The pressure of hard places makes us value life. Every time we come through such a trial, it is like a new beginning, and we learn better how much life is worth and make more of it for God and man. The pressure helps us to understand the trials of others and fits us to help and sympathize with them. There is a shallow, superficial nature that gets hold of a theory or a promise and talks very glibly about the distrust of those who shrink from every trial. But the man or woman who has suffered much never does this. Knowing what suffering really means, he or she is very tender and gentle. This is what Paul meant when he said, Death worketh in us, but life in you (2 Corinthians 4:12). Trials and hard places are needed to press us forward, even as the furnace fires in the hold of the mighty steamship give the force that moves the Piston, drives the engine and propels that great vessel in the face of winds and waves.
Be the first to react on this!
A.B. Simpson (1843 - 1919)
Simpson is the founder of the Christian Missionary Alliance Movement that began in Canada with a desire to promote missions and global evangelism. He was used powerfully of the Lord to unify many brothers and sisters in a common purpose of fulfilling the great commission.A.W. Tozer joined with the Missionary Alliance denomination because of the teachings of A.B. Simpson and specific his writings on holiness: "A Larger Christian Life." He wrote many hymns and added a great emphasis on the person of Jesus Christ in church-life.
FOUNDER OF THE Christian and Missionary Alliance, Albert Benjamin Simpson was born in Canada of Scottish parents. He became a Presbyterian minister and pastored several churches in Ontario. Later, he accepted the call to serve as pastor of the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. It was there that his life and ministry were completely changed in that, during a revival meeting, he experienced the fullness of the Spirit.He continued in the Presbyterian Church until 1881, when he founded an independent Gospel Tabernacle in New York. There he published the Alliance Weekly and wrote 70 books on Christian living. He organized two missionary societies which later merged to become the Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Albert Benjamin Simpson was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical protestant denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism.
In December 1873, at age 30, Simpson left Canada and assumed the pulpit of the largest Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky, the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church. It was in Louisville that he first conceived of preaching the gospel to the common man by building a simple tabernacle structure for that purpose. Despite his success at the Chestnut Street Church, Simpson was frustrated by their reluctance to embrace this burden for wider evangelistic endeavor.
Simpson’s heart for evangelism was to become the driving force behind the creation of the C&MA. Initially, the Christian and Missionary Alliance was not founded as a denomination, but as an organized movement of world evangelism. Today, the C&MA denomination plays a leadership role in global evangelism.