Anne Judson, born in 1789, lived a life marked by faith and suffering until her death in 1826. Raised in a Christian home, Anne initially lived a life focused on outward morality without a true understanding of salvation. Her spiritual awakening came at age 16 during the Second Great Awakening, leading her to embrace the beauty of salvation through Jesus Christ. Anne married Adoniram Judson and embarked on a mission to Burma, facing immense hardships including the loss of all her children and her husband's imprisonment. Despite these trials, Anne's faith remained steadfast, driven by a desire to bring the gospel to women in a culture where they were marginalized. Her work included translating the Gospel of Matthew into Burmese and writing a catechism. Anne's legacy, alongside Adoniram's, significantly impacted Christianity in Myanmar, with millions tracing their spiritual heritage back to their efforts. Her life exemplified perseverance through tribulation, and her story continues to inspire faith and dedication to God's service.

Please be seated. You have an outline in front of you that gives you a sense of some of the things I'm going to cover just so that you can track with me. And we're dealing with Ann Judson. When we get to Ann Judson, we get to a life that experienced enormous suffering and hardship and difficulty. Yet she says, I rejoice that I am in his hands.

That was really the theme of her whole life. With Ann Judson, you get a woman who is fearlessly available, passionately dedicated to the salvation of the lost. She only lived for 37 years. She was born in 1789 and died in 1826. A very courageous woman who I think is a living picture of Hebrews 11, 37, and 38.

They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth." Now, she was not martyred as this text indicates in Hebrews 11, but she did experience Enormous dislocation in her life as a result of her her desire to spread the gospel Along with her husband and I think that song that we sang earlier that Martin Luther penned and is in the depths of the depression Is relevant a mighty fortress is our God a bulwark never failing and then He writes did we and our own strength confide? Our striving would be losing. This woman and these women that we're studying have these things living in their hearts.

You find in her a humble and a heartfelt desire for God's pleasure in everything. And that's why she says, I rejoice that I'm in his hands, that he is everywhere present and can protect me in one place as in another. Jesus is faithful. So let's talk about her life, let's talk about her early life. She writes about her growing up years.

She grew up in a Christian home where her father was kind of a lay leader in the church. He was a man of God. They had a home that was full of life. It reminds me of the Burke home. The father built a big room to have big gatherings of people, and they just enjoyed life in the church there.

And she would say in her youth that she was one of the happiest creatures on earth. Later she would find out that wasn't really true because she didn't know Jesus, but she did grow up in a happy home. What a blessing it must have been. I want to tell you about Anne's spiritual journey because I think It helps to understand what really happens to so many, not just young women, but all of us. She says, during the first 16 years of my life, I very seldom felt any serious impressions.

I was taught by my mother the importance of abstaining from those vices which children are liable, such as telling falsehoods, disobeying my parents, taking what was not my own. She also taught me that If I were a good child, I should at death escape that dreadful hell, the thought of which sometimes filled me with alarm and terror. I therefore made it a matter of conscience to avoid the above-mentioned sins, to say my prayers night and morning, and to abstain from any usual play on the Sabbath, not doubting, but that such a course of conduct would ensure my salvation." So she was a good girl, but she was dead in her trespasses and in her sins. And She began to realize her spiritual state, that she was living a life of vanity and that her obedience, her good nature, her desire to please her parents meant nothing in terms of her salvation. And so she writes of her growing desire for godliness in this way.

In the spring of 1806, there appeared a little attention to religion in the Upper Parish of Bradford. In other words, there was a revival going on in her area. She says, religious conferences had been appointed during the winter, and I now began to attend them regularly. I often used to weep when hearing the minister and others press the importance of improving the present favorable season. In other words, come to Jesus.

But then the harvest passed. In other words, the revival moved on and she realized that she was not saved during that time. So she was hearing the preaching, there was a great awakening going on, she was saved during the second great awakening, and yet while she felt things while the preaching was going on as people were turning to Christ, she realized she had not. Even though she would weep and feel guilty and recognize her need for Christ, She remembers one Sunday morning picking up a book and seeing the phrase, she that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives. And that convicted her of her sin.

And during that time, still unsaved, She read Pilgrim's Progress. She made resolutions. She made commitments to God. None of them stuck. And she still remained unconverted.

And then when she was 16 years old, that changed. She was saved right about sixteen years old. I will read what she writes about that. I began to discover the beauty in the way of salvation by Christ. He appeared to be just such a Savior as I needed.

I saw how God could be just, saving sinners through Him. I committed my soul into His hands. I now began to hope that I had passed from death into life. I had sweet communion with the Blessed God from day to day. My heart was drawn out in love to Christians of whatever denomination the sacred scriptures were sweet to my taste.

And such was my thirst for religious knowledge that I frequently spent a great part of the night reading religious books. How different were my views of myself and of God from what they were when I first began to inquire that I should be saved. I felt myself to be a poor lost sinner. My view of myself humbled me in the dust, melted me into sorrow and contrition for my sins, induced to lay my soul at the feet of Christ and to plead his merits alone as the ground of my acceptance." And so in 1806 at age 16, she publicly professed saving faith in Jesus Christ. And what was the heart of it.

It's what she said and what I just read. She discovered the beauty of Jesus Christ. That's what it was. And his beauty was more beautiful than this world. And that is really probably the premier sign of truly being saved.

A heart is turned, the affections change. So there she is. She's saved after this journey of living in a Christian home, in a Christian environment, in the midst of a revival in the second great awakening. Well, so she's converted and a short time passed and she begins to have missionary inclinations. Do you see that as the second item in your outline, missionary inclinations?

Her father had a heart for missions and he was part of a group that gathered a conference together. They were part of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and they organized a conference. Much of this happened as a result of some pressure from some young men who had been newly converted, and they desired to serve Jesus in foreign lands. And so this group of young men began to lobby this association of churches in New England to establish a missionary society and to begin sending men into the mission field in foreign lands. So her father, who was a deacon in their church, was part of organizing a conference.

And guess who came to the conference? Adoniram Judson, the man who would become her husband. And so he was very taken by her sweetness, her love for God, and he fell in love with her. And so he wrote a letter to her father, and I'm going to read you a portion of this letter to her father. This man, Adoniram Judson, understood that he was getting ready to go into dangerous territory and that his life would be threatened and maybe extinguished as a result of where he was going to minister the gospel.

He had committed to go to Burma and was very soon to set sail for Burma. He writes this to Anne's father, I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world. Whether you can consent to her departure and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life, whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home and died for her and for you for the sake of perishing? Immortal souls, for the sake of Zion, for the glory of God, Can you consent to all this in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory with the crown of righteousness, brightened with the acclamations of praise, which shall redound to her Savior from the heathens saved, through her means from eternal woe to despair.

Some letter, some letter, give me your daughter you will never see her again. So sometime after this proposal Anne writes to one of her friends, I feel willing and expect if nothing in providence prevents to spend my days in this world in heathen lands. Yes, Lydia, I have about come to the determination to give up all my comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to relatives and friends, and go where God in his providence shall see fit to place me." You can read that in the book, The Golden Shore, which is a biography of Ednairem Judson. So there was this growing conviction in her mind that she should go. It was dawning on her and then in her journal she writes even more of this.

And you can tell that her heart is becoming more and more confirmed that she should go. And she says this, I have at length come to the conclusion that I must go. She says, I rejoice that I am in his hands, that He is everywhere present and can protect me in one place as well as in another. He has my heart in His hands, and when I am called to face danger, to pass through the terror and distress, He can inspire me with fortitude and enable me to trust him. Jesus is faithful.

His promises are precious. Were it not for these considerations, I should, with my present prospects, sink down in despair, especially as no female has, to my knowledge, ever left the shores of America to spend her life among the heathen. Nor do I yet know that I shall have a single female companion. But whether I spend my days in India or America, I desire to spend them in the service of God and be prepared to spend an eternity in His presence." So her heart did change, and she did agree to marry Adoniram Judson. And two weeks, they were married in 1812.

Two weeks after their wedding, they boarded a ship to Burma or to India. And she would board that ship and 13 years later she would be dead as a result of a disease that she contracted while she was there. She says this, and this really I think is the key to her life. I desire no higher enjoyment in this life than to be instrumental of leading some poor, ignorant, heathen females to the knowledge of the Savior. To have a female praying society consisting of those who were once in heathen darkness is what my heart exceedingly pants after and makes a constant subject of prayer, resolved to keep this in view as one principal object of my life.

So she set herself to find women, to rescue them from the darkness of their age. She was going to a place where women were degraded, women were abused in unspeakable ways, really, and she went there to bring the gospel to them and to preach the word of God to them, to rescue them from that life. What I just read, she wrote on board ship on the way to India. Then on the way to India, She and her husband were converted. Well, they were converted to be Baptists.

And they became Baptists on the way over, and they realized they were going to meet some Baptists when they arrived. William Carey would be one of them. And they wanted to have their arguments ready. They were Presbyterians at the time. So they set themselves to study the scriptures on the matter of baptism on the way over.

Then when they arrived, they set themselves to study even more and had apparently some of the best books available, and they became Baptists. This was very difficult because they were sent out by a Presbyterian missionary society, and they knew that they would be rejected from that missionary society. They knew that people would stop praying for them. They knew that they would not get their support and there they were in India. She writes, a renunciation of our former sentiments has caused us more pain than anything which ever happened to us through our lives.

Well, of course, the sufferings that they would experience would be far, far greater than that, But it made life difficult. Well, when they arrived in India, they ended up getting kicked out of India. You see this in the six element of this outline. They first went to India. And at the time, the government in India and the East India Company were opposed to missionaries and they were ordered to leave the country and so they went to Burma, which is modern day Myanmar.

And so now they're in Burma and they're in a place where the gospel has never been preached, a land of 15 million people. Here's what Anne prayed when they went to Burma. O thou light of the world, dissipate the thick darkness which covers Burma, and let thy light arise and shine. O display thy grace and power among these Burmese, subdue them to thyself, and make them thy chosen people." This is what burned in her heart, the salvation of the lost. Oh, light of the world.

This was her perspective, that Jesus was the light of the world. This is what moved her along in her daily life. Well, she had children. She had three pregnancies. This is the next item, children.

The first baby, Nameless, was born dead as they sailed from India to Burma. And then the second child, Roger, Roger Williams Judson, he lived 17 months and he died. The third, Maria Elizabeth Judson, lived to be two years old, and she actually outlived her own mother by six months, and then she died. So they lost all of their children during this time being in a land where disease reigned and children died easily. They had a hard experience with their children.

When her second child died, Anne wrote this, our hearts were bound up with this child. We felt he was our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error and to strip us of our only little all. O may it not be in vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he will stay his hand and say, it is enough.

So you can feel the pain on the one hand. On the other hand, they had a view that God always did what was good, as difficult and heartbreaking as it was. She believed that God had taken her child so she would not idolize her child. And she prayed that the suffering would bear fruit in her life. There's not a note of bitterness, but there is great sorrow.

She was a very active minister to women there. She wrote a catechism in Burmese, and in 1819 she translated the Gospel of John, I'm sorry, the Gospel of Matthew into the Burmese language. And In the Burmese catechism, she wrote her version of a prayer for conversion. I'll read it to you because you get a sense of just her right grasp of the gospel and how it really is required of the human soul to repent and turn from sin in order to be saved. And so this is the catechism in Burmese where she writes kind of a version of what you might call the sinner's prayer.

O God our Father, I confess that I have committed many sins against you. Because of these things, O Father, I deserve to be disowned and sent to suffer in hell, but instead Jesus died for me. I want to depend on him. So please have mercy upon me and give me a pure mind and a clean heart. Forgive me for whatever sins I have done.

Please return me to the right way to be your disciple and help me keep your word. Please send down your Holy Spirit upon me. Have mercy on me. Take care for me and save me from hell after I die. Take me to the peaceful city of heaven, O God our Father.

Amen. Does that prayer resonate in your heart? Is that your prayer? Check to see if it is. If it's not, it could be.

It could be if God would give you a heart to turn toward Him. You know, you must be born again. Anne understood that. She understood what it meant to be a young girl, not born again, religious, faithful, very nice, very smiley, very happy. She understood that your smile is not the primary indication that you're born again.

So this catechism was a blessing there. You know, she came home in 1822 when she was having some severe liver problems. And in the ninth element of your outline, home to recoup and recruit. So she comes home and she has this problem with her liver. And during that time she writes a history of the Burmese mission that was widely read in America.

It was a very well-known book at the time. And it really spurred on other missionaries. One of the interesting things about some of the lectures that she gave when she came back to America, she would meet with groups of women and appeal to them to come and minister to the women in Burma. She would describe at length what this corrupt culture had done to women. It's fascinating to read what she says, because you can just see how an ungodly culture always harms women.

You can see how an ungodly culture harms women here. And she would explain how the Word of God would be such a blessing to be brought with women coming and preaching to women. And so that's what she did. And she really appealed that more female missionaries would come in order to come and minister to the women who needed the gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, Adoniram Judson was imprisoned for about a 17-month period.

The Burmese War broke out in 1824 to 1826. This was near the end of Anne's life. He was imprisoned for almost the last two years of her life, not quite. He was imprisoned having been accused of being a British spy. Of course it was not true.

He was not a British spy, but they threw him into prison. He was treated dreadfully. You know, he looked like he was in a Nazi concentration camp. You know, gaunt, sunken eyes, vermin diseased, head shaved, filthy, eating rotten food, if any food at all. It was a very terrible time.

I'll read how he was bound up. His feet were fettered, and at night, a long horizontal bamboo pole was lowered and passed between his fettered legs and hoisted up until only the shoulder and the heads of the prisoners rested on the ground. And that's how he slept at night. Imagine that. While he was in prison for these 21 months, or 17 months, Ann cared for him.

She came every day. She was pregnant at the time when he went into prison, and at the beginning. And so she would walk two miles every day, barefoot, to go see him and also to appeal to the authorities to let him out because he was not a British spy. And so the baby was born and so she would take her little daughter, Maria. This tribulation pushed their family really to the breaking point.

And she was sick, she was pregnant, her milk dried up. But the jailer would allow Adoniram Judson to take the baby into the village to beg for a woman to nurse the baby, if you can imagine that. The hardships that this couple experienced were just astronomical. And so after about a year of this, they moved Adoniram six miles away from his wife. And she would walk for six miles to see him with her sick, emaciated baby, and her feet were bloody having to walk so far.

She says this, and writes, Our little, our dear little Maria was the greatest sufferer at this time, my illness depriving her of her usual nourishment, and neither a nurse nor a drop of milk could be procured in the village. By making presents to the jailers, I obtained leave for Mr. Judson to come out of prison and take the emaciated creature around the village to beg a little nourishment from those mothers who had their young children. In other words, she bought off the jailer that he would allow such a thing. Her cries in the night were heartrending.

When it was impossible to supply her wants, I now began to think the very afflictions of Job had come upon me. When in health I could bear the various trials and vicissitudes through which I was called to pass. But to be confined with sickness and unable to assist those who were dear to me when in distress was almost too much for me to bear. And Had it not been for the consolations of religion and an assured conviction that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I must have sunk under my accumulated sufferings." The only thing that held her up was her knowledge of God. It was her view of God that sustained her.

Nothing else could sustain her. And so then on November 4, 1825, Judson was released from prison. The government needed him as a translator in their negotiations with Britain. And so he was released. At the same time, Ann's health was broken, so broken that 11 months later after his release, she died on October 24th, 1826.

And then six months later, their little daughter died on April 24, 1827. You know, do you think perhaps she understood Romans 8, 18? For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly, because of him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Anne died of smallpox in 1826.

Adoniram wrote a letter to her mother to inform her of her death. It was a long letter, here's a short excerpt from it. And you'll get an idea of who this woman was even in the midst of all of her suffering. Can you imagine Ann Judson complaining about her situation? Well, here's the answer.

Oh, with what meekness and patience and magnanimity and Christian fortitude she bore in those sufferings. And can I wish they had been less? Can I sacrilegiously wish to rob her of a single gem? Much she saw and suffered of this evil world, and eminently was she qualified to relish and enjoy the pure and holy rest into which she has entered. True, she has been taken from a sphere in which she was singularly qualified by her natural disposition, her winning manners, her devoted zeal, and her perfect acquaintance, with the language to be extensively serviceable to the cause of Christ.

True, she has been torn from her husband's bleeding heart and from her dear darling babe, but infinite wisdom and love have presided as ever in the most afflicting dispensation. Faith decides that it is all right, and the decision of faith, and in the decision of faith eternity will soon confirm it. So he was, Adoniram was broken, he fell into a despondency, in a deep despondency. He sat, he had a grave dug beside his hut and waited to die, that was his disposition. And He retreated for 40 days to be alone in this tiger-infested jungle, and he felt such a desolation and a separation from God.

He says, God is to me the great unknown. I believe in him, but I find him not." That was his situation at that time. He fell into the depths of despair, but he didn't stay there. He would remarry, he would lose that wife and he would remarry again. And he would complete his course.

So here's some lessons. First of all, Ann knew what it meant to suffer. She knew how to glory in her tribulations because tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. I think she understood 2 Corinthians 4.17 for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

I've listed a number of passages of scripture that I think grasp the kind of suffering, the way they suffered in their situation. The Judson's moved away from all the comforts of America. They endured unspeakable hardship. They experienced rejection and hunger and death, and they were beggars in the world. When Adeniram Judson died, The translation work was completed.

A hundred churches had been planted. There was a Burmese catechism. Eight thousand Burmese had professed faith in Jesus Christ by the time Adoniram Judson died. His translation of the Bible is still used in Myanmar today, and his legacy continues to bear fruit. In 1993, the head of the Myanmar Evangelical Fellowship said this, Today there are six million Christians in Myanmar, and every one of them, every one of us trace our spiritual heritage to one man, the Reverend Adoniram Judson.

So they suffered and they died, And many found life as a result. Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Six million today would say it was worth it. But what a life of hardship.

You know, a girl, as she's growing up, she needs to recognize that her life is not her own. She's not made for the pleasures of this world. She's made for the pleasures of God. And you know, in this opulent society that we live in, we often have such a wrong view of our future. And as we grow older, we find out that there's more suffering than you thought would happen.

There's more suffering than you thought. There are things that happen that you never dreamed could even happen, but they happen for the glory of God. And so how should a girl prepare herself? Prepare herself by entering into the sweetness of fellowship with God. That's the only thing that matters, and it's the only thing that sustains.

And, Ann Judson, I think, proves it. Hebrews 11, I think, pictures this entire story, particularly verses 12 to the end of the chapter, where you have this picture of suffering. But what is the result? It's the salvation of eternal souls. Would you pray with me?

Lord, we, again, we're amazed at these lives that you put in this world to help us. Those who walked with you, help us to walk with you like they did. Oh Lord, we pray that you would give us a passion and a love for you, that we would recognize too that we are in your hands and that wherever we go, you are there. You're able to sustain us in one place just as well as another. That we don't have to move one inch to find our satisfaction and our joy and our significance.

As long, oh Lord, as you burn in our hearts and we see the sweetness of your face. I pray, Lord, that you'd give every girl here that. Amen.