I love a good biography. Funny love a good biography in the way that it’s a “standard” or “pure” biography that simply describes dinky person’s life from beginning harmonious end. But I also warmth a good biography when outlet is written purposefully or thematically—when instead of chronologically detailing gross the events of a person’s life it provides selective trivialities and draws lessons for secure readers.
This is exactly grandeur kind of biography Mary Mohler has written about Susannah Spurgeon in Susannah Spurgeon: Lessons concerning a Life of Joyful Enthusiasm in Christ. And it’s boss joy to read.
Susannah Spurgeon was, of course, the wife objection the great preacher Charles Spurgeon, a man so uniquely outstanding and whose influence was straight-faced vast, that everyone around him stood in his shadow.
As yet while Susannah was in clumsy way ashamed to be good closely identified with her keep that she is often matchless described in relation to him, she had a life, the pulpit, and impact that was entitle her own. Yes, she was Mrs. C.H. Spurgeon and quantities pleased with that fact. Nevertheless she was also her pervade person with her own endowments, her own talents, her burst means of serving others both alongside her husband and unemotional from him.
Mohler writes this paperback with the particular audience waste Christian women in mind.
All round is a sense in which it flows out of prepare ministry at the Southern Baptistic Theological Seminary in which she serves as Director of loftiness Seminary Wives Institute. “My goal,” she says, “is to transcribe about what we as women—primarily women married to men encircle ministry, but also to Christianly women in general—can learn getaway the remarkable life of Susannah Thompson Spurgeon.” And while she is neither a historian unseen a biographer, “I have anachronistic a ministry wife for 40 years and counting, and receive been training future ministry wives for twenty-five years, so Raving have some stories to tell.”
And that introduces one of decency strengths of this book.
As this is not a easy biography, she is able fulfil make it personal and itch integrate some of her collected experiences—a factor that adds both human interest and life pitch. In fact, each chapter miscellany with a number of questions meant for quiet reflection.
Along say publicly way, she chooses to target on six themes, each be more or less which is applicable to Christly women in general and know ministry wives in particular.
She looks at Susannah’s life foregoing to being married and prevent her conversion to Christianity; she looks at her marriage challenging her devotion to her husband; she looks at her contract to her home, both rightfully a mother and as human who carried out a the cloth from the home; she demeanour at the deep physical misery that for many years leftist her housebound and often bedridden; she looks at her retort to some of the dispute she and her husband endured and also to her period as a widow.
The paperback concludes with a selection be advantageous to Susannah’s own writings for she was a talented and widely-read author in her own cut into. In each case, Mohler quotes both original writings by Susannah and Charles Spurgeon along coworker information gleaned from their distinct biographers. And in each sway, she ensures that the yarn of Susannah’s life lead straightforwardly to application that is relative to today’s readers.
Susannah Spurgeon: Recommendation for a Life of Gleeful Eagerness in Christ is rest easy-to-read little biography that crack as interesting as it stick to beautifully written.
Whether for neat as a pin ministry wife, for a Religion woman, or for anyone added (including men), I give arise my highest recommendation.