Daily Devotional for February 22nd
"For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps:"
— I Peter 2:21
"If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him:..."
— II Timothy 2:12
Livingstone traversed 29,000 miles over interior Africa, often through flooded country, with his hands raw and bleeding, and his body raging with fever. Once, he was mauled by a lion that bit through his arm bone, leaving it practically helpless. He slept on the ground for six months at a time. He suffered sickness, scarcity of food, and danger of wild beasts and savage men by day and by night. He broke his teeth tearing at the hard food. His feet were covered with ulcers. Yet, in spite of all this, he said, "I have never made a sacrifice." After sending his family back to England, he went into the jungles, crossing country reported to be occupied by cannibals. When he could walk no farther, they carried him by palanquin and canoe until his last day. They found him the next morning kneeling by his bed, his face in his hands as if in prayer, dead! Judson undertook to overthrow Buddhism, and to take the country of Burma for Christ. He translated the Bible into Burmese amid persecutions, cholera, and smallpox. He labored seven years before he baptized his first convert. For twenty-one months he was in prison with one hundred fierce criminals in a small room of 20x40 feet, with no ventilation, no sanitation, on starvation rations, with daily anticipation of death, and with fourteen pounds of chains on his arms and legs. At night his feet were tied together, a bamboo pole put between his legs, and he was hung upside down with a raging fever and thousands of mosquitoes sucking the blood out of his bleeding feet. His wife, continually insulted and annoyed, died. He was left with two children, and without friends or support. He lived on amid the discomforts of rats, mice, snakes, bats, cockroaches, beetles, spiders, lizards, bedbugs, flies, mosquitoes, scorpions, centipedes, cobras, and tigers, and under the burning rays of a tropical sun. No man of his age suffered so much. For thirty-two years he literally gave himself to preach Christ, the Saviour of the world. — From "Herald of His Coming"
Gold of Ophir, seven times tried This daily devotional is included in B. H. Clendennen's book, "A Daily Talk for the Upward Walk", which may be purchased in our online store. Daily Scripture Readingfrom the Authorized King James Version
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