Today I'll patient be.
I only hope to be like Him And for Him suffer loss.
9. My glory's in the coming age, Today I'll patient be. I'd ne'er enjoy ahead of Him This world's prosperity.
10. That day I shall receive the crown, He'll wipe away my tears. So faithfully I'll journey on Till He at length appears.
While staying in Shanghai as an unmarried person, his mother came to stay with him for a period of time. Rumors circulated that a woman was living with him. Miss Groves, a sister who had previously been a help to him, heard the rumor and came to ask, "Is it true that you have a woman living with you?" He answered, "Yes." Then she rebuked him. Years later when he related this incident to me, I asked, "Why didn't you tell her that that woman was your mother?" He replied, "Miss Groves didn't ask who that woman was." He simply did not like to explain things to people in order to vindicate himself.
Following his marriage, his wife's aunt threatened to take some steps to damage his reputation if he would not come to pay her the courtesy of a visit. This actually stopped him from paying her a visit. If she had not threatened him in such a way, he would have done it. Under such threatening, however, he would not meet her demand. He refused to do anything to reduce the attack of others upon him. He believed that everything was from God's hand and was willing to bear any kind of opposition or attack as a cross, in order to live a crucified life with Christ.
In 1942 in the church in Shanghai, there was a big disturbance concerning him. He did not say a word to vindicate himself; neither did he take any steps to appease the situation or reduce his suffering. Again, he was learning the lesson of the cross, living the crucified life by the Christ who was living in him.
Because of that disturbance he was frustrated from continuing his ministry for six years. During that six-year period of suffering, he did nothing to attempt to recover his ministry, nor did he attempt to start any other kind of work. He remained fully silent, under God's sovereign hand, learning the lessons of the cross. He kept himself fully in the confinement of Christ's death and experienced Christ as his life during that long trial. Following that long dark night of six years, when the day dawned and the Lord came to recover his ministry in 1948 through a revival in Shanghai, he asked us to sing the following hymn on the life of the grapevine. This hymn portrays how the grapevine is continually under certain kinds of hardship and dealing, yet it still continues to bear fruit and to cheer others. Three stanzas of the hymn say: