even after he was converted, Simeon did not meet one other believer on campus for almost three years.
His conversion happened like this. Three days after he arrived at Cambridge on January 29, 1779, the Provost, William Cooke, announced that Simeon had to attend the Lord's Supper. And Simeon was terrified. We can see, in retrospect, that this was the work of God in his life. He knew enough to know that it was very dangerous to eat the Lord's Supper unworthily.
So he began desperately to read and to try to repent and make himself better. He began with The Whole Duty of Man but got no help. He passed through that first communion unchanged. But So he began desperately to read and to try to repent and make himself better. He began with The Whole Duty of Man but got no help. He passed through that first communion unchanged. But knew it wasn't the last. He turned to a book by a Bishop Wilson on the Lord's Supper. As Easter Sunday approached a wonderful thing happened.
Keep in mind that this young man had almost no preparation of the kind we count so important. He had no mother to nurture him. His father was an unbeliever. His boarding school was a godless and corrupt place. And his university was destitute of other evangelical believers, as far as he knew. He is nineteen years old, sitting in his dormitory room as Passion Week begins at the end of March, 1779.
Here is his own account of what happened.
"In Passion Week, as I was reading Bishop Wilson on the Lord's Supper, I met with an expression to this effect-- 'That the Jews knew what they did, when they transferred their sin to the head of their offering.' The thought came into my mind, What, may I transfer all my guilt to another? Has God provided an Offering for me, that I may lay my sins on His head? Then, God willing, I will not bear them on my own soul one moment longer. Accordingly I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus; and on the Wednesday began to have a hope of mercy; on the Thursday that hope increased; on the Friday and Saturday it became more strong; and on the Sunday morning, Easter- day, April 4, I awoke early with those words upon my heart and lips, 'Jesus Christ is risen today! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!' From that hour peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul; and at the Lord's Table in our Chapel I had the sweetest access to God through my blessed Saviour. "(Moule, 25f)
The effect was immediate and dramatic. His well- known extravagance gave way to a life of simplicity.
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