Archives: Episode

September 19. Charles Spurgeon. When Charles was 19, a church asked him to come for a 6-month try-out as pastor. Charles agreed to a 3-month trial and said, “The congregation might not want me, and I do not wish to be a hindrance.” He stayed 38 years and brought more than 14,000 people in. 

Usually, Charles chose the theme for the Sunday-morning sermon the night before, took a single page of notes to the pulpit, and spoke about 140 words per minute for 40 minutes. The man could talk, and what he said, God used.  

Charles often preached 10 times in a week, and about 3,600 times in his lifetime. Though some criticized Charles for his active sense of humor, that wasn’t the whole story about him. Listen to this. 

Trapped in the dark? God knows where you are. He’ll equip you to lead others out. 

Charles felt wretched as he readied himself to preach the word of God one Sunday morning. 

His spirit was downcast; his heart was weighed down by an invisible burden. Whatever joy he had felt was gone, and the depression was like a dark cloud that hovered above his head, following him wherever he went. There was no sickness, no pain that caused such a depression—at least, not this time. 

Charles certainly didn’t love God less or feel as if he were leaving the faith. His life had been spotless, and no guilt kept him up at night. But, as Charles went about his days preaching and teaching the Word of God, he wondered if God had left him. Why did God allow His servant to fall into such a deep depression? 

Charles felt much sorrow, but instead of dwelling on it, he decided to speak about it in one of his sermons. He had felt forsaken, and he remembered that Jesus, too, had felt forsaken when he hung on the cross. Charles gathered whatever energy he could muster and took to the podium and preached about Jesus’ trial. Charles connected Jesus’ ordeal to the feelings he was now experiencing. 

Once the sermon was over, Charles stood in a room near the sanctuary and noticed a man coming toward him. He looked to be about sixty years old, with bright eyes filled with tears. 

Visibly shaken, the man took Charles’s hand in his own and held it, cried, and with a dazed look, he said, “Birds of a feather will flock together.” 

Charles was taken aback. What did the man mean? Was he mad? 

But then the man explained what he meant. “Nobody ever preached my experience before. I have now been for years in a horrible gloom of great darkness and could not find God, but this morning I learned that I was not the only man in the thick darkness.” He paused, a new glimmer of hope shining in his eyes. “And I believe that I shall get out.” 

Charles felt an understanding suddenly wash over him. God had not forsaken him like he thought. Even amidst the depression, there was still work to be done and a ministry to help others learn about the love and comfort of Christ. “Yes, that was the reason why I was put into the dark, that I might help you,” Charles said. The invisible burden that weighed him down earlier seemed to weaken. “And now that I know the reason,” he continued, “I am already out of the prison.” 

Charles continued to minister to the man over time, rescuing him from the brink of insanity and helping him to find his way back to his calling. But Charles found himself being rescued and learned that God was able to use him to help others with depression because he had experienced it himself. 

“You cannot help a man if you know nothing about him, and therefore the Lord sends you into many a thick wood and dark valley that you may meet with His own redeemed in their wanderings,” he said. “If you did not know the wilderness, how could you act as a guide through it?” 

Charles understood that depression could happen to anyone, even someone who loved Jesus with all his heart. But even though depression made his faith feel weak, God was able to use it and grow it into something strong to help others. “If you believe in Christ Jesus, though your faith be as a grain of mustard seed, it will save you, and it will, by and by, grow into something stronger.” 

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26 NIV). 

Trapped in the dark? God knows where you are. He’ll equip you to lead others out. 

Spurgeon, Charles. “Our Leader Throught the Darkness.” Spurgeon Gems, Sermon #3370. September 4, 1913. https://​www.spurgeongems.org/​sermon/​chs3370. pdf. 

Spurgeon, Charles. “Encouragement for the Depressed.” Spurgeon Gems, Sermon #3489. December 9, 1915. https://​www.spurgeongems.org/​sermon/​chs3489. pdf. 

Would You Like to Learn More About This Man? 

Once—to test the church’s acoustics, Charles  yelled, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” A worker high in the rafters heard him and converted to Christianity! 

“These are dark days, but you can bring on a spiritual summertime if you know how to pray.” ~Charles Spurgeon 

Story read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

© 2020, 365 Christian Men. LLC. All rights reserved. 

September 18. GK Chesterton. Chesterton was an exuberant man, a keen debater, and a prolific writer—ninety books, ten novels, and many articles. Best known for his Father Brown mystery series, Chesterton was also a philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has a camp of followers and a camp of haters. Either way, he makes a reader think deeply. 

Chesterton knew how to have fun, and he knew how to do serious work. On this date in 1909, Chesterton influenced Ghandi about India’s independence. 

When weak thinking undermines truth, thinking people must speak up. 

Chesterton lived in an era of intellectualism when it was popular to debate in public, to trade witty barbs with your opponents, and to deny the existence of God. 

Chesterton was an intellectual, too, and a lover of the one true God. It was his duty and his calling to speak up against the lies being passed off as “the new truth.” 

Chesterton was a 300-pound, six-foot-four man, who wore a cape and tiny glasses “pinched to the end of his nose.” This was the day he would debate his greatest opponent—and respected friend—George Bernard Shaw. They would argue about what to believe and how to live. As he had often done, Chesterton would wield his favorite weapon: words. 

In an auditorium packed with a murmuring crowd, Chesterton lumbered toward the stage. Judging by the number of attendees, the gate had done well. It wouldn’t hurt his finances—if he had remembered to sign for his share of ticket sales. He couldn’t remember if he had. 

Chesterton crushed his cigar. Straightened his crumpled hat. Finger-combed his magnificent mustache. This was going to be fun. He stepped onto the stage. 

Shaw, with his snow-white hair and pressed black suit was Chesterton’s opposite. He was a vegetarian teetotaler, and he liked his cup of tea. Chesterton loved red meat, red wine, and a good cigar. But the important differences went deeper. 

For a long, long time in the Western world, most people had believed in a God, who was a person and who had created the universe and everything in it. It was a given. 

And this kind of thinking was called orthodoxy, which means “correct teaching.” But with the new wave of intellectualism, growing numbers of people called themselves atheists—who said, “there is no God” or agnostics—who said, “we can’t know whether there’s a god” or some ambiguous mix. Shaw called himself an agnostic. 

Chesterton argued that an all-powerful, all-wise Creator did indeed exist. And the all-good Creator had sent His Son to save the world. Chesterton said Christianity had not “been tried and found wanting;” it had been “found difficult and left untried.” 

Shaw said it was impossible for people to know whether a personal creator existed, and he actively promoted a Socialist agenda. The newspapers made a small fortune publishing the Chesterton-Shaw battles. And—not having TV or internet—people attended debates for the fun of watching these men try to outwit one another. 

With extra drama to entertain the audience, Chesterton cast his gaze at Shaw. “To look at you,” he said to Shaw, “anyone would think a famine had struck England.” 

Without a pause, Shaw responded, “To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it.” 

The audience roared. 

And so, the debate began. 

Both Chesterton and Shaw had been Socialists as very young men. But Chesterton grew up, denounced Socialism, and became a Christian. 

He chuckled. Despite their differences, he respected Shaw—and enjoyed matching his wit. They danced circles with words. The audience was always entertained. Chesterton and Shaw might banter, but they “would have died rather than really hurt” each other. 

The advertised debate topic varied. But the specific topic didn’t matter. Shaw would fight for “progress.” And he said progress could only happen if men threw aside all belief. 

Chesterton stood for reason and faith. He poked holes in Shaw’s theories. He believed his generation must “rediscover the reasons for believing” in God or humankind was “lost.” Chesterton’s admirers said he stepped into their confusion, turned “the tables on the heretics,” and exploded “their paper castles with a splutter of fireworks.” That was his plan. To fight for humanity by confronting its core problem—failing to believe in the one true God. He hoped his generation would “pay attention and gain understanding.” 

“Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. I give you sound learning, so do not forsake my teaching. For I too was a son to my father, still tender, and cherished by my mother. Then he taught me, and he said to me, ‘Take hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands, and you will live’” (Proverbs 4:1–4 NIV). 

For that purpose—and because there was little else as delightful as intellectual debate—he had taken this stage. 

How do you confront weak thinking? When weak thinking undermines truth, thinking people must confront it. 

Chesterton, GK. The Everlasting Man. 1925, Reprinted by Project Gutenberg, 2001. Accessed May 7, 2020. http://​gutenberg.net.au/​ebooks01/​0100311. txt. 

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. The G.K. Chesterton Collection. The Catholic Way Publishing, 2014. 

Story read by: Peter R Warren, https://www.peterwarrenministries.com/ 

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Story written by: Paula Moldenhauer, http://paulamoldenhauer.com/ 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

© 2020, 365 Christian Men. LLC. All rights reserved. 

September 17. TD Jakes. When TD was a boy, the neighborhood kids called him “Bible Boy,” but because he had a speech impediment, grownups said he would never be a preacher. TD proved those grownups wrong, and he started preaching in a storefront church with only ten members. 

On this date in 2001, TD was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. He is now a pastor, author, and filmmaker. Today’s story shows an important event in his early life. 

Alone, we can get stuck, but together we can overcome obstacles. 

When TD was six, he had to run down a path of hard, Appalachian soil from his house to the school bus stop. Full of energy, TD had no problem running behind his house and down the street with the other kids. But there was an obstacle he just couldn’t get past. There was a giant boulder. 

Now, the other boys got themselves up and grabbed the edges of the rock and pulled themselves over the boulder to the other side, and they caught the school bus. But when TD got to the boulder, he froze. 

That boulder was so big that every time he looked at it, he was filled with fear. Fear of slipping and falling. Fear of getting bruised or cut. Fear of getting trapped in the blackberry bushes that grew on both sides of the boulder. No matter how much he wanted to climb like the other boys, his feet just wouldn’t budge. Fear held him in place. 

Every day, he would run down the path—and he would be stopped by the boulder. Day after day he ran home with plenty of tears and the sounds of the other boys mocking him in the distance. He felt defeated. Humiliated. Overwhelmed. The only way he could get over the boulder was if his mom or dad would lift him over it. Double humiliating. 

A new day. Another trek down the path. That boulder would be waiting for him. Of course, the guys would have new insults for the new day. 

But this time when TD saw the boulder up ahead, he stopped. His eyes and his mouth rounded. His two-hundred-sixty-pound father was whacking the boulder with a sledge hammer! Thwack. Thwomp. On and on he swung, chipping away rock, bit by bit, until a stairway formed. Before long, TD could step onto the boulder himself, climb the newly made stairs over the boulder, and slide down to the other side where the pathway to the bus stop was clear. 

TD looked at his father like a hero that day, and the boulder never gave him a problem again. But his father had also taught a valuable lesson: his father had helped him, so he could help other people. “Little did I know that I would spend the rest of my life with a mallet and pick in my hands trying to help people who were stuck at their own big rocks, helping them over their hurdles into the field of their dreams.” 

TD kept the lesson close to his heart for years to come and incorporated it into his ministry. “God has invested a great deal in you,” he wrote, “and for all the Creator has put in you, there is only one thing God wants to know: ‘What will you do with what I gave you?’” 

“I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw” (Proverbs 24:32 NIV). 

What unexpected lesson is God trying to teach you? Look for it in the obstacles. Alone, we can get stuck, but together we can overcome obstacles. 

Jakes, T.D. “Destiny: Step into Your Purpose.” New York: Faith Words, 2016. 

Jakes, T.D. “He-Motions: Even Strong Men Struggle.” New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004. 

Story read by: Blake Mattocks 

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Story written by: Paula Moldenhauer, http://paulamoldenhauer.com/ 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

© 2020, 365 Christian Men. LLC. All rights reserved. 

September 16. Matt Krueger. Matt was a hard-driving accountant. He was still a very young man when he had a close encounter of the God kind, and it changed his life forever. Here’s his story. 

You can’t fight an enemy you don’t know exists, and you can’t fight a battle you don’t know you’re in. 

The nurses kept coming back. The results must be wrong. They ran the tests three times. With normal cholesterol levels around 100 to 150, they couldn’t believe that healthy eighteen-year-old Matt’s was over 400. He was a candidate for coronary artery disease. For Matt, it was just business as usual … keep on drinking because life is short; party hard! 

Matt was too busy getting on with life to let a medical test interrupt his wild lifestyle. He was in great shape playing sports and he just shrugged off the results and ignored God. He was having too much fun to be bothered with church and a relationship with God. 

A few years later, Matt had a heart scan. So much plaque had built up in his arteries that the doctor warned him that he needed immediate surgery. He could have a heart attack or stroke at any moment. The shock overwhelmed him as he came face-to-face with his mortality. The fear of dying during surgery consumed him. What would happen; where would he go? Heaven or hell? The thoughts tormented him, and he put off the surgery. 

But Matt’s fear of death began to wreak havoc on his marriage. He could only focus on himself and his wife Marina was left on the outside. She felt like she couldn’t meet his expectations. His fear was becoming a wedge between them. Where was this all headed? 

In desperation Matt followed Marina’s lead and started going to church and listening to Christian radio. Finally, the fear became too much for the whole family and he scheduled the surgery. The surgeon was successful in opening up Matt’s arteries, but his fear of dying only got worse. Any pain he felt—he thought was a sign of a heart attack until one morning it finally all came to a head. 

“After planting a tree, the previous day, I thought I experienced pain in my left shoulder and arm. Again, fear, anxiety, and paralysis took hold of my mind that morning. I thought this was the big one.” 

This time, however, Matt’s fear turned to strength, determination, and resolve. Falling on his knees Matt gave his life to Jesus. “If this was really a heart attack, I asked Jesus to save me in the life to come, and if not, I pledged my belief in him in this life, as well.” 

The pain left, and at that moment an overwhelming peace and a fighting determination welled up in Matt. He finally stood up to the bully that had been hounding him for years. “I remember in my prayer that day, literally telling the devil to go pick on someone else. I finally knew who he was, and I was finished with allowing him to torment me.” 

It was no longer about Matt … it was about Jesus. His battle with the enemy’s condemnation was over. His struggle with the fear of dying ended when his knees hit the sidewalk that morning. Matt’s past life of running from God ended, and his new life in Jesus began. 

Marina was the first to notice the change. “He became selfless. Matt has a heart for God and a heart to serve. He is 110 percent opposite of who he used to be.” 

Today Matt and Marina have a strong marriage and family. He lives for serving Christ and sharing his testimony in word and music … standing up to the enemy and standing for Christ. 

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 NIV). 

Are you ignoring the obvious? You are in danger of living in denial, look in the mirror. You can’t fight an enemy you don’t know exists, and you can’t fight a battle you don’t know you’re in. 

Copen, Lisa and Matt Krueger. “Faith Begins When Worry Ends, The Story of Matt Krueger.” Rest Ministries. April 7, 2011. http://restministries.com/blog/2011/04/07/faith-begins-when-worry-ends-the-story-of-matt-krueger/.  

Krueger, Matt. Matt Krueger Music. Accessed May 7, 2020. http://mattkruegermusic.com/the-music/. 

Matt Krueger: The Heart of the Matter. Christian Broadcasting Network. Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www1.cbn.com/700club/matt-krueger-heart-matter.  

Story read by: Joel Carpenter 

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

© 2020, 365 Christian Men. LLC. All rights reserved. 

September 14. William McKinley. In 1861, McKinley was a 17-year-old teacher in a country school when the Civil War broke out, and he enlisted. By the end of the war in 1865, he was a major. By 1897, he had become the 25th President of the United States. He was a man who knew his duty and did it. On this date in 1901, McKinley died from a gunshot wound, a wound inflicted by an assassin. 

Faithfulness to God demands daily decisions. 

In July of 1864, 21-year-old Second Lieutenant McKinley found himself on Lieutenant Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes’s staff, currently in the Virginia valley near Kernstown. 

The Confederates began firing. 

The Union army, having underestimated the South’s strength, retreated. Hayes turned to McKinley, a young man he had come to think of as a son, and gave him a task—a dangerous task that would require more courage than Lieutenant McKinley had ever shown. 

“There’s a regiment caught in the orchard, still under fire,” Hayes told McKinley. “We need them to move into retreat—if they haven’t already fallen.” 

Years before, McKinley had given his life to the Lord. And he had no doubt of the rightness of the North’s cause. So he put his life in God’s hands and simply mounted his horse and took off toward the advancing enemy and the stranded regiment. 

In spite of the constant shelling from the enemy, McKinley charged across open fields while his fellow officers watched in concern. The young man directed his mount to sail over fences in plain view. To forge through ditches. To keep moving forward. 

The air filled with vapor from the barrage of cannons, and shells whizzed all around. Then one exploded very near to him; the smoke obscured him from view. All the officers who marked his progress flinched, for Lieutenant McKinley was a favorite with everyone, enlisted and officer alike. They feared Lieutenant Colonel Hayes had sent the promising young man to his death. 

Then suddenly, “Out of this smoke emerged his wiry little brown horse with McKinley still firmly seated and as erect as a hussar.” (That’s a Hungarian horseman.) 

Hope soared as McKinley reached the orchard. Once there, he directed the stray regiment to join the retreat. After one last volley with the enemy, the regiment followed McKinley to safety. They soon fell in line with their brigade to march back to a more secure position. 

Young McKinley returned to the side of his commanding officer. Hayes turned to him, “I never expected to see you in life again,” he said. 

McKinley simply smiled, acknowledging he had done the duty asked of him for the sake of the men in that regiment. 

“We know love by this, that [Jesus] laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16 NASB). 

Faithfulness to God demands daily decisions. Can you be counted on? 

Freidel, Frank, and Hugh Sidey. “William McKinley.” The White House. Accessed July 1, 2020. https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/william-mckinley/. 

Hawks, Steve A. “Two Future U.S. Presidents Fight at Kernstown wayside marker.” Stone Sentinels. Accessed July 1, 2020. http://stonesentinels.com/less-known/battles-of-kernstown/two-future-presidents-wm/. 

Story read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Story written by: Shelli Mandeville, https://worthy.life/ 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

© 2020, 365 Christian Men, LLC. All rights reserved. 

September 13. Stubborn Teenager. Today our story is about a man much like you and me. When he was a child, his parents took him to church, but when he became a teenager, he was ready to put away childish things—childish things like church and preaching. This kid was from Charlotte, North Carolina. Here’s his story. 

If you’re suffering from a stony heart, God’s got the cure. 

Before it was the birthplace of NASCAR racing, before it was the home of the NFL’s Panthers, before it was home for the NBA’s Hornets, Charlotte North Carolina was called the most church-going city in the country. And that was before the arrival of Dr. Mordecai Ham. 

On the edge of Charlotte, the Christian Men’s Club built themselves a wood building on a steel frame. It may have been a ramshackle structure with a sawdust floor, but it could seat 5,000 people. And those devout men intended to fill it. 

They called a self-educated evangelist—Dr. Mordecai Ham. They called him to preach to anyone who would listen. They called for a revival. 

Dignified and strong, white-haired Dr. Ham knew his Bible, and he preached up a holy typhoon—morning and evening, six days a week, for eleven weeks. 

This is where our mule-minded teenager entered the picture. “Everything I heard or read about [Dr. Ham] made me feel antagonistic toward the whole affair,” the boy said. “It sounded like a religious circus … I did not want anything to do with an evangelist—particularly with such a colorful character as Dr. Ham.” He told his parents he would not be joining them in the audience. 

Even when his folks went and had a sort of spiritual awakening, for a whole month, the kid refused to go—until he heard the rumors. 

As the high-school kids told it, that white-haired preacher had proof that a house across the street from the school was a den of immoral activity. It was said that kids were buying grain alcohol and the upstairs had been turned into a brothel. And Mordecai Ham meant to shut them down. 

But truth was—a Men’s Group leader’s marketing strategy included leaking the news of the brothel to the preacher and getting signed depositions to back up the preacher’s accusations. Mordecai Ham got dubbed “the fighting preacher.” Who could stay away? 

When a bunch of high school students decided to resort to might to defend their collective honor, even our church-hating teen couldn’t stay away. He wanted to see the fighting preacher. Mostly, he wanted to see the fight. 

He sat in the far back, confident he was untouchable. And after the meeting, the boy couldn’t  remember what the preacher had talked about, but he said, “ … I was spellbound. In some indefinable way, he was getting through to me … ” 

“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19 ESV). 

All the loud talk about sin and hell, and all the feelings that went with that bore down on the teen. Even way in the back row, he became convinced Dr. Ham was preaching right at him. 

“Why would the evangelist always be pointing his bony finger at me?” the boy said. “I became deeply convicted about my sinfulness and rebellion. And confused.” After all he had been brought up in the church and doing good deeds. 

That’s why he joined the choir—so he could stand on the stage behind the preacher and avoid the old man’s accusatory gaze. 

Still, the Holy Spirit found the boy, and for the first time, he realized he didn’t know Jesus for himself. Hand-me-down religion was no longer enough. 

So, when the preacher invited sinners to come to the front and find relief, the boy walked down the aisle. He didn’t feel anything and almost went back to his seat, but a tailor he knew came up to him and told him the gospel. 

The boy said, “For the first time in my life I got down on my knees without being told to do so. I really wanted to talk to God. ‘Lord, I don’t know what happened to me tonight,’ I prayed. ‘You know. And I thank You for the privilege I’ve had tonight.’” 

About the next night, the teen said, “All my father’s mules and horses could not have kept me from getting to that meeting.” He showed up every night for weeks. 

And when the revival was over and Charlotte flowed back to normal, it wasn’t too long before the boy realized God had called him to preach. And he did. 

Maybe you’ve heard of him. His name was Billy Graham. 

Billy went on to preach about God’s love to nearly 215 million people around the world. He met with every sitting US president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. In 2000, he received the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Freedom Award for his enduring contributions to the cause of freedom. 

Is there something keeping you from turning your life over to God? If you’re suffering from a hard heart, God’s got the cure. 

Bailey, Laura. “The Night Billy Graham Was Born Again.” November 6, 2017. https://billygraham.org/story/the-night-billy-graham-was-born-again/ 

Graham, Billy. Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham. New York: Harper Collins, 2018. 

Hammond, Sarah Ruth. God’s Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. pp. 72–74. 

Would You Like to Learn More About This Man? 

In May of 1934, Christian businessmen in Charlotte, North Carolina, held an all-day prayer meeting on his father’s pasture. Billy Graham’s father, William Franklin Graham, Sr., recalled one of the men’s prayer that day: “That out of Charlotte the Lord would raise up someone to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.” 

The Christian Men’s Club who invited Dr Ham to Charlotte, had been established by the fast-moving preacher Billy Sunday ten years before this story. 

Story read by: Chuck Stecker 

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Story written by: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

© 2020, 365 Christian Men. LLC. All rights reserved. 

September 3. Sádhu Sundar Singh. Sundar was desperate to know the truth about life. He knew it must mean something. In his extremity, he cried out for the One-in-charge to reveal himself—or Sundar would end his own life right then. 

And Jesus, the Messiah, revealed Himself to Sundar and recruited him to feed His sheep. On this date in 1905, Sundar was baptized into the body of Christ. 

He became a Sádhu—a holy man and teacher—and he traveled and preached throughout the Himalayas and even into Nepal and Tibet, which were closed to the gospel. Today’s story is about one day’s work in Sundar’s life. 

Surprise your enemies—don’t try to get revenge. 

Dressed in his signature saffron-colored robe and matching turban, his feet bare, Sundar approached the Indian men working in the Markanda field. They were working hard to reap crops under a blazing sun, and he saw men who needed a savior. 

He watched them swing their scythes. They listened to him with little more than indifference as he—a sádhu, the Indian word for holy man or sage—talked to them about Jesus Christ. 

Gradually, the workers’ disinterest morphed into disapproval. Although Indians have always revered religious men, these men grew impatient with this man’s strange teachings. They rained curses and threats on Sundar, and suddenly a stone sailed through the air and hit its target: the sádhu’s head. 

But moments later, the man who had thrown the stone developed such a bad headache that he had to stop working. 

Feeling compassion rather than vindication, Sundar picked up the man’s scythe and took his place in the field, working alongside the now-astonished men. 

“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35 NIV). 

The men grew quiet and attentive and Sundar  knew that his actions had demonstrated the faith he had been sharing. 

At the end of the day, the workers invited him to join them for their evening supper. At home, long into the night they listened to his compelling message about the Christ, and then he left them. 

Later, when the men had rested, they went out to take inventory of their harvest. It soon became obvious their yield was much greater than what they had seen in previous years. Shocked and somewhat fearful, they declared to each other that they had surely been visited by a holy man. 

An opportunity to disarm an enemy awaits; look for it and take action. Surprise your enemies—don’t try to get revenge. 

Parker, Mrs. Arthur. Sádhu Sundar Singh—Called of God. Madras: Christian Literature Society for India, 1919, xiv. 

Heiler, Friedrich. The Gospel of Sádhu Sundar Singh, trans. Olive Wyon. Lucknow, IN: Lucknow Publishing House, 1970, 1. 

Story read by: Chuck Stecker  

Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter 

Audio production: Joel Carpenter 

Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/ 

Project manager: Blake Mattocks 

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