A Walk with John Sung

Whenever I get blue and discouraged in ministry and down in the dumps by feeling I'm preaching to the walls and feeling my ministry isn't having the impact it should and souls aren't being reached like they could, I go take a walk with John Sung. I get out his 600-page diary and I reread it once again and take a stroll through its pages to see a man who poured out his life for Christ like a drink offering dying at the tender age of 42. I walk along with Sung as I carry his sandals and see his sacrificial life of prayer where praying five hours at a time was not unusual for him.

As I walk beside him, I observe how he read 11 chapters of the Bible every day to the day he died and I stand amazed at his consecrated preaching that had such power from on high and see how God used that surrendered man to shake China in revival and to save 200,000 souls. I cross the cold rivers and trek the mountain ravines with him in his itinerant ministry and as I spend time with him, I am shamed by my lack but encouraged to be more on fire for God and his glory as I take a walk with John Sung and witness his tireless life of ministry spent for the Lord and pretty soon the blood begins to run in my veins again coursing with a freshness and renewed vigor and I'm ready to go all out for God no matter the cost and be poured out for the Lord Jesus like a drink offering. I cannot walk in the shadow of Sung without catching a spark of his holy flame for God.

John Sung lived to save souls at the sacrifice of all else. He was away from his family 11 months of the year and was away preaching every time his wife gave birth. He bled from a wound from piles that troubled him all his life having to wash his own underwear every day as he was in constant pain but his personal suffering paled in comparison to how God used him.

As I walk with John Sung, my heart is stirred within me and I want to be more like Jesus whom Sung served and after walking a time with Sung, I have the courage and strength and determination to go preach again a gospel few want to hear about a bloody cross and a blood-stained savior from sin who demands repentance and a life of discipleship from all followers of him. I'll keep preaching the gospel of the cross until my lips go silent in death, my body goes down to the grave, and my soul ascends up to glory to be with my one true and faithful friend, Jesus of Nazareth.