I was sitting there, in a noonday Lenten Service 50 years ago. This man came out to speak, and of course, he was a famous intellect, and he started by saying he had never been discouraged in 25 years. – I had never heard anything like that. But I could not write him off as an odd ball because of his intellectual prowess, nor could I dispose of him as a crank, for he was scientific. His name was Dr. E. Stanley Jones. He was a missionary in India, who worked with the upper class and won them to Christ by the thousands with his orderly argument.
On this occasion, he said the reason he had not been discouraged was due to a simple workable secret. Jones said he had been trying to carry everything himself. One night, in despair in Lucknow, India, while praying in church, the Lord said to him: ‘Look Stanley, are you ready to turn life over to me or do you want to hang on to it and ruin it? If you give it to me, I will give you health, long life, and no discouragements.’ ‘Seemed like a good deal to me, so I chose it on the spot,’ said Jones. That made a powerful impression on me, because I had been brought up differently. I had never heard anything like that.
