Stories of Faith - Episode 15

Mary Carey was the sister of William Carey, the man who has come to be known as the “Father of Modern Missions.” Their father was a weaver in Northamptonshire, England. William and Mary were playmates as children, but as she grew older, she was increasingly affected by a degenerative disease of the spine.

When William Carey left for what would be a lifetime career as a missionary to India, Mary went to live with their sister Ann. For the rest of her life, she depended upon the kindness of her sister’s family for everything that she needed. By the time that she was twenty-five years old, she was paralyzed; she could not move any of her limbs except for her right arm. She was confined to her bedroom for fifty years. For thirty-one of those years, she could not speak.

This is not the life that Mary would have chosen. At one point, she wrote in a letter to her brother, “I wish we may be more conspicuous for God.” Though she never became “conspicuous,” God allowed her to be more influential than she could ever have dreamed. She faithfully interceded for the work going on at Carey’s mission in India. In spite of the fact that she could not speak, Mary led a Bible class, sitting propped up in bed and writing on a slate. Although self-pity must have been a ripe temptation, Mary’s niece wrote that her aunt always felt more for others than for herself.

Mary Carey outlived her brother, but as long as he was living, she wrote him letters. She was his connection to home, and she exhausted herself writing to him all of the details of their family’s news. Not only did these letters help sustain and encourage Carey on the field, Mary’s letters and William’s responses have allowed historians to piece together many of the details of Carey’s life and ministry.

Chronic illness is a heavy cross to bear. Mary was financially dependent upon her brother and physically dependent upon her sister’s family for her entire adult life. But she was emotionally dependent upon the Holy Spirit, who enabled her to think beyond her own difficulties and care for others. Her pastor often said of her, “Her work in her affliction, in its way, was as great as that which her great brother wrought.” William Carey’s life changed India forever. Mary Carey’s life, letters, and prayers changed those around her and left a valuable legacy for those who suffer in body.

Culled from "The Well Squandered Life: Influential Lives of Obscurity"

Stories of Faith - Episode 14

David Brainerd was born in Connecticut in 1718. He lost both of his parents in his youth. He tried his hand at farming for a bit, but he longed for education and entered Yale University when he was twenty-one. Brainerd believed that God was calling him into ministry; his earnest temperament and scholarly disposition boded well for his success in the pastorate.

While David Brainerd was at Yale, George Whitefield preached there. The fires of the Great Awakening sweeping across the country began to burn among the students, leading to great spiritual zeal and, along with it, controversy. The faculty and administration of the university were suspicious of what was termed “enthusiasm.” The students who, for the first time, had developed a taste for spiritual ardor began to question the genuineness of faith in those who were not swept up in the Awakening. Charges of hypocrisy were leveled at various school officials who retaliated by announcing that any such charges would be greeted with expulsion. David Brainerd was overheard to make several ill-judged remarks about members of the faculty, and the university made good its threat by expelling him.

David Brainerd’s expulsion from Yale ended his career as a minister before it began. No matter how he appealed the decision, he could not get reinstated as a student. A recently passed law forbade any minister from being established in Connecticut who had not graduated from Yale, Harvard, or a European university. David Brainerd gave up his dream of being a pastor and instead became something he had never before considered: a missionary to Native Americans.

Brainerd’s constitution and temperament made him a far from ideal choice to be a pioneer missionary. He contracted tuberculosis while at Yale and had been physically weakened ever since. Brainerd suffered greatly from what was then known as melancholy, which we now call depression. Living alone in remote villages where no one spoke his language exacerbated his tendency toward depression. But what David Brainerd lacked in natural qualifications, he made up for in dedication and earnestness. As Ruth Tucker puts it, “Brainerd was a zealot.”

For several years, David Brainerd had very little success in his mission work. He did not speak the language of the tribes to which he preached, and his interpreters had little spiritual understanding. He moved several times and finally ended up in Crossweeksung, New Jersey, where he found greater openness among the Iroquois of the Susquehanna Valley. In 1745, revival broke out in Crossweeksung, and, over the course of a year and a half, Brainerd saw more than a hundred Native Americans repent and believe the Gospel. He helped start a school and church. But in 1747, Brainerd’s health broke down. He died of tuberculosis in the home of Jonathan Edwards, under the watch care of Edwards’s daughter (whom he had hoped to marry).

One would have expected the memory of David Brainerd’s short stint as a missionary to be relegated to the annals of missiology. But Brainerd kept a journal, and Jonathan Edwards was so inspired by the journal that he published it along with a brief biography of his young friend. The Life of David Brainerd has never since been out of print. It has influenced countless ministers, missionaries, and lay people, including John Wesley, David Livingstone, William Carey, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Andrew Murray, and Jim Eliot.

David Brainerd’s journal is a record of one long struggle. While one might not expect such an account to inspire missionaries, it gives hope to those who recognize their own weaknesses. Brainerd’s perseverance in the face of depression, loneliness, illness, and perceived failure—obstacles faced so frequently in ministry—gives courage to the downtrodden. Though he was cut off from the life that would have made him comfortable and thrust into a ministry that seemed doomed to failure, God had a plan to use him. I doubt that there are any among us who have not been influenced by someone shaped by the life of David Brainerd.

Culled from "The Well Squandered Life: Influential Lives of Obscurity"

Stories of Faith - Episode 13

Culled from http://www1.cbn.com

Reinhard Bonnke is the son of a German pastor. He gave his life to the Lord at the age of nine and heard the call to the African mission fields before he was a teenager. After attending Bible college in Wales and pastoring in Germany for 7 years, he began his missionary work in Africa. Reinhard began holding tent meetings that accommodated 800 people. As attendance steadily increased, larger tents had to be purchased. In 1984, he commissioned the construction of the world’s largest mobile structure -- a tent capable of seating 34,000. This tent was destroyed in a wind storm just before a major crusade. There was a question as to how to proceed. The team decided to hold the crusade “open air.” Instead of the expected 34,000 attendees, the event saw over 100,000 people, significantly more than the tent would have allowed. Crowds have been exceeding “tent” size ever since.

When Reinhard tells of God calling him to a life of evangelism, he speaks easily about a dialogue they had. It seems God laid out for him what would be expected. And Reinhard told God that he would obey and follow what God was asking of him. Before this extended conversation ended, however, God told him, “You weren’t my first choice.” Reinhard listened. “You weren’t my second choice either.” Later on there was a time when Reinhard hesitated to schedule a specific crusade. He says as he wavered, “God said, ‘You drop the vision and I drop you.” The evangelist attributes the tremendous responses he sees in ministry to simple obedience to what God requires.

Stories of Faith - Episode 12

Culled from www.hopefaithprayer.com, www.jenniferleclaire.org

Most of us know the story of revivalist Charles Finney. He was an attorney-turned-preacher in the early 1800s, declaring he received “a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause.” During his preaching days in New York, several revivals broke out and spread like wildfire. The greatest moves of God in American history occurred during this season of time. We know Finney, but how many of us know Finney’s partners who labored in prayer? Daniel Nash and Abel Clary were old-school intercessors who were key to the revival that followed Finney’s ministry. We can all look at the life of Daniel Nash and Abel Clary and see an example of how important prayer is to see the kingdom of God revealed. When God would direct where a meeting was to be held, Father Nash would slip quietly into town and seek to get two or three people to enter into a covenant of prayer with him. Sometimes he had with him a man of similar prayer ministry, Abel Clary. Together they would begin to pray fervently for God to move in the community.

One record of such is told by Leonard Ravenhill: “I met an old lady who told me a story about Charles Finney that has challenged me over the years. Finney went to Bolton to minister, but before he began, two men knocked on the door of her humble cottage, wanting lodging. The poor woman looked amazed, for she had no extra accommodations. Finally, for about twenty-five cents a week, the two men, none other than Fathers Nash and Clary, rented a dark and damp cellar for the period of the Finney meetings (at least two weeks), and there in that self-chosen cell, those prayer partners battled the forces of darkness.”

Another record told by Charles Finney himself: “On one occasion when I got to town to start a revival a lady contacted me who ran a boarding house. She said, ‘Brother Finney, do you know a Father Nash? He and two other men have been at my boarding house for the last three days, but they haven’t eaten a bite of food. I opened the door and peeped in at them because I could hear them groaning, and I saw them down on their faces. They have been this way for three days, lying prostrate on the floor and groaning. I thought something awful must have happened to them. I was afraid to go in and I didn’t know what to do. Would you please come see about them?’ “‘No, it isn’t necessary,’ Finney replied. ‘They just have a spirit of travail in prayer.'”

Another states: “Charles Finney so realized the need of God’s working in all his service that he was wont to send godly Father Nash on in advance to pray down the power of God into the meetings which he was about to hold.” Not only did Nash prepare the communities for preaching, but he also continued in prayer during the meetings. “Often Nash would not attend meetings, and while Finney was preaching Nash was praying for the Spirit’s outpouring upon him. Finney stated, ‘I did the preaching altogether, and brother Nash gave himself up almost continually to prayer.’ Often while the evangelist preached to the multitudes, Nash in some adjoining house would be upon his face in an agony of prayer, and God answered in the marvels of His grace. The tears they shed, the groans they uttered are written in the book of the chronicles of the things of God.”

Again, Finney himself wrote of Clary, “Mr. Clary continued as long as I did, and he did not leave until after I had left. He never appeared in public, but he gave himself wholly to prayer.” “Clary had been licensed to preach; but his spirit of prayer was such, he was so burdened with the souls of men, that he was not able to preach much, his whole time and strength being given to prayer,” Finney wrote. “The burden of his soul would frequently be so great that he was unable to stand, and he would writhe in agony. I was well acquainted with him, and knew something of the wonderful spirit of prayer that rested upon him. He was a very silent man, as almost all are who have that powerful spirit of prayer." As history tells it, Finney found Clary’s prayer journal after Clary went on to glory. Recorded within its pages were the chronicles of the prayer burdens the Lord put on his heart. It’s no accident or coincidence that those prayer burdens aligned, one by one, with the order of the blessings poured out on Finney’s ministry and the people who came to his meetings.

Stories of Faith - Episode 11

NABEEL QURESHI (1983-2017) originally published on blogs.thegospelcoalition.org

ISLAM WAS ALL

Nabeel was born in California as a U.S. citizen to Pakistani immigrants who fled religious persecution at the hands of fellow Muslims. His parents were devout members of the peaceful Ahmadi sect of Islam, which differs from orthodox Islam on some minor doctrines but shares with it a belief in the six articles of the faith and holds to the five pillars of the faith Nabeel’s family was the most loving and tightly knit family that he knew. And it was entirely centered on Islam, which formed the framework and blueprint of his life.

His mother taught him Urdu and Arabic before he learned English at the age of 4. By the age of 5, he had read the entire Qur’an in Arabic and had memorized many chapters.

His parents also trained him in apologetics so that he would not only believe in Islam, but could defend it and refute other religions like Christianity.

ENCOUNTERING THE CLAIMS OF CHRIST

In August 2001, while a student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Nabeel observed fellow student David Wood reading the Bible in his free time. Nabeel regularly read the Qur’an, but it struck him as odd to see a Christian reading the Bible on his own.

Nabeel challenged David’s belief in Christianity, beginning with the charge that the Bible had been corrupted over time. Wood aspired to be a Christian apologist, and the two young men formed a friendship and engaged in debate that lasted for several years.

In working through David’s arguments and examining the evidence for himself, Nabeel eventually became convinced of the general reliability of the New Testament.

He next raised the objection that Jesus never claimed to be God. After being shown this was untrue, Nabeel challenged David that Jesus had never died on the cross. Again, by being willing to investigate the evidence, Nabeel changed his mind.

It was now two and a half years later, and Nabeel raised the greatest stumbling block for accepting Christianity: how could one man die for another man’s sins? And how could the one true God be a Trinity? He was now reading the Bible and considering Christ’s claims for himself.

In return, David began to challenge Nabeel’s confidence in the claims of Islam. Intellectually, Nabeel held to Islam for several subjective reasons (like the kind of life it produced), but objectively, the central claim was that Islam was true because Muhammad was a true prophet of God. But after studying primary sources and biographies, Nabeel eventually concluded that he could not reasonably hold to the idea that Muhammad is the greatest of prophets and history’s most perfect man.

From December 2004 to April 2005, Nabeel experienced three vivid dreams that strongly suggested to him that Christianity is true and that Christ should be followed.

Later that year, he traveled to Washington, D.C., Canada, and England to search out knowledgeable Muslims who could answer the arguments against Islam that he had encountered. “I heard various replies running the gamut from terribly unconvincing to fairly innovative, and I encountered people that ranged from sincere to condescendingly caustic. At the end of my research, the arguments for and against Islam still hung in the balance, but one thing was abundantly clear: they were far from approaching the strength of the case for Christianity.”

CHRIST IS ALL

Nabeel described for Christianity Today his final conversion to Christ, while a medical student, and the effect it had on his world:

I began mourning the impact of the decision I knew I had to make. On the first day of my second year of medical school, it became too much to bear. Yearning for comfort, I decided to skip school. Returning to my apartment, I placed the Qur’an and the Bible in front of me. I turned to the Qur’an, but there was no comfort there. For the first time, the book seemed utterly irrelevant to my suffering. Irrelevant to my life. It felt like a dead book.

With nowhere left to go, I opened up the New Testament and started reading. Very quickly, I came to the passage that said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Electric, the words leapt off the page and jump-started my heart. I could not put the Bible down. I began reading fervently, reaching Matthew 10:37, which taught me that I must love God more than my mother and father.

“But Jesus,” I said, “accepting you would be like dying. I will have to give up everything.”

The next verses spoke to me, saying, “He who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it” (NASB). Jesus was being very blunt: For Muslims, following the gospel is more than a call to prayer. It is a call to die.

I knelt at the foot of my bed and gave up my life.

A few days later, the two people I loved most in this world were shattered by my betrayal. To this day my family is broken by the decision I made, and it is excruciating every time I see the cost I had to pay.

But Jesus is the God of reversal and redemption. He redeemed sinners to life by his death, and he redeemed a symbol of execution by repurposing it for salvation. He redeemed my suffering by making me rely upon him for my every moment, bending my heart toward him. It was there in my pain that I knew him intimately. He reached me through investigations, dreams, and visions, and called me to prayer in my suffering. It was there that I found Jesus. To follow him is worth giving up everything.

In another place, he recounts the incredible pain this created in his family:

After my family learned of my conversion, they have not been the same.

My mother has tears in her eyes whenever I see her, a quiver in her voice whenever I hear her, and absolute despair on her face in sleep and while awake. Never have I met a mother more devoted to her children than my mother, and how did I repay her? In her mind, decades’ worth of emotional and physical investment ended up with her son espousing views that are completely antithetical to everything she stands for.

My father, a loving, gentle, and big-hearted man with every ounce of the emotional strength expected of a 24-year veteran of the U.S. military, broke down for the first time that I had ever seen. To be the cause of the only tears I ever saw fall from his eyes is not easy to live with. To hear him . . . the man who stood tallest in my life from the day I was born, my archetype of strength, my father . . . to hear him say that because of me he felt his backbone has been ripped out from behind him, feels like patricide.

It was then that I wondered why God had let me live; why had God not just lifted me to himself when I had found the truth? Why did I have to hurt my family so much, and practically eschew the ones who loved me more than anyone else?

The answer was sought and found in God’s Word. After accepting him, it is my duty to work for him and walk his path. For now, my loss was to be comforted by his words found in Mark 10:29-30:“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.”

AMBASSADOR AND APOLOGIST

Nabeel went on to study Christian apologetics at Biola University, graduating with an MA in 2008, while also completing his medical degree at Eastern Virginia Medical School, graduating in 2009. In 2012, he completed an MA in religion at Duke University, and then entered an MPhil and PhD program at Oxford University in New Testament studies. In 2013, he became an itinerant speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministry.

In February 2014, Nabeel published his first book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity (Zondervan), which landed on The New York Times bestseller list, and was awarded the Christian Book Award for both “Best New Author” and “Best Non-Fiction Book” of 2015. It has sold more than a quarter of a million copies.

In 2015, Nabeel’s wife, Michelle, gave birth to their daughter, Ayah Fatima Qureshi, named after a Christian martyr.

In March 2016, Zondervan published Nabeel’s book Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward.

Five months later, in August 2016, Zondervan released No God But One: Allah or Jesus? A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity.

CANCER

On the day of the book release for No God But One, Nabeel wrote on Facebook, announcing that he had been diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer: In October 2016, his wife, Michelle, suffered a miscarriage, and in May 2017, Nabeel announced that the radiation had not worked and that the cancer had spread to his chest. During this time, Nabeel’s parents came to Houston, where he lives, and helped to care for him: 

In September 2017, his doctors decided to place him on palliative care, as there were no further medical options to pursue.

As a Christian apologist with a special focus on Islam, Nabeel was often introduced as a “former Muslim.” He felt ambivalence about the label, wondering if he would be forever bound by the life he left. When asked about this by Boundless, he responded:

We don’t identify other Christians as “former adulterers,” “former narcissists,” etc. I have been made a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), I strive every day to cast off the old self and to put on the new (Ephesians 4:22-24), reflecting the fact that I have been born again from above (John 3:3).

I would be thrilled if I never had to talk about Islam again, focusing instead on the awe-inspiring power of God’s incarnation and resurrection!

But, he added:

. . . as long as there are Muslims, there will be Christians who need to be equipped to share the Gospel with them in compelling compassion.

Until that is no longer the case, I am honored to discuss my former way of life to build up the body of Christ.

GLORY AND JOY

Today, Nabeel Qureshi, beholding his Savior face to face, is able to declare what is true:

I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race.

I have kept the faith.

Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Tim. 4:7-8)

Entering into the joy of his Master, he undoubtedly heard the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Stories of Faith - Episode 10

Apostle to Islam: Samuel Zwemer’s Story (Source: www.urbana.org)

Some missionaries are known for their great fruit, their many converts, churches they started, or hospitals they helped build. Samuel Zwemer is not known for these things. After 38 years of missions work throughout Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Egypt and Asia Minor, Samuel had seen his efforts produce fewer than 12 conversions to Christianity.

Yet producing converts was not the ultimate goal for Samuel. The man who would become known as the Apostle to Islam wrote “The chief end of missions is not the salvation of men but the glory of God.” We are faithful to God’s call on our lives for no other ultimate goal than that of bringing glory to God.

SET APART

As an infant, Samuel’s mother prayed that he would become a missionary. During his senior year at Hope College, Samuel dedicated himself foreign missionary service and later found a companion in this mission during his first year at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. James Cantine and Samuel covenanted with each other to “go to some needy field and possibly start a new work.”

The pair selected Arabia as their destination because, as the homeland of Islam, it was the most difficult mission field they could find. They submitted their plans to different societies, including the American Missionary Society, but found no one willing the sponsor them. They were told it was foolish “to want to go to such a fanatical people.”

In reply, Samuel said, “If God calls you and no board will send you, bore a hole through the board and go anyway.” And that’s what they did. James solicited support from churches for Samuel, and Samuel visited congregations to secure funds for James and together they started the Arabian Mission.

Trial and hardship were present companions to Samuel on the mission field. A partner in the early days of the mission died suddenly after a short illness and was believed to have been poisoned. Samuel’s younger brother, Peter, became ill and died in 1898, just six years after joining the mission.

In another six years, Samuel's two young daughters were to die of dysentery. In the midst of this suffering, Samuel and his wife, Amy, marked their daughters’ graves with an affirmation of God’s sovereignty: “Worthy is the Lamb to receive riches.”

ADVOCATE AND MOBILIZER

When Samuel returned to the United States for a furlough in 1905, he accepted a call to the Student Volunteer Movement as a traveling representative for recruitment. For the next five years, Samuel spent the greater part of his time speaking at conventions around the world influencing many to go into missionary service before returning himself to the mission field in Arabia.

Samuel would continue speaking at missions conferences for the rest of his life and was the keynote speaker at the first Inter-Varsity Student Foreign Missions Fellowship Convention, which became Urbana.

Throughout his life, Samuel would remain an advocate for missions work in the Muslim world. The year before he died, he was scheduled to attend Urbana ‘51 as a Special Guest, but was unable to due to illness. Instead, he sent a telegram in which he said:

"I am with you in spirit. The world of Islam is a challenge to faith and hope and love. Doors once closed are nailed open…Now is the time for…advance. The cloud of witnesses and the old guard are calling you. Come over and help us."

Samuel Zwemer died quietly while recovering from a heart attack in New York in 1952.

NO WORLD-BOUND MEASURE

Zwemer was the first long-term American missionary to the Middle East. He wrote almost a book a year for most of his life. He founded and edited the quarterly publication The Moslem World for 37 years. He was a professor at Princeton. He directly motivated hundreds to go to the mission field.

But above all his attributes, Samuel Zwemer was faithful. Samuel is a hero of the faith, not unlike those heroes listed in the book of Hebrews who were “commended in their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” (chapter 11, verse 39).

As you go about your part in God’s global mission, aspire not to some world-bound measure of success. Instead, aspire to glorify God through faithfulness no matter the outcome.

Stories of Faith - Episode 9

Culled from Workplace Grace: Becoming a Spiritual Influence at Work

“Dave and I hit it off during a business negotiation. Over time, Barb (my wife) and I became close friends with Dave and his wife, Ann. We spent time together carpooling kids and watching soccer games. Barb and Ann led our daughters’ scout troop.

Dave and Ann were not believers, and they had encountered more than a few aggressive, hypocritical Christians, which made Dave wary. But the more we got to know each other, the more my faith seemed to intrigue him.

After a year, over lunch I told Dave how I came to believe in Christ. He listened with interest and asked questions. Eventually, he and Ann accepted an invitation to attend a Bible study at our home. Ann told Barb that she was interested in a personal relationship with Jesus, but she didn’t want to take this step without Dave.

For months, I communicated the gospel to Dave in every way I knew. Yet in spite of all my efforts, Dave’s heart seemed impenetrable, and I became discouraged.

I met with my spiritual mentor and recounted my frustration. In response, he asked me two tough questions.

“Wait, do you really care about these people, or are they just a project?”

Embarrassed, I had to admit that persuading them to make a decision to trust Jesus had become more important than being a friend.

“How often do you and Barb pray for Dave and Ann?”

I hung my head. “I really don’t pray for them very much at all.”

He reminded me that Dave and Ann faced the toughest, most important decision of their lives – and that praying for them would do more than all our efforts. So Barb and I began to pray every day for Dave and Ann as we continued to cultivate, plant, and love them.

Almost seven years after our friendship began, God answered our prayers. Dave and Ann both decided to become followers of Jesus.” – Walt Larimore