“Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.”

Fifteen years before the United States of America officially became its own independent nation, one of the world’s greatest missionaries was born. In a small cottage in Paulerspury, England, William Carey was born on August 17, 1761. The oldest child in his family, William enjoyed learning and loved reading. He especially enjoyed reading about “explorers” – so much so that his friends nicknamed him “Columbus” when he was young.

Carey spent his teen years apprenticed to a shoemaker. He grew up to become a shoemaker and…so much more! He would often look over at the globe he had made of shoe-leather, and he would begin to weep. Why? It was such a painful reminder that people all over the world were dying and going to hell. Carey had read in Andrew Fuller’s book this line: "If it is the duty of all men to believe whenever the Gospel is presented to them, it must be the duty of all who have received the Gospel to endeavor to make it universally known." He felt that responsibility to share the Gospel with everyone for the glory of God.

Because missionaries were virtually unheard of during his lifetime, Carey faced many challenges when he decided to go to the mission field. Other preachers and even some of his respected friends argued with him, saying short-sighted things like, “If God wants people to get saved, He’ll save them without your help! Give it up!”

Carey disagreed, believing and obeying instead the Great Commission: “Go ye therefore, and teach [make disciples from] all nations.” He declared that we ought to “expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

His dogged commitment to reach all people groups with the Gospel, and to do so in an efficient and God-glorifying way, led to the beginnings of the modern missions movement. Today, missionaries are free to travel all over the world to share the Gospel because of this “Father of Modern Missions.”

William Carey dared to do the impossible and led many to Christ as a result. He spent 40 years as a missionary in India. They were years full of difficult, heartbreaking trials and setbacks! It was six years before Carey saw someone convert to Christianity. There were deaths in his family, a fire that destroyed their mission facilities along with months and months of translation work, and many more apparent tragedies and obstacles that looked impossible to overcome. But God had sovereignly appointed Carey’s mission there, and God sustained him and brought glory to Himself through Carey’s work.

The “father of modern missions” has been quoted as saying, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” Do you imagine you know what will make your future “bright”? God promises never to leave you, for example (Hebrews 13:5)! And God promises always to love you! (Romans 8:39). Can you press on in the way God has laid out for you, in spite of what friends and family might say to try to discourage you? Can you trust Him to hold you and keep you for His glory, even when things around you are falling apart?

Mark 16:15 – And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”
 

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“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.”

According to an old Jewish belief, only the most blessed people die on their birthdays. How appropriate, then, that Corrie ten Boom was born and died on April 15. She was born in 1885, and she died on her 91st birthday after a lifelong testimony of how the love of God can transform and sustain people. Cornelia ten Boom lived with her father and sister in Holland at the time of the Holocaust and World War II. When the Nazis invaded Holland, she began helping her Jewish friends by hiding them in secret rooms in her house. A fellow-countryman betrayed the ten Booms and their “underground network” and secret hiding places were discovered. The ten Booms and their friends were sent to prison and terrible concentration camps.

Although the idea of Christians enduring persecution is not unusual, the faith that Corrie maintained as she endured persecution was unusual. The Nazis separated her from loved ones, beat her, harassed her, humiliated her, and almost killed her. Death was all around her; she watched her sister Betsie grow more and more ill, and eventually she lost her and other family members and friends. Yet Corrie was able to testify wholeheartedly to the love of God: “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”

How could she say that? Corrie valued the good news of Jesus Christ’s love in a world full of hate. She saw the people who hurt her as souls who ought to be delivered from themselves instead of enemies who ought to be punished for eternity. She once said, “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”  

What about us? In today’s comparably “normal” and “safe” circumstances, praying in a public restaurant or giving a disabled beggar some food is too “hard” or “scary” (or maybe just embarrassing?) for some Christians. They do not do anything notably “Christian” in public, because they don’t want to stand out as being different, and they are afraid someone might get angry or give them a funny look. They don’t want to give sacrificially or take risks to help needy people, because they are worried about having enough money and food for themselves. It was crucial for Corrie to remember that God loved her in spite of her shortcomings and that He wanted her to share His kind of love and forgiveness with her enemies. Do you love the unlovely? Do you take risks and make sacrifices to help needy people? Did Jesus Christ do those things for you? Even if you “don’t feel like it,” you can, by God’s grace, live out God’s love and grace in a world that doesn’t understand it.

Hebrews 11:25 – Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.
 

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“God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him.”

One half of a prayer request was answered on May 21, 1832, when James Hudson Taylor was born. Prior to his birth, his parents had prayed, “God, if You should give us a son, grant that he may work for You in China.” God gave Mr. and Mrs. Taylor a son, but would he ever go to China?

 As a young boy, Taylor learned about China from his father who read him stories from a family book. He decided he wanted to live overseas someday, but China was a long way from his home and from his parents in England.

At age 17 – after a brief time of teenage rebellion – Hudson Taylor trusted in Jesus Christ to be His Lord and Savior. He went on to study banking and medicine, but he found no satisfaction in these career paths. Could it be that God really did want him to go to China?

Taylor eventually embraced what he came to believe was God’s call on his life; and in 1853, he began his six-month voyage to Shanghai, China. During his 51 years on the mission field, he became the most widely-used missionary in the entire country. His goal was to make sure every province in China heard the Gospel. Over time, God used Hudson Taylor and the ministries he began to bring over 35,000 people to Himself.

He often said, “If I had 1,000 lives, I’d give them all for China.”

We joke about cats having nine lives, but what if it were true that we could have more than 1, or 9? or if we could really have 1,000 lives to live on Earth? If you had 1,000 lives, how would you spend them? Would you play extreme sports (since if you were hurt, you would know you’d always have another chance)? Would you be lazy (knowing you would have plenty of time to work hard later on)?

 The truth is, each of us will have only one life to live. What will you do with yours? Would you willingly devote every day and hour and minute to God’s glory and spreading the Gospel of Jesus?

Psalm 16:11 – You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
 

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“So much has been given to me; I have no time to ponder over what has been denied.”

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was a happy little girl until, when she was only nineteen months old, a terrible fever took control of her body. Miraculously, she survived, but she lost both her sense of sight and hearing.

Because Helen was deaf and blind at such a young age, she had not been able to learn how to speak. But this did not stop her. She learned to recognize people by feeling their faces, and she learned various daily tasks by placing her hands on top of other people’s hands as they worked. By age 7, she had invented 60 hand signs that helped her communicate. Helen’s parents hired a personal tutor – Anne Sullivan – who did wonders for young Helen. Anne worked faithfully with her over the years, helping her transform from a stubborn blind girl to a smart, refined woman.

Helen graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904, and she wrote a book called The Story of My Life. The sales from this book earned Helen enough money to buy her own house. After living a fulfilled life, Helen Keller died in 1968 and the Helen Keller Foundation was set up to assist people with blindness.

What disability has kept you from attempting great things for God? Some people are tempted to make excuses for laziness because of their limitations and hard things they have to face. Maybe your parents divorced, or maybe you are not as naturally talented or outgoing as you wish you could be – but that is no excuse for being “disabled” in serving God! Satan knows our weaknesses. He wants us to be discouraged and to keep us from doing God’s work. Pay no attention to wrong thinking about hard things in your life and limitations you might have no control over. Those obstacles do not matter at all to God. In fact, the Bible says that God makes His strength perfect in our weaknesses!

2 Corinthians 12:9 – And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
 

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“The world marches forth on the feet of little children.”

In the late 1700s, many church-goers in England hated Sundays! Sunday was the only day when children were not allowed to work, so the streets were full of excited and noisy children enjoying their day off! Churches were sometimes unable to meet because of the noise. People were upset.

Robert Raikes, born on September 14, 1735, was the owner and printer of the popular newspaper in town. His father had been the owner of the newspaper before him, and had given Robert the newspaper as his responsibility before he died. Robert wrote about these children in his newspaper, telling people that something had to be done! Children should not be ignored or left to entertain themselves on Sunday.

Because the children were forced to work throughout the week, they were unable to attend school. As a result, many English children could neither read nor write. From a very young age, they were driven to act like adults and join the work force.

Robert Raikes took the money he earned from the newspapers he sold, and with that money, he started a Sunday School. He became known as the “pioneer for the Sunday School Movement.” His influence still lives on today, as Sunday Schools have been started all over the world.

He asked only that Sunday School teachers be godly people who could teach these children how to read and write. Why was it important for them to learn to read? So that they could study God’s Word for themselves! Just two years after the first Sunday School began, over 200,000 children in England were attending Sunday School each week. Because of Robert Raikes, thousands of children throughout history have been exposed to the Gospel and become believers.

What do you like most about Sunday School? What do you learn?

2 Timothy 3:15 – And that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

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“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”

John Newton was born in London, the son of a hardworking shipmaster. Because of his father’s influence in his life, John Newton knew that he wanted to work on a ship one day.

John’s mother was a wonderful Christian lady who taught him much about God and the Bible. Unfortunately, John would not listen. This choice would cost him greatly as he grew older.

The life of a man who lives on a ship is often very difficult – and life for the young John Newton was no exception. In fact, things became so difficult, that he actually ran away. He was captured and sold to a slave ship were he was treated very harshly by his commander.

Once, during a terrible storm, John Newton knew that he was going to die. The waves crashed against the ship and everything was hopeless. He went to his cabin and wrote in his journal, “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Miraculously, he was spared. On May 10, 1748, God took hold of his heart and saved him. Ever after that, John would always speak of May 10, 1748, as the day that changed his life. He celebrated May 10th every year. He gave up drinking alcohol, gambling, and cussing. He spent his time studying the Bible and learning everything he could about his God.

A friend of John Newton’s father eventually rescued John and gave him the opportunity to own his own slave ship. He kept the ship for only a short time before he came to realize that the slavery trade was wrong. He chose to believe instead that every person has been made by God, every person is equal before God, and every person ought to be treated as a creation of God.

John Newton is most famous for writing the hymn “Amazing Grace.” He considered it the song that best described his own experience of God’s grace. What song most closely describes your Christian testimony?

John 9:25 – He answered and said, “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”

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“Lord, if I may, I’ll serve another day!”

Anna Bartlett Warner, the daughter of a well-respected New York lawyer, was born on August 31, 1827, in Long Island, New York. In Long Island, the Warner family had been known for being very rich. But then came the Great Depression¹. The Great Depression was a difficult time in history. The stock market crashed, and the value of the dollar went very low. People everywhere lost their jobs and their money. Many people lost everything they had.

Because of their losses, the Warners had to move to their summer home, and Anna was expected to get a job. She chose to be an author – writing novels which became famous during her lifetime. What became even more famous, however, were the hymns and songs that she wrote. She wrote the following song for a little boy in Sunday School who was dying:
Jesus loves me – this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong;
They are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me.
Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.

“Jesus Loves Me” has become perhaps the most well-known Christian song in history.

When the Chinese Christians were persecuted they had no way of letting their brothers and sisters in Christ know that they survived. In 1972, some Christians in America received a strange message from their friends in China. The message said that the “This I know” people were fine! The Chinese police thought it was just a silly message, so they let it go through. The Americans knew right away that the Chinese Christians were referring to Anna Warner’s sweet song – “Jesus Loves Me.”

Are you serving God with the gifts He has given you? Is Anna Warner’s song a good reminder to you that God loves you? He loves you more than anyone else ever could! Loving other people is a sign that you love God. Are you loving others today?

1 John 4:8 – He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

[1] Note: The Warner family lost their fortune during the Panic of 1837, a recession that lasted until the mid-1840s, not the Great Depression of 1929-1933.

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“I committed my soul to the Savior, and earth and heaven seemed brighter from that moment.”

Frances Ridley Havergal was born in England on December 14, 1836. Her father, William Henry Havergal, was a well-known and well-respected hymn writer. She would grow up to be much like her godly and talented father.

From an early age, Frances was well-educated. She learned to read at age 3, began memorizing the Bible at age 4, and wrote her first poetry at age 7. As a teenager, she memorized entire books of the Bible, including Psalms, Isaiah, and most of the New Testament!

Her father encouraged her to write hymns and sent her to study in Germany when she was 16. While in Germany, she devoted her life to Jesus Christ.

Frances wrote 71 hymns in the English language, including “Like a River Glorious”; “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”; and “Take My Life, and Let it Be.” She also wrote the music for some of her hymns, and her father wrote the music for others.

Frances Ridley Havergal and Fanny Crosby – two of the most famous women hymn writers in history – were contemporaries, which means they were living at the same time. Although they never met in person until they reached heaven, they were friends and pen pals. Frances once sent this poem to her friend Fanny:
Dear blind sister over the sea –
An English heart goes forth to thee.
We are linked by a cable of faith and song,
Flashing bright sympathy swift along
One in the East and one in the West,
Singing for Him whom our souls love best.

Are you using the gifts and talents and opportunities God’s given you? Do you use them for yourself or for His glory? Do you value God’s Word? Have you ever learned a Bible passage just because you wanted to?

Psalm 119:11 – Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You.

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“God always blesses obedience.”

Blaine Myron Cedarholm was born on June 20, 1915. Myron Cedarholm, as he was called, was saved at the age of five. He was baptized at age ten by his father, who was also his pastor. By the end of his life, Cedarholm had come to be known as “the man with the pipeline to heaven.”

Cedarholm was raised in a wonderful home and knew at a young age that he was called to the ministry. He studied hard, prayed often, and preached weekly in churches everywhere.

In 1960, after he and his wife had served in ministry as a couple for thirteen years, they were given the opportunity of visiting missionaries around the world. The Cedarholms were able to visit at least 325 missionaries in 52 countries.

In May of 1968, Cedarholm received a phone call from a kind lady urging him to visit Watertown, Wisconsin. Because of her great respect for the Cedarholms, she felt he might be the right man to start a Bible college.

With less than 90 days until classes would be scheduled to begin, the project of starting a new college seemed impossible. God, however, is known for doing the impossible. In September of 1968, Maranatha Baptist Bible College opened its doors for its very first school year. 172 students from around the country attended this miracle school.

Mrs. Cedarholm wrote the school hymn, and its third verse reads as follows:
Maranatha: He cometh! Behold, in the sky
A shout! A voice the trump of God! Our Lord is drawing nigh!
Believe Him, receive Him, look up and thou shalt be
To the Praise of His glory with Him eternally!

The Cedarholms trusted God to do the impossible if it was His will for them to start a school. Do you believe that God can do the impossible in your life? Are you trusting in God to lead you and give you what you need to be what He wants you to be, whether that’s a teacher or a missionary worker or a college president…or whatever He may want you to be?

Ephesians 1:12 – That we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.

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“Everything a sinning man needs he finds at the Cross.”

George Campbell Morgan was born in England on December 9, 1863. Even as a child, he admired his father who was a Baptist preacher. Morgan once wrote that he had no choice but to get saved because of his father’s wonderful Christian testimony.

As a child, Morgan was often sick and unable to go to school. He was tutored at home and was taught to love learning and to study hard. This love of learning would grow with him throughout his life.

When he was 10, Morgan got to hear Dwight L. Moody preach. He was so impressed by what he saw and heard that he started preaching, as well. So, he became a preacher at the age of 13. By age 15, he was traveling and preaching as often as he was able.

Then something very dangerous and difficult happened that would change the course of Morgan’s life.

When G. Campbell Morgan was 19 years old, he began reading as much as he could about God and religion. Some of it was good, but much of it was wrong. A lot of it was human discussion about God and His Word, rather than God’s own teaching about Himself. Very soon, Morgan got all caught up in wrong thinking about God and the Bible. He became very interested in philosophy – or the pursuit of knowledge – and unfortunately, he became even more interested than he was in the things God had written about Himself in His Word. For the next two years, Morgan refused even to read his Bible!

Finally, at age 21, God got a hold of his heart and Morgan realized he had had enough of man-made philosophy. Instead, he returned to God’s Word and to trusting Christ. He spent the rest of his life preaching that God knows much more than human beings know. He wrote 60 books and 11 pamphlets. Eventually, Dwight L. Moody ended up relying on Morgan to help him in his ministry. In serving God, Morgan had the opportunity to help the man who was so used by God in his own early life as a believer.

Have you ever been tempted to trust human opinions and conclusions more than you trust God’s own Word? It is possible to be smart about the world and ignorant about God.

1 Corinthians 1:27 – But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.

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