John Bunyan

Have you ever been through the wringer?  No, I mean really through the wringer?  John Bunyan found himself on the wrong side of a religious war in England and was commanded by the king not to preach.  In 1661 he was convicted of preaching and sentenced to three months in Bedford prison.  Because he would not promise never to preach again, he spent the next twelve years in prison.  His wife and four little children were left destitute existing only by the kindness of church members and the few shillings that John earned in prison by making shoelaces.  But God had a plan for Preacher Bunyan.  It is during this imprisonment that John Bunyan wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress”.  Job said it best in Job 23:10, “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”  God produces His best work in the crucible of the refiner’s furnace.  God brought John Bunyan through the fires of testing to make him into the servant/writer that he needed to be.  God gave Bunyan twelve years of solitude to finish his work.  Four years after Bunyan’s death saw 100,000 copies of “Pilgrim’s Progress” printed with 1300 editions in the next 250 years.  God took John Bunyan through the fires and God will take you through the fires as well.  That is, if you remain faithful.  May He do so, is my prayer for you.