Good morning…
Yesterday I wrote about Eating With Audrey, Audrey DeShetler who has suffered through cancer treatment after cancer treatment, scan after scan, relapse after relapse, hospital stay after hospital stay, for nearly fifteen years. Recently, Audrey has experienced God’s divine healing, sensing from Jesus, “Audrey, you are well.”
“Hi Sue,” a faithful friend wrote, “right after I read your devotional this morning, I read the one below which reinforces yours about Audrey🙏🏻♥️”
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Glory Follows Suffering by Anne Graham Lotz
I consider that
the sufferings of this present time
are not worthy to be compared
with the glory
which shall be revealed in us.
– Romans 8:18, NKJV
Bad things do happen to those Jesus loves. But remember this spiritual principle: Glory follows suffering, and life follows death.
Miss Audrey Wetherell Johnson was a woman greatly beloved of God. Born in England, educated in Europe, delivered from agnosticism, and transformed by God’s grace into a gifted Bible teacher and preacher, she answered God’s call to the mission field in China during the 1930s. After years of teaching pastors and church leaders in a theological seminary in Beijing, Miss Johnson was scooped up with other missionaries and placed in a Japanese concentration camp for three years of intolerable and unmentionable suffering. Yet once again we glimpse God’s glory when we learn that Miss Johnson was finally released, came to America, and began Bible Study Fellowship, an international ministry that now has approximately one million men and women who use her material and format to study God’s Word each week.
If something bad has happened to you, would you look forward to the glory that IS coming?!
******
Audrey DeShetler. Audrey Wetherell Johnson. Researching I learn, the name Audrey is of English origin and means “noble strength”. How perfect is that? Through the tale of these two strong Audreys, we sense that sometimes suffering and glory each take a hand, walking us through life, through death, through resurrection into eternally more.
Right to my face they say,
“God will not save you!”
[pause]
But You, Eternal One, wrap around me like an impenetrable shield.
You give me glory and lift my eyes up to the heavens.
I lift my voice to You, Eternal One,
and You answer me from Your sacred heights.
[pause] (Psalm 3:2-4, VOICE).
As we pause to consider the many sufferings of this present time, might we witness the glory of God being revealed in us?
…Sue…
P.S. Last night, I received this text from Audrey’s mom, Jennifer: “Thank you for your blog today about Audrey, Sue. She is going to start working as a summer intern at Northside Church this week.”
Let the glory of God continue to be revealed!
