The Prisoner Who Kept Saying No

In 1661, John Bunyan sat in a cold Bedford jail cell with a simple offer on the table: stop preaching, and walk free. The magistrates weren't asking him to renounce his faith — just to stay quiet. It seemed reasonable enough. His wife, Elizabeth, was struggling to feed their four children, including a daughter who was blind. Every instinct of self-preservation whispered the same thing: just agree and go home.

Bunyan refused. Not once, but repeatedly, over twelve agonizing years of imprisonment.

What gave a poor tinker the backbone to resist? Bunyan himself wrote that he had first surrendered his will entirely to God. He described seasons of intense spiritual warfare in his cell — dark nights when despair clawed at him, when the temptation to compromise felt almost physical. But each time, he returned to prayer. Each time, he submitted himself again to the Almighty before he tried to stand against the darkness.

The pattern matters. Bunyan didn't resist first and then ask God for help afterward. He submitted first. He knelt before he stood.

James 4:7 gives us that same sequence: "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." The order is not incidental. Our ability to resist flows directly from our surrender. Bunyan discovered what every believer eventually learns — the man on his knees before God is the one the enemy cannot break.