Nothing wasted

When Adoniram Judson entered Burma in July, 1813 it was a hostile and utterly unreached place.

But Judson went there with his 23-year-old wife of 17 months. He was 24 years old and he worked there for 38 years until his death at age 61, with one trip home to New England after 33 years. The price he paid was immense in the emotional/spiritual and physical pain he endured to his death.

He said, "If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings."

This was the unshakable confidence of all three of his wives, Ann (or Nancy), Sarah, and Emily.

For example, Ann, who married Judson on February 5, 1812 and left with him on the boat on February 19 at age 23, bore three children to Adoniram. All of them died. The first baby, nameless, was born dead just as they sailed from India to Burma. The second child, Roger Williams Judson, lived 17 months and died. The third, Maria Elizabeth Butterworth Judson, lived to be two, and outlived her mother by six months and then died.

When her second child died, Ann Judson wrote,

"Our hearts were bound up with this child; we felt he was our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O, may it not be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he will stay his hand and say 'It is enough.'"

Today there are close to about 3,700 congregations of Baptists in Myanmar who trace their origin to this man's labors of love.

More about the extraordinary life of Adoniram Judson and his wives, all of whom died serving Christ in very tough circumstances in Burma, can be found in this sermon by John Piper. © Desiring God. It is seriously worth reading (here)!