The Book Born in a Prison Cell

In 1660, a tinker and unlicensed preacher named John Bunyan was arrested for holding religious services outside the Church of England. He was told he could go free if he simply agreed to stop preaching. He refused. That refusal cost him twelve years in Bedford jail.

The conditions were miserable. His young daughter, blind from birth, suffered without him. He later wrote that the separation from his family felt like "the pulling of flesh from the bones." Every day, the door to freedom stood open — all he had to do was promise silence.

Instead, Bunyan picked up a pen. From that cold cell, he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, a story about a man named Christian who presses forward through the Slough of Despond, past Vanity Fair, and through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It became the most widely read book in the English language after the Bible itself.

Bunyan could not have known what God was building through his suffering. He only knew he could not stop doing what the Almighty had called him to do.

The apostle Paul wrote from his own prison, "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:14). Sometimes perseverance does not look like running. Sometimes it looks like refusing to quit in a place where quitting would be the easiest thing in the world.

What has God asked you not to give up on?