Be sure the blessings will be exquisite while the challenges will be excruciating.

I have half a dozen special projects and goals on the radar that presently seem rather daunting. So much so I wouldn’t mind taking all of next year off.

But with a few mouths to feed and my current responsibilities I better stick around.

I came across a wonderful quote last week by former US President Theodore Roosevelt that really encouraged me.

I hope it will do the same for you:-

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

.

.

Having recently finished the rigours of college life, he was enjoying the free time living with his parents allowed.

Only the day before he had finished reading missionary David Brainerd’s journals and wrote “I have prayed for new words, explosive, direct, simple words.”

Sixty years ago today, as he sat down to write in his journals, God answered Jim Elliot’s prayer with words that were indeed “explosive.”

.

On 28 October, 1949, Jim Elliot wrote:

His entry is copied below:

One of the great blessings of heaven is the appreciation of heaven on earth—Ephesian truth.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. Luke 16:9: “…that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.”

Scripture leaves so many stories untold. Think of the calloused heart of the priest who stooped over, squinting in the dimness of the sanctuary, looking for the thirty pieces of silver Judas cast there, pausing to see if he had found all thirty. Too legal to put the money in the treasury since it was blood money, they wax very philanthropic and buy with it a field to bury strangers in.

How cold the heart of man! How feelingless and obdurate!

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” It has pleased God, in these last sixty years, to use these words in a powerful way.

I firmly believe that it was not Jim Elliot’s death that impacted the world so powerfully. It was the life behind the death. He gave what he could not keep to gain what he cannot lose.

I am reflecting today on these questions:

• Am I expecting to influence others through some “event,” or do I realise that it is my life which has the most impact?
• Am I foolishly clinging to things that I will someday lose anyway?
• How highly do I value the things that I cannot lose?

Celebrate this day with me by reflecting again on the truth of these words!

This is from his The Attributes of God. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s chapters are succinct and pointed. Their object is God. The full text of this book is available for free here.

The sovereignty of God is perhaps one of the most widely affirmed doctrines, and yet it seems to be one of the least applied. But I’ll let Pink do the talking…

The sovereignty of God may be defined as the exercise of His supremacy…. Being infinitely elevated above the highest creature, He is the Most High, Lord of heaven and earth. Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent; God does as He pleases, only as He pleases always as He pleases. None can thwart Him, none can hinder Him. So His own Word expressly declares: ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure’ (Isa. 46:10); ‘He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand’ (Dan. 4:35). Divine sovereignty means that God is God in fact, as well as in name, that He is on the Throne of the universe, directing all things, working all things ‘after the counsel of His own will’ (Eph. 1:11).

Rightly did the late Mr. Spurgeon say in his sermon on Matthew 20:15,

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God’s Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation—the Kingship of God over all the works of His own hands—the Throne of God and His right to sit upon that Throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldings, no truth of which they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounties. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends His throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth, and we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter; then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust.

‘Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places’ (Ps. 135:6). Yes, dear reader, such is the imperial Potentate revealed in Holy Writ. Unrivalled in majesty, unlimited in power, unaffected by anything outside Himself. But we are living in a day when even the most ‘orthodox’ seem afraid to admit the proper Godhood of God. They say that to press the sovereignty of God excludes human responsibility; whereas human responsibility is based upon Divine sovereignty, and is the product of it.”

-Taken from The Attributes of God, Arthur W. Pink, p. 32-33, emphasis in original.

-Ken Sande, The Peace Maker

—

“Becky was trying to look through a picture book. For about ten minutes she had been trying to turn the page with her little, fingerless hands. Debbie was playing the piano. As Brenda worked in the kitchen, Becky asked, ‘Mommy, when I grow up, will I have hands like Debbie?’

As I read quietly in the next room, I listened to hear her response.

Brenda stopped her work and said softly, ‘Becky, Debbie has the hands that God has given her to do her job, and you have the hands that God has allowed you to have to do your job.’

Out of that simple statement has grown the ‘Hidden Treasure’ principle, a central theme of our ministry, especially our ministry with disabled children: ‘We have everything we need to do the will of God for our lives.’”

—

“The afflicted have a responsibility to take the initiative, to use their disability to glorify the Lord. … The disabled have no right to take advantage of their handicap for selfish purposes; it is a trust from God.”

-Taken from More Precious Than Gold, pp. 205, 207, 212.

Taken from Spiritual Leadership, p. 53

“It is the purpose of the passage that must be uppermost. This is true just as well for delivery as for anything else: God’s purpose must control all. All error in preaching, in one way or another, stems from placing our own purposes or personalities above God’s.

The Bible exalts Christ, not men. He should be seen in a sermon, not the preacher who becomes more visible than Christ because of his unbecoming delivery. In every respect, including his use of delivery, the preacher must put Christ first.

This point becomes clear in the interplay between content and delivery at every stage. If God’s purpose in a passage is solemn and grim, your delivery must not make light of it, either intentionally or unintentionally. If God’s purpose is a joyful one, you dare not grind that through a personality grid that is so inflexible and insensitive that the message comes out drab or even solemn. In short, you must allow even your personality to be changed , if and when necessary, by God’s truth. A minister of the Word, when faithful to his calling, in every becomes just that—one in whom the Word has absolute sway, even to the point of great personality change in him. The delivery you should seek, then, is a delivery that is formed, informed, and influenced by God’s truth. The best preacher is one who allows his voice and body to become a well-tuned instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit. He is willing, therefore, to be stretched, squeezed, and otherwise altered to meet every demand necessary to preaching the whole counsel of God.”

Taken from Preaching with Purpose, p. 155.

“A Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.

I feel a strong desire to tell you–and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me–which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors in pairs–pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”

Taken from Mere Christianity, p. 156.

More ministers should try to lead in this way, guiding the church toward intelligent reading and larger, more committed, more resilient faith.”

Taken from Spiritual Leadership, p. 107.

Taken from An Earnest Ministry, p. 268.