Pastoral Resources

Experiencing a life-changing faith, having a close relationship with God and desiring to please God above all else are strong earmarks of belief for born-again Christians, according to a recent poll comparing America’s religious attitudes.

In a nationwide survey, 1,210 adults were asked...(those responding yes)

Survey Questions

Born-again Christians

Others

Is your faith very important to your life?

99%

78%

Do you desire a close personal relationship with God?

94%

44%

Is it more important to please God than to achieve success the acceptance of others?

91%

68%

Does prayer really make a difference in your life?

73%

43%

Do you have a responsibility to share your faith with others?

68%

29%

Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percent

Sources unknown

To reach the home of Desmond T. Doss near Rising Fawn, Ga., you take the Desmond T. Doss Medal of Honor Highway. The folks around there are mighty proud of their neighbor up on Lookout Mountain. As a 20-year-old in 1945, the shy, slim Seventh-day Adventist became one of the most famous and unusual heroes of WWII. A strict believer in the Sixth Commandment--Thou shalt not kill--he refused to bear arms. But he was willing to serve as a medic, one of the most dangerous jobs the Army had to offer. One day on the Pacific island of Okinawa, Private Doss rescued almost a whole company of men who had been cut down by Japanese fire while trying to capture an important hilltop. Crawling out among bullets and shell bursts, he dragged the wounded one by one to a sheltered spot behind a rock, tied a double-bowline knot around their chests and legs, and lowered them over a 35-foot cliff to safety. “Dear God,” he remembers praying over and over, “let me get just one more.” It took all day, but he got them all. The Army estimated he had saved 75 lives.

At Okinawa, his outfit was given orders to assault the Maeda Escarpment. That was a jagged hilltop, one side of which dropped away in a sheer cliff. From there, the dug-in Japanese could direct artillery fire for miles in all directions. His company decided to climb up behind the enemy: they would scale the cliff with ropes and ladders. We went up and pushed over against the Japanese position, got pinned down and couldn’t move,” Doss recalled. Another company was supposed to take the opposite side of the escarpment, but word came that they had been “all shot up,” he said. “We had to take the whole thing by ourselves. How’d you like to be pinned down, where you couldn’t move, and get an order like that. But Uncle Sam has to sacrifice lives. This was holding up the works.”

“We had orders to withdraw,” Doss said, “But I couldn’t leave my men. In combat you get very closely attached to each other. When you see your buddy hit, you just can’t leave him out there. It’s like a mother with a house on fire. She don’t think of herself; she’s thinking about that child. And that’s the way I felt about my men.”

Exposing himself to mortars, grenades and machine guns, he crawled out into the open and dragged the wounded back to cover. The Army at first said he had rescued a hundred. “I didn’t see how it could be more than 50, and I still don’t. So they settled on 75. I didn’t think I’d get killed. But I felt it would be worth getting wounded if I could save just one more man. I kept praying for the Lord to help me, and He did.”

The battle started on April 29. It was May 5 when Doss performed the principal deeds that resulted in his winning the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for heroism. President Harry S. Truman himself would place the medal around his neck on the White House lawn in October 1945.

A preacher once received a letter with a pathetic story of a muddled and disordered life which ended: "It just beats me. A doctor of philosophy and unable to solve my own troubles!" It takes more than a friend of wisdom to help us in our troubles; it takes Wisdom personified, the Lord Jesus Himself. When everything goes wrong and troubles abound and the Christian can still go about his duties in life without revolting against God, against Wisdom, then he is possessed with this wonderful meekness of wisdom. Meekness of wisdom is accepting Wisdom's dealings with us without a murmur and without a sigh. It is that temper of spirit which at all times says, "Yes, Lord, Thou knowest best."

There is a story of a tool company that manufactured drill bits. Faced with financial losses, company executives gathered to discuss the problem: a declining demand for drill bits. The CEO challenged his men: “How can we revive the bit market?” After an embarrassing silence, one member of the team dispelled the fog: “Sir, the market isn’t for bits--it’s for holes!” The story, though apocryphal, does illustrate a basic but often overlooked truth: “The customer never buys a product. By definition, the customer buys the satisfaction of a want” (in the words of Peter Drucker). To put it another way, there are no markets for products--only markets for what products can do. In contemporary industry, the Xerox Corp. shows this principle in action. Xerox successfully pioneered the copy-machine industry by leasing copiers at a “per copy” price rather than selling machines outright. They correctly saw the market was for copies, not machines.

Four Implications:

1. We must constantly evaluate customer needs;

2. We must design products to meet specific needs;

3. We must redesign products as needs change;

4. We must delete products that no longer meet customer needs.

Christ met unbelievers where they were. He realized what many Christians today still don’t seem to understand. Cultivators have to get out in the field. According to one count, the gospels record 132 contacts that Jesus had with people. Six were in the Temple, four in the synagogues and 122 were out with the people in the mainstream of life.

Americans were asked how close they are to meeting their ideal goals; analysts at KRC Research used the answers to develop measures of happiness they call “quality quotients.” Answers above 8 indicate general happiness; those below 7 denote relative unhappiness.

Priority

Percent Who Rank Issue as One of the Top Three Priorities in Life

Quality Quotient

1. Family life

68%

8.18

2. Spiritual life

46%

8.25

3. Health

44%

7.68

4. Financial situation

25%

5.98

5. Their jobs

23%

6.82

6. Romantic life

18%

7.71

7. Leisure Time

14%

6.14

8. Their homes

11%

8.12

During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, there was a shortage of currency in the British Empire. Representatives carefully searched the nation in hopes of finding silver to meet the emergency. After one month, the committee returned with its report. “We have searched the Empire in vain seeking to find silver. To our dismay, we found none anywhere except in the cathedrals where the statues of the saints are made of choice silver.”

To this, Oliver Cromwell eloquently answered, “Let’s melt down the saints and put them into circulation.”

Sooner or later, most Americans become card-carrying members of the counterculture. This is not an underground holdout of Hippies. No beads are required. All you need to join is a child. At some point between Lamaze and PTA, it becomes clear that one of your main jobs as a parent is to counter the culture. What the media deliver to children by the masses, you are expected to rebut one at a time. But it occurs to me now that the call for “parental responsibility” is increasing in direct proportion to the irresponsibility of the market place. Parents are expected to protect their children from an increasingly hostile environment. Are the kids being solid junk food? Just say no. Is TV bad? Turn it off. are there messages about sex, drugs, violence all around? Counter the culture. Mothers and fathers are expected to screen virtually every aspect of their children’s lives. To check the ratings on the movies, to read the labels on the CD’s. To find out if there’s MTV in the house next door. All the while keeping in touch with school and in their free time, earning a living. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, a research associate at the Institute for American Values, found this out in interviews with middle-class parents. “A common complaint I heard from parents was their sense of being overwhelmed by the culture. They felt relatively more helpless than their parents.”

O poet, Blush like a rotted skin;

Brighten like a dusty tower;

Wail like an enormous flood;

Tremble like a red locomotive;

Flop like a damp gate!

The beaches are praying.

Listen!

How they stifle their enormous lips!

The river winks,

And I am ravished.

The Mediation of IBM 7094-7040 DCS

Before you rush off to English to read your class the greatest since Edgar Allen Poe, you ought to know that the preceding was written by a computer. Although the quality is...well...unusual, the computer has one thing going for him. He’s fast. Such literary masterpieces are knocked off at the rates of two stanzas a second.

The computer has only its teacher to thank. Yale English Professor Marie Boroff fed in the raw data.

“Reading the collected output,” Miss Boroff wrote, “one gets the impression that the computer is obsessed with earthworms and caterpillars, and that it has a penchant for making gratuitous references to locomotives and Vaseline.” The computer doesn’t totally lack in intelligence, it seems. In the middle of one of its greatest works it wrote, “The roses are vomiting. Enough!”

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II, Caesar asks Brutus, “What is’t o’clock?”

Brutus replies, “Caesar, ‘its strucken eight.” The Bard had forgotten that mechanical clocks were not invented until 14 centuries after Caesar’s death.

In 1884 a young man died, and after the funeral his grieving parents decided to establish a memorial to him. With that in mind they met with Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University. Eliot received the unpretentious couple into his office and asked what he could do. After they expressed their desire to fund a memorial, Eliot impatiently said, “Perhaps you have in mind a scholarship.”

“We were thinking of something more substantial than that… perhaps a building,” the woman replied.

In a patronizing tone, Eliot brushed aside the idea as being too expensive and the couple departed. The next year, Eliot learned that this plain pair had gone elsewhere and established a $26 million memorial named Leland Stanford Junior University, better known today as Stanford!

A man went to a memory improvement seminar and was excited about what he learned. A friend asked him what the name of the seminar was. “What’s that flower in the garden, long stems, thorns, bright red...” “Oh, you must mean a rose?” “Yeah, that’s right. Rose, what was the name of that seminar I went to?”

Improving one’s memory is not all that difficult. Most of us simply don’t expend the time or effort required. “The true art of memory,” wrote an English historian, “is the art of attention.” We can improve our memories by simply putting our minds to it and by following a few simple rules:

1. Remember to remember. Telling yourself that you want to remember this or that fact and concentrating on it will improve your memory immediately. We remember what we WANT to remember.

2. Sharpen your observation. Pay close attention to what you see and hear. Use images. Shut your eyes and try to SEE it. Notice details. Really LOOK at things. Few people actually do.

3. Practice recall. Forgetting is most rapid soon after learning. It helps, therefore, to make a deliberate effort to repeat and review immediately. Repetition will help fix the fact or image in our minds.

4. Concentrate. Eliminate distractions. The mind is at its best when it is centered on one thing at a time. Avoid such things as fatigue, noise, and competing visual images during the time you are trying to learn.

The male’s inability to ask directions is genetic. That’s the reason why it takes 500,000,000 sperm to fertilize one egg. None would bother to stop and ask directions.

Why do men have such difficulty connecting in significant relationships?

Men are self-reliant.

Men don’t feel.

Men don’t touch.

Men don’t need fellowship.

Men see life as a puzzle.

Men are too macho.

Men are very competitive.

A fishing boat sank in rough, cold waters off Vancouver Island, leaving two men in a life raft tied to the sinking boat by a nylon rope. Neither had a knife to cut the rope, and had the ship sunk, it would have pulled the boat and the men down with it. For an hour, the two men alternated chewing the rope, Minutes before the ship sank, the men finally chewed through the rope and survived.

In his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn] recalled the words he heard as a child, when his elders sought to explain the ruinous upheavals in Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” He added, “If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: ‘men have forgotten God.’”

God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men…What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.

Early in this century a London newspaper carried an advertisement that read: “Men wanted for hazardous darkness, and constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” The ad, signed by famous Arctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, brought Inquiries from thousands of men. Commenting on this in his book Be Faithful, Warren W. Wiersbe said, “If Jesus Christ had advertised for workers, the announcement might have read something like this: ‘Men and women wanted for difficult task of helping to build My church. You will often be misunderstood, even by those working with you. You will face constant attack from an invisible enemy. You may not see the results of your labor, and your full reward will not come till after all your work is completed. It may cost you your home, your ambitions, even your life.’” - D.C.E.

Robert A. Cook, former president of King’s College in New York, told a true story from the early years of his ministry. He had been receiving some rather pointed criticism, and he sought the counsel of a friend, pastor Harry A. Ironside.

Pouring out his heart, Dr. Cook asked what he should do about the accusations being made against him. Ironside responded, “Bob, if the criticism about you is true, mend your ways! If it isn’t, forget about it!”

1. The right answer.

2. That’s not logical

3. Follow the rules

4. Be practical

5. Avoid ambiguity

6. To err is wrong

7. Play is frivolous

8. That’s not my area

9. Don’t be foolish

10. I’m not creative

I was told of a patient in the chapel of a mental hospital who, after listening for a time to the Chaplain, was heard to remark, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”!

In 1886, Karl Benz drove his first automobile through the streets of Munich, Germany. He named his car the Mercedes Benz, after his daughter, Mercedes. The machine angered the citizens, because it was noisy and scared the children and horses. Pressured by the citizens, the local officials immediately established a speed limit for “horseless carriages” of 3.5 miles an hour in the city limits and 7 miles an hour outside. Benz knew he could never develop a market for his car and compete against horses if he had to creep along at those speeds, so he invited the mayor of the town for a ride. The mayor accepted. Benz then arranged for a milkman to park his horse and wagon on a certain street and, as Benz and the mayor drove by, to whip up his old horse and pass them—and as he did so to give the German equivalent of the Bronx cheer. The plan worked. The mayor was furious and demanded that Benz overtake the milk wagon. Benz apologized but said that because of the ridiculous speed law he was not permitted to go any faster. Very soon after that the law was changed.

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of rewards makes the Christian’s life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connection with things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it.

Driving home from her office one summer day, a woman noted that there were four places within two blocks of her home where she could stop and buy a five-cent glass of iced tea. Each little stand had two or three youngsters behind it, all eager to serve any customer who came their way. During the next two weeks, the woman managed to stop at each of the stands to encourage the entrepreneurs. In each case the tea was very good. Small talk revealed that all the youngsters were selling tea made by their mothers, who used tea leaves and real lemons in making the tea.

One day the woman discovered that only one stand was operating. Behind it was the new kid on the block. She stopped and ordered a glass of tea. It was served in a paper cup and it cost 10 cents.

Some conversation brought out the fact that the young man’s father was a lawyer who specialized in mergers, which had inspired the boy to buy out his competitors, bartering with baseball cards, marbles, and stuff he had laying around in his garage. His first act, he explained, was to raise the price of the iced tea, and cut costs. He was using a powdered tea mix from the supermarket, he said, which eliminated buying real lemons as well as the bother of squeezing them or putting them in the juicer. He didn’t have to brew real tea either, he pointed out. He had plans to cut costs further, he said, and with his competitors out of the market, he expected sales to grow.

Intrigued, the woman made a half dozen more stops at the stand and became aware that the tea was getting weaker and weaker. One day the young man confessed that sales were dropping and he attributed this to the fact that he was using less and less of the powdered-tea mix. Then one day he went out of business, as attempts to turn things around failed.

The moral of this story is: Honest tea is the best policy.

April 7, 1965, 11 a.m.

Lieut. Gen Grant,

General Sheridan says, “If the thing is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender.”

Let the thing be pressed.

A. Lincoln

Martin Luther said, "I have one preacher that I love better than any other on earth. It is my little tame robin which preaches to me daily. I put his crumbs on the window sill. He hops on the sill and takes as much as he needs. From there he always flies to a little tree close by, lifts up his voice to God, sings his song of praise and gratitude, tucks his head under his wing and goes to sleep, leaving tomorrow to look after itself. He is the best preacher I have on earth."

Given the many details which a presidential inaugural committee must cope with, mistakes are inevitable. So it was that Franklin Delano Roosevelt received an invitation to his own January 20, 1937 presidential inauguration! Through the White House social bureau, he solemnly sent word that the press of official business would keep him away. Then, relenting, he sent a further note in his own handwriting: “I have rearranged my engagements and think I may be able to go. Will know definitely January 19. F.D.R.”

According to an old fable, a man made an unusual agreement with Death. He told the Grim Reaper that he would willingly accompany him when it came time to die, but only on one condition—that Death would send a messenger well in advance to warn him.

Weeks winged away into months, and months into years. Then one bitter winter evening, as the man sat thinking about all his possessions, Death suddenly entered the room and tapped him on the shoulder. Startled, the man cried out, “You’re here so soon and without warning! I thought we had an agreement.”

Death replied, “I’ve more than kept my part. I’ve sent you many messengers. Look in the mirror and you’ll see some of them.” As the man complied, Death whispered, “Notice your hair! Once it was full and black, now it is thin and white. Look at the way you cock your head to listen to me because you can’t hear very well. Observe how close to the mirror you must stand to see yourself clearly. Yes, I’ve sent many messengers through the years. I’m sorry you’re not ready, but the time has come to leave.”

A survey of top-level executives at Fortune 1000 companies, conducted by New York based Jericho Promotions, found that the stock of messy-desk companies rose an average of 3.5 points while neat-desk stocks fell by one point.

The predominantly intellectual understanding of metanoia as change of mind plays very little part in the N.T. Rather the decision by the whole man to turn round is stressed.

The faith teachers maintain that when Adam sinned, the world was turned over to Satan. The devil became the legal owner of the planet. The faith teacher’s position accommodates the Gnostic view (particularly evident in Zoroastrianism, a Persian Gnostic religion), in which a good god rules the spiritual world and a bad god rules the physical realm.

In such a philosophy the problem of evil is solved by blaming everything that goes wrong on the bad god (the devil); the good god is seen as no more than a counterbalance. One is left with the impression that the two gods each possess equal power both in quality and quantity. Everything that is wrong in the world is the fault of the bad god. And it’s up to the initiate or believer to make sure the good god wins.

When Jimmy Swaggart defied the orders of the Assemblies of God to refrain from preaching for one year, he assured the public that he was free of moral defect, for, he said, Oral Roberts had cast out the demons from his body over the phone. Oral Roberts confirmed Swaggart’s report, insisting he saw the demons with their claws deeply embedded in Swaggart’s flesh. Now that the rascals were gone, Swaggart and Roberts asserted, Swaggart could get on with preparing the way for Christ’s return. Evidently, personal responsibility for sin can be dismissed by blaming it on an external force. Yet Flip Wilson’s famous quip, “The devil made me do it” is hardly comedy when we’re talking about the biblical view of sin.

For these metaphysical evangelists, even personal sins can be attributed to the bad god, since he is, after all, sovereign over this earthly realm as the good god is relatively in charge of the spiritual domain. Here again, then, is the echo of the Gnostics of old. When that heresy was revived toward the end of the medieval period, Calvin said, “They made the devil almost the equal of God.”

In this way, the problem of sin is replaced with the problem of Satan. It is facing Satan, not my own sin and rebelliousness, that becomes the great task of the Christian life. I’m not the problem—the Devil is!

Members of a 24 member United Methodist Church (UMC) panel could not agree on whether homosexuality is a sin, so the committee’s 14,000-word report on the subject was referred to the denomination’s national policy-making body, which will convene in Louisville, Ky., in May. The report contains a majority statement, signed by 17 committee members, recommending the removal of an assertion in the church’s book of rules that homosexual practice and Christianity are incompatible. A minority report, signed by four members, argues for retaining the current language. The panel agreed that biblical references to sexual practices should not be viewed as binding “just because they are in the Bible.” Fierce debate is expected at this year’s General Conference because at least 35 of the UMC’s 72 regional bodies have approved resolutions calling for preserving the traditional stance.

Bertoldo de Giovanni is a name even the most enthusiastic lover of art is unlikely to recognize. He was the pupil of Donatello, the greatest sculptor of his time, and he was the teacher of Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor of all time. Michelangelo was only 14 years old when he came to Bertoldo, but it was already obvious that he was enormously gifted. Bertoldo was wise enough to realize that gifted people are often tempted to coast rather than to grow, and therefore he kept trying to pressure his young prodigy to work seriously at his art. One day he came into the studio to find Michelangelo toying with a piece of sculpture far beneath his abilities. Bertoldo grabbed a hammer, stomped across the room, and smashed the work into tiny pieces, shouting this unforgettable message, “Michelangelo, talent is cheap; dedication is costly!”

Former New York Yankee great Mickey Mantle recalls that as a teenager in the minor leagues he began playing poorly. Discouraged, homesick, and feeling sorry for himself, Mantle tearfully called his father to come to take him home.

When the elder Mantle arrived, Mickey expected sympathy and reassurances that yes, it was time for the father to take the boy out of his cruel environment. But Charles Mantle jarred his strapping son by saying, “Okay, if that’s all the guts you’ve got, you might as well come home with me right now and work in the mines.”

Snapped awake, Mickey Mantle stuck it out that year—and wrote his name in baseball history.

When Lloyd C. Douglas, author of The Robe and other novels, was a university student, he lived an a boarding house. Downstairs on the first floor was an elderly, retired music teacher, not infirm and unable to leave the apartment. Douglas said that every morning they had a ritual they would go through together. He would come down the steps, open the old man’s door, and ask, “Well, what’s the good news?” The old man would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair and say, That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but, my friend, THAT is middle C!”

The old man had discovered one thing upon which he could depend, one constant reality in his life, one “still point in a turning world.” For Christians, the one “still point in a turning world,” the one absolute of which there is no shadow of turning, is Jesus Christ.

Migratory birds in the U.S. were tagged by the Department of the Interior with metal strips reading “Wash. Biol. Surv.”—for Washington Biological Survey. The code was changed, so the story goes, after a farmer from Arkansas wrote to the department:

“Dear Sirs, I shot one of your crows, My wife followed the cooking instructions attached—she washed it, boiled it and served it. It was the worst thing we ever ate.”

After interviewing her friends the Ditkas, Jeannie Morris said this (as reported in Ditka: Monster of the Midway):

The Ditka marriage [to Marge], like many others of that time, was dysfunctional from the start. I don’t think it was ever any good. Mike and Marge, I mean, you can put it in a nutshell. Mike and Marge never got along...You know, I think the deal was that when they got married, they got married with the idea of being married forever. I mean, there was nobody else he wanted to marry and he thought he was supposed to get married. Both are very strong willed and they’re very much alike, and Marge tried to go by the rules for a long, long time...The rules being he’s the boss and we do everything his way, and if he doesn’t feel like being here for whatever period of time he doesn’t have to be.

Megan Ditka, his daughter, is twenty-nine now and reported to the author of Ditka: Monster of the Midway:

I have very few recollections of my father. My mom basically raised us by herself. I love my mom a lot. She’s a real brave woman. I couldn’t ask for anybody better. My dad was never really around a lot. And even when he was, he wasn’t. We were always pretty much afraid of my dad. My dad is just like his dad. You didn’t have conversations with him. He’s a little intimidating when you’re a kid...I don’t think he knows how to love.”

I don’t know the private Mike Ditka. But it’s clear that his drive to succeed, his focus, and his strong emotions impacted his family and cost him dearly.

Over the triple doorways of the cathedral of Milan there are three inscriptions spanning the splendid arches.

Over one is carved a beautiful wreath of roses, and underneath it is the legend, “All that which pleases is but for a moment.”

Over the other is sculptured a cross, and there are the words, “All that which troubles us is but for a moment.”

But underneath the great central entrance to the main aisle is the inscription, “That only is important which is eternal.”

If we always realize these three truths, we will not let trifles trouble us, not be interested so much in the passing pleasures of the hour. We should live for the permanent and the eternal.

What does the cheating scandal at the U.S. Naval Academy say about military honor? Last week, Navy investigators reported that 81 midshipmen had obtained a copy of a 1992 engineering exam before exam day and that many of them then lied during an internal investigation, some to protect classmates. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, who chaired a review of the academy’s honor code, blames the widespread cheating on the Navy’s emphasis on skills like technical proficiency over character development. A 1967 Annapolis graduate, Armitage notes that one point of honor is still pounded into all midshipmen from Day 1: “Never bilge (endanger) a shipmate.” That credo cuts two ways, says James Q. Wilson, author of The Moral Sense. It explains why some midshipmen betrayed their personal honor by lying to protect their classmates; but, says Wilson, those same people will never let their buddies down during times of war. He adds, “I wouldn’t worry that this indicates a decaying moral fabric of the next generation of military officers.”

All over the Northeast, half a million Adventists—disciples of New York evangelist William Miller—awaited the end of the world on April 3, 1843. Journalists had a field day. Reportedly some disciples were on mountaintops, hoping for a headstart to heaven. Others were in graveyards, planning to ascend in union with their departed loved ones. Some high society ladies clustered together outside town to avoid entering God’s holy kingdom amid the common herd. When April 4 dawned as usual, the Millerites were disillusioned, but they took heart. Their leader had predicted a range of dates for the end—dates that have also come and gone.

A man had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. He could receive little company and was not to be excited. While in the hospital a rich uncle died and left him a million dollars. His family wondered how to break the news to him with the least amount of excitement. It was decided to ask the preacher if he would go and break the news quietly to the man. The preacher went, and gradually led up to the question. The preacher asked the patient what he would do if he inherited a million dollars. He said, “I think I would give half of it to the church.” The preacher dropped dead.

One of America’s most miserly millionaires was John G. Wendel, who died in 1915 at his home in New York City. Seeking to keep their inherited fortune in the family, Wendel and five of his six sisters remained unmarried. He instilled such frugality in his sisters that when the last one died in 1931, it was found that although her estate amounted to more than $100 million, she never had a telephone, electricity, or an automobile. Her only dress was one she had made herself and worn for nearly 25 years.

L. Kraft, head of the Kraft Cheese Corp., who had given approximately 25% of his enormous income to Christian causes for many years, said, “The only investment I ever made which has paid consistently increasing dividends is the money I have given to the Lord.”

J. D. Rockefeller said, “I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week.”

I remember at one time I received an invitation from a young preacher to speak in his church. He said, "I remember when you preached at my father's church many years ago. My mother had worked all night, and after dinner, you did the dishes. I'll never forget that. I forgot your sermon, but I haven't forgotten your doing dishes at my mother's home."

Nearly every businessman complains of at least one ulcer. Think how many ulcers the poor businessman would have if he worked under the same circumstances as the average minister!

"Just suppose, Mr. Businessman, that you were the overseer of 100 workers. Suppose only about 50 percent of them ever showed up for work at a given time, and only 25 percent could be relied upon. Suppose that every time a simple flash of lightning appeared in the sky, large numbers of young workers pulled the covers over their heads and failed to report for duty.

"Suppose your workers only worked when they felt like it and yet you must be very sweet and never fire one of them. To get them back to work you must beg them, plead with them, pat them on the back, and use every means under the sun to persuade them without offending them. And suppose you were in competition with a notorious rascal, the devil, who had no scruples and is far more clever than you are and uses such attractive things as fishing rods, guns, soft pillows, televisions and a thousand other things to attract your customers.

"How many ulcers would you have?"

Nearly every businessman complains of at least one ulcer. Think how many ulcers the poor businessman would have if he worked under the same circumstances as the average minister!

"Just suppose, Mr. Businessman, that you were the overseer of 100 workers. Suppose only about 50 percent of them ever showed up for work at a given time, and only 25 percent could be relied upon. Suppose that every time a simple flash of lightning appeared in the sky, large numbers of young workers pulled the covers over their heads and failed to report for duty.

"Suppose your workers only worked when they felt like it and yet you must be very sweet and never fire one of them. To get them back to work you must beg them, plead with them, pat them on the back, and use every means under the sun to persuade them without offending them. And suppose you were in competition with a notorious rascal, the devil, who had no scruples and is far more clever than you are and uses such attractive things as fishing rods, guns, soft pillows, televisions and a thousand other things to attract your customers.

"How many ulcers would you have?"

In The Christian Leader, Don Ratzlaff retells a story Vernon Grounds came across in Ernest Gordon’s “Miracle on the River Kwai.” The Scottish soldiers, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing. The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot.

It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first check point.

The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others!… The incident had a profound effect.… The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors … (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: ‘No more hatred. No more killing Now what we need is forgiveness.’”

Sacrificial love has transforming power.

In The Christian Leader, Don Ratzlaff retells a story Vernon Grounds came across in Ernest Gordon’s Miracle on the River Kwai. The Scottish soldiers, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened.

A shovel was missing. The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot . . . It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first check point.

The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! . . . The incident had a profound effect. . . The men began to treat each other like brothers.

When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors . . (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: ‘No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness.’

Character is simply long habit continued. - Plutarch

Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us. - Humboldt

Character is not made in crisis—it is only exhibited. - Freeman

We do not need more knowledge, we need more character! - Calvin Coolidge

Character is what you are in the dark. - D.L. Moody

Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty. - Woodrow Wilson

Character is much easier kept than recovered. - T. Paine

The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back. - Abigail Van Buren

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

It isn’t the thing you do;

It’s the thing you leave undone,

Which gives you a bit of heartache

At the setting of the sun.

The tender word forgotten,

The letter you did not write,

The flower you might have sent,

Are your haunting ghosts tonight.

The stone you might have lifted

Out of a brother’s way,

The bit of heart some counsel

You were harried too much to say.

The loving touch of the hand,

The gentle winsome tone,

That you had no time or tho’t for

With troubles enough of your own.

The little acts of kindness

So easily out of mind;

Those chances to be helpful

Which everyone may find.

No, it’s not the things you do,

It’s the thing you leave undone

Which gives you the bit of heartache

At the setting of the sun.

- Margaret Sangster

A friend of Pastor Jack Lewis’s was enrolled as a student at Central Washington University. He was a devout Muslim and prayed 5 times daily toward Mecca. He and some other Muslim friends were together one day. His other friends weren’t as devout, and were kidding him about his devotion to religious duty. One asked which direction he prayer in, and he pointed north. Then a horrified expression crept over his face as it dawned on him that now Mecca wasn’t north, as it was in his home town in Arabia, but east. For months all his prayers had been misdirected.

Of Thomas Carlyle, by Samuel Butler; “It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.”

One of America’s most miserly millionaires was John G. Wendel, who died in 1915 at his home in New York City. Seeking to keep their inherited fortune in the family, Wendel and five of his six sisters remained unmarried. He instilled such frugality in his sisters that when the last one died in 1931, it was found that although her estate amounted to more than $100 million, she never had a telephone, electricity, or an automobile. Her only dress was one she had made herself and worn for nearly 25 years.

John G. Wendel and his sisters were some of the most miserly people of all time. Although they had received a huge inheritance from their parents, they spent very little of it and did all they could to keep their wealth for themselves.

John was able to influence five of his six sisters never to marry, and they lived in the same house in New York City for 50 years. When the last sister died in 1931, her estate was valued at more than $100 million. Her only dress was one that she had made herself, and she had worn it for 25 years.

The Wendels had such a compulsion to hold on to their possessions that they lived like paupers. Even worse, they were like the kind of person Jesus referred to “who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21).

Author Leo Buscaglia tells this story about his mother and their “misery dinner.” It was the night after his father came home and said it looked as if he would have to go into bankruptcy because his partner had absconded with their firm’s funds. His mother went out and sold some jewelry to buy food for a sumptuous feast. Other members of the family scolded her for it. But she told them that “the time for joy is now, when we need it most, not next week.” Her courageous act rallied the family.

A woman was at home doing some cleaning when the telephone rang. In going to answer it, she tripped on a scatter rug and, grabbing for something to hold onto, seized the telephone table. It fell over with a crash, jarring receiver off the hook. As it fell, it hit the family dog, who leaped up, howling and barking. The woman’s three-year-old son, startled by this noise, broke into loud screams. The woman mumbled some colorful words. She finally managed to pick up the receiver and lift it to her ear, just in time to hear her husband’s voice on the other end say, “Nobody’s said hello yet, but I’m positive I have the right number.”

There was a man who seemed stingy to everybody who knew him. He would be very scrupulous about how he spent even a nickel or a dime, so that he was greatly ridiculed. Finally it became known that he had an invalid wife and an invalid child for whom he cared, and they needed the very last penny that he could save to keep them alive. The criticism of outsiders now turned to admiration for him. Because we are unable to know everything about a man, we cannot possibly judge him rightly.

On April 30, 1976 Evelyn Mooers attached a rappelling rope to a drain pipe grating on the roof of the Mark Twain South County Bank. Mooers, an experienced climber, had once scaled 14,410-foot Mt. Rainier in Washington state. The rappelling exercise from the bank building would have been routine but for one miscalculation. The drain pipe grating wasn’t anchored.

Numerous bank officials and their friends watched as Mooers plummeted to her death. Her faith in the grating was fatally misplaced.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

Football has its share of the improbable—like the time Chicago Cardinals’ Clint Wagers prepared for a field goal attempt. Evidently his educated toe had its own ideas that day, for it missed the pork hide completely and slammed into his face, fracturing his jaw! (Maybe that explains why you’ve never heard of the Chicago Cardinals!)

Or we could tell you all about the time a Rice player ran full speed toward a perfectly teed ball ready for the kickoff—only to land flat on his back. But we won’t.

In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. Because Jefferson trusted that students would take their studies seriously, the code of discipline was lax. Unfortunately, his trust proved misplaced when the misbehavior of students led to a riot in which professors who tried to restore order were attacked. The following day a meeting was held between the university’s board, of which Jefferson was a member, and defiant students. Jefferson began by saying, “This is one of the most painful events of my life,” was overcome by emotion, and burst into tears. Another board member asked the rioters to come forward and give their names. Nearly every one did. Later, one of them said, “It was not Mr. Jefferson’s words, but his tears.”

An English nobleman once visited Josiah Wedgwood to see how he made his legendary china and pottery. A young apprentice was instructed to give the nobleman a tour of the factory. The nobleman did not believe in God and was sacrilegious, foul-mouthed, and consistently ridiculed the Bible during the tour. At first the young apprentice was shocked but after a while he began to laugh when the man made his cynical remarks. Josiah Wedgwood was greatly disturbed by this, especially when he saw how his young apprentice was being influenced by this wealthy nobleman. Later the atheist asked if he could purchase a particularly expensive vase. As he handed it to the nobleman, Wedgwood deliberately let it crash to the floor. With a vile oath the nobleman angrily said, "That is the one I really wanted and now it is shattered by your carelessness." Josiah Wedgwood replied, "Sir, there are things more precious than any vase-things that can never be restored once they are ruined. I can make another vase, but you can never give back to my helper the pure heart you have defiled by your vile language and sacrilegious talk!"

During the first three days of July, 1863, in the midst of America's great Civil War, the armies of the North and South clashed decisively at Gettysburg. For the first three days of the battle, the fighting was inconclusive, but then the tide began to turn against General Lee and the Confederate forces. The northern troops under General G. G. Meade were winning. Lee began to retreat southward on the night of July 4, while storm clouds drenched the East Coast with rain. When Lee reached the Potomac, he found that the river was swollen with rain. He could not cross it. Behind him was the victorious Union army. Before him was the river. He was trapped.

Here was the great, golden opportunity for General Meade to end the battle. Meade could have attacked immediately, destroying Lee's army and, in effect, ending the Civil War. President Lincoln actually ordered him to attack. However, instead of attacking, Meade delayed. He held a council, then delayed again. Eventually the water of the river receded, and Lee escaped over the Potomac. The war was extended two more years. Meade never regained his lost opportunity, and it was to General Grant that Lee eventually surrendered on April 9, 1865.

This story shows us the tragedy of having missed a great opportunity. But if this principle is true in the physical realm, as we realize, it is certainly more true spiritually. The Bible recognizes this when it says, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mat 16:26). Or again, "If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet as by fire" (1Co 3:15).

In the heyday of the New York Yankees, manager Joe McCarthy once interviewed a coach being brought up to the majors from a Yankee farm team.

“How much do you know about psychology?” McCarthy asked. The coach said he had studied it in college. “So you think you’re good,” said McCarthy.

The coach replied: “I don’t know how good I am, but it’s a subject I’ve studied.”

“All right,” McCarthy said, “I’ll give you a test.”

McCarthy said that a few years before he’d had a problem and had gone to Frankie Crosetti, his shortstop.

“Frank,” McCarthy said, “I’m not satisfied with the way Lou Gehrig is playing first base. He’s too lackadaisical. I want you to help me. From now on, charge every ground ball. When you get it, fire it as quickly and as hard as you can to first base. Knock Gehrig off the bag if you can. I don’t care if you throw wild or not, but throw it fast and make it tough for him.”

Crosetti demurred and said: “Maybe Lou won’t like the idea.”

“Who cares what Gehrig likes!” McCarthy snapped. “Just do as I tell you.”

McCarthy then said to the coach: “Now that’s the story. What conclusions do you draw from it?”

The coach considered the matter for a minute, then answered: “I guess you were trying to wake up Gehrig.”

“See?” McCarthy shrugged his shoulders in resignation. “You missed the point entirely. There wasn’t a damned thing wrong with Gehrig. Crosetti was the one who was sleeping. I wanted to wake up Crosetti.”

D. L. Moody had a keen memory for names and faces. If one of his children was missing from Sunday school, he knew it, and he would do everything possible to find out why. One day he saw an absentee coming down the street, so he took off after her. She ran down the sidewalk, across the street, and through an alley into a saloon, up the stairs to a back apartment, into the bedroom, and then dived under the bed.

Moody went after her, and just as he was claiming his prize, the mother showed up. Panting from the exertion, Moody simply explained, “I’m Moody,” He said that he had missed the girl and would be happy if all the family could come to the services. Within a few weeks he had every child in the family in his school.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were excited. On December 17, 1903, they had finally succeeded in keeping their homemade airplane in the air for 59 seconds. Immediately they rushed a telegram to their sister in Dayton, Ohio, telling of this great accomplishment.

The telegram read, "First sustained flight today fifty-nine seconds. Hope to be home by Christmas." Upon receiving the news the sister was so excited about the success that she rushed to the newspaper office and gave the telegram to the editor. The next morning the newspaper headline read, "Popular Local Bicycle Merchants To Be Home For Holidays."

One of the greatest stories of the twentieth century was missed because an editor missed the point.

But who has not made the same mistake in reading the Scriptures? If one is too casual about it, he might learn some truth but miss that which is most important. For years Charles Hodge has been saying, "Familiar Scripture should be read more closely." That advice is well worth heeding, but all Scripture should be read more closely to let the deep meaning sink into your heart.

The Book of Revelation is probably the least understood book of the Bible. We have not been able to see the forest for the trees. We become so entangled with living creatures, seals, horsemen, dragons, numbers, marks and trumpets that we miss the point.

Revelation is a book of imagination. It is built with symbols and vivid imagery. But behind it all is a great truth. God is ruling on His throne. He's in control. And Christians do not have to worry in the midst of persecution and death. We have been given a vision of victory!

Read the Bible. Read it carefully. And don't miss the point.

Three contestants in a TV quiz show were down to the last question of the final round. The emcee said, “Come up with the missing word at the end of the phrase and spell it correctly, and you’ll win our grand-prize trip to Europe. Are you ready? The phrase is, ‘Old MacDonald had a ____.’ And remember, you must spell the missing word.”

The first contestant proposed, “Old MacDonald had a house— h-o-u-s-e.”

The audience groaned.

The second contestant tried, “Old MacDonald had a ranch—r-a-n-c-h.”

More audience groaning.

The third contestant got up and said, “Old MacDonald had a farm.”

The applause was deafening. When it calmed down the emcee said, “All right—what you have to do now is spell the magic word and you win our super-deluxe, super-fabulous trip to Europe.”

“That’s easy,” said the contestant. “E-I-E-I-O.”

Early missionaries to the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific received their mail once a year when the sailing boat made its rounds of the South Pacific. On one occasion the boat was one day ahead of schedule, and the missionaries were off on a neighboring island. The captain left the mail with the Marshallese people while he attended to matters of getting stores of water and provisions. At last the Marshallese were in possession of what the missionaries spoke about so often and apparently cherished so much. The people examined the mail to find out what was so attractive about it. They concluded that it must be good to eat, and so they proceeded to tear all the letters into tiny bits and cook them. However, they didn’t taste very good, and the Marshallese were still puzzled about the missionaries’ strange interest in mail when they returned to find their year’s correspondence made into mush.

A good example rings louder than any bell to toll people to church. An African prince, after interpreting the missionary's message, said, "I can't read this Book myself," referring to the Bible, "but I believe the words of it because I have watched the missionaries for two years. They have told me no lies about anything else; so when they tell me this Book is God's Word, I believe it. I believe that Jesus died for me, and I am going to follow this Jesus."

In Green Leaf in Drought, Isobel Kuhn relates the story of a missionary family going through great trials. The theme is

“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” Jer. 17:7-8.

Here is the passage (p. 59) that has encouraged some to a higher vision of trials. “These ‘four anchors’ they found in Andrew Murray’s formula for trial.

1. Say, He brought me here. It is by His will I am in this strait place and in that fact I will rest.

2. He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child.

3. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends for me to learn.

4. In His good time He can bring me out again—how and when He knows.

So let me say, I am

(1) here by God’s appointment;

(2) in His keeping;

(3) under His training;

(4) for His time.”

In Green Leaf in Drought, Isobel Kuhn relates the story of a missionary family going through great trials. The theme is

“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” Jer. 17:7-8.

Here is the passage (p. 59) that has encouraged some to a higher vision of trials. “These ‘four anchors’ they found in Andrew Murray’s formula for trial.

1. Say, He brought me here. It is by His will I am in this strait place and in that fact I will rest.

2. He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child.

3. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends for me to learn.

4. In His good time He can bring me out again—how and when He knows.

So let me say, I am

1. here by God’s appointment;

2. in His keeping;

3. under His training;

4. for His time.

John Paton was a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands. One night hostile natives surrounded the mission station, intent on burning out the Patons and killing them. Paton and his wife prayed during that terror-filled night that God would deliver them. When daylight came they were amazed to see their attackers leave.

A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christ. Remembering what had happened, Paton asked the chief what had kept him from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied in surprise, “Who were all those men with you there?”

Paton knew no men were present—but the chief said he was afraid to attack because he had seen hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords circling the mission station.

A missionary, speaking of the need on the foreign fields, was to receive an offering to help out with the work. A man was sitting next to the aisle about halfway up. He had folded his arms and sat with a grim look, a scowl and a frown. He evidently didn’t want to be there. Perhaps his wife had made him come. When the usher held the plate in front of him, he just shook his head. The usher jiggled the plate invitingly. Still the only response was the head shake. The usher leaned over and whispered, “It’s for missions, you know.” Still the scowl and a mumbled sentence, “I don’t believe in ‘em.” This usher was a sharp man.

He leaned down and said, “Then you take some out. It’s for the heathen, anyway.”

We must heed the memorable words written by Robert Murray McCheyne to the Rev. Dan Edwards on 2 October 1840 after his ordination as a missionary to the Jews: ‘I trust you will have a pleasant and profitable time in Germany. I know you will apply hard to German; but do not forget the culture of the inner man,—I mean of the heart. How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his sabre clean and sharp; every stain he rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword,—His instrument,—I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.’