Articles
Suffering, Are We?
“if anyone suffers as a Christian...” (1 Peter 4:16)
Having been advised he could only be paid $10.00 to come and preach, but would be expected to deliver a $100.00 sermon, Joe Blue responded with this note.
...The Lord willing, I shall be with you brethren April 24, 1953. I hope the lectureship will be good. I note what you wrote about paying me $10.00 for a $100.00 sermon. That is too great a sacrifice for an old worn out preacher to make. I have different prices on sermons. I have one I can let you have for $12.35 and one for $15.00, then I have one $25.00 sermon. I also have one for $7.89. I have another very nice one for $3.69. I am closing out on one you can have for seventeen cents plus tax. All in all I think you need about a $2.40 sermon, but when you go into $100.00 sermons it takes lots of rousement.
Yours in the One Way, Joe H. Blue*
"Rousement." I like that word. Don't know that I've ever heard it anywhere else, but I like it. And in his lifetime, whenever or wherever he preached, seems brother Joe Hubert Blue (1875-1954) sure brought (and caused) lots of rousement.
“I have been stoned, beaten with green walnuts, and with eggs. I have had dynamite put under the pulpit while I was preaching. I have had to be guarded while I preached. I have had them to threaten to take me out of the pulpit and fix me so I would never be able to get in another one. I have had them threaten to hang me. I have suffered all this for the cause of our Lord, and yet have not begun to suffer what our Lord suffered, or the apostles. I am now 68 years old and want to preach many more years. To God be all the glory for the great Victory.” ~ Joe Blue, January, 1944 *
“Well, he must have been getting paid pretty good to put up with all that”, you assume? That brings on a call for a few more facts and a bit less assuming.. Please read on.
“I have never been the man to complain about what the brethren have paid me for my work. I preached monthly (for a year) for a congregation and held their meeting, and they paid me $4.00 for my work. I preached monthly for another congregation, twenty miles away, and held their meeting, and they paid me one dollar and a bushel of seed corn. Brother O. L. Hays and I were called to Cotter, Arkansas to hold a meeting in 1904 in the month of January, and they paid us $2.00 and a handkerchief apiece. When the meeting closed there was a three-inch snow on the ground, and we walked home a distance of 46 miles. I have gotten off the train at Hardy, Arkansas, in the night, and taken my suitcase and walked home that night, a distance of 25 miles. Many times I have set up in a cold depot all night, because I did not have the price of a bed and enough to take me on to my meeting. I have done without something to eat in my travels just because I did not have money to buy it and get on to meeting.” ~ Joe Blue, January, 1944 *
*Arkansas Angels by Boyd Morgan, pages 85 and 79, respectively
Truth told, most of us don’t mind to suffer, so long as there’s no discomfort, pain, or misery involved. After all, we didn’t "sign up" so we could be cold, without a place to sleep, pelted with eggs, walnuts, or rocks, walk home from church in the snow, be on the wrong end of a rope, and/or be beaten up, banged up or blown up. And didn’t nobody say nothing about the prospect of missing a meal!!
No, our idea of suffering is some different. Being laughed at because of our faith. That’s suffering. Missing the office Christmas party or the High School Prom because the goings on there weren’t suitable for a Christian. That’s suffering.Crawling out of bed so that we’re not (too) late for Sunday morning Bible class. That’s suffering. Crawling out of bed so that we’re not (too) late for Sunday morning Worship services. That’s suffering. Enduring a sermon that lasts for more than 25 minutes. That’s REALLY suffering! And we might go on... and on... and on…
“Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” (Luke 9:23)
“Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” (2 Timothy 3:12)
I don’t guess taking up my own daily cross has been all that hard if I measure the taking up by the pain of lifting or hardships caused. Admittedly, my own suffering and persecutions have been, at worst, minimal. How ‘bout for you? Might it be we just haven’t taken up the heavy end of that cross? Not yet, we haven’t. But, we’re going to. Someday. For His sake. Aren’t we?
~Teddy Horton
