By
Ada Brownell
“Call
unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things”
(Jeremiah 33:3).
Recently in our Sunday school class, a missionary told
how he grew up in a dysfunctional family three doors away from a church. His
alcoholic father found another woman and left his family. His mom and his
stepfather didn’t live righteous lives, either, but one day his mother visited
the church and took her children. She accepted Jesus as Savior and the young
lad did, too.
They were empty-pockets poor. The boy didn’t receive
great grades in school, but suddenly he had a desire to study. He decided to go
to Bible college, and there God called him to be a missionary, and he obeyed.
Eventually, Jerry was able to take the Gospel to a village where the people had
never heard the story of Jesus. There now are more than a hundred churches
there.
Martin Luther brought the world back to the Bible and
the teachings of Jesus when he began to preach salvation is by faith instead of
works. Evangelists such as Charles Finney, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, and
William Booth won thousands of people to Christ. Turning from sin changed
nations for the better.
Women have even been used mightily by God. William
Booth’s wife, Catherine, used to gather women, and they would go down the
streets of London and other European cities with a band and bass drum, calling
people to Jesus Christ. Catherine would climb on a soapbox and preach. Soon men
joined them, and they literally became an “army” drawing people from
prostitution, crime, drunkenness, and other sin. Catherine pointed them to the
Savior, Jesus Christ, who gives deliverance, joy, and peace.
In one small town a man told another that if the women
went on much longer all the publics (saloons) would have to close. “I went to almost every bar in town the other
night and found only four men in them all,” he said.[1]
The Booths and their Salvation Army continued
preaching and helping the poor. The Salvation Army still reaches out to the
spiritually and physically needy more than a century after the Booths’ deaths.
Catherine Booth’s life touched so many, an estimated fifty thousand people
attended her funeral![2]
David stood up to negative peer pressure when he
fought Goliath, who kept threatening the Israelites and gloating over their
cowardice. Daniel stood up in faith when he was ordered not to pray, but kept
praying. The lions he had to sleep with didn’t even show their teeth. Three
Hebrew children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were the only ones who would
not bow down and worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image. They were thrown
into a fiery furnace, but God delivered them without even the smell of smoke on
their clothes. Their act of boldness brought recognition of the one true God to
Babylon, which was about fifty-five miles from where modern Baghdad is today.
If we call upon the
Lord in faith and correct motives, God will still do mighty things today.
PRAYER: Lord, increase my faith so that I can reach at
least one person with the gospel so he will have your gift of eternal life.
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