The Bullet of Change: Books, the Book and the Spirit – Part 1

King Solomon shared a wise word that is beginning to make more sense to me every day:

“My Son, be warned. The making of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.” Ecclesiastes 12:12

The number of book published each year is escalating at an amazing pace. If you read a book a month, you’re falling behind man’s accumulation of knowledge at a mind-boggling rate.

Consider the following statistics:

Worldwide, in 1996 there were 808,066 titles published, according to UNESCO's Statistical Yearbook 1998, as cited in The Bowker Library and Trade Almanac. (Research from U C, Berkeley)

The number of books published (in the U.S.) in 2005 is estimated to be close to 200,000, and that includes everything—adult and children's books, professional books and textbooks, paperbacks and hardcovers. (from Publisher’s Weekly)

As a pastor, I saw my own time literally swamped with the reading of books. A large part of my ministry has been in the area of counseling couples who are having troubles in their relationship, and that has necessitated a great deal of study.

Yet in my spirit I am aware of something that I want to share with you. The really important thing is the opening of the human spirit to the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. He can accomplish in a brief time and with more depth far greater growth than all the reading of the many books can accomplish.

Solomon must have known this so he gave us the warning.

The Bullet of Growth: Learning Takes Time (Part 2)

One more great though from Carey is his statement on patience … “In achieving anything for God He makes us, like the farmer, ‘submit’ to the slow laws of nature.” There is nothing a farmer can do to “speed up the seasons.” He must cooperate with the laws of nature or fail. Clearing the land, breaking up the soil, planting the seed, guarding against pests and weeds and then waiting … waiting … for the soil, the sun and the rain to do their thing in God’s own time is his only choice!

So it is with those of us who seek to be the “spiritual farmers” of God! Something spiritual must be planted in our minds and lives if we expect spiritual fruit in our actions. A man who fills his mind with nothing but business, finance or sports will never have great thoughts or actions for God!

What we plant is what we grow and it takes time. Multitudes of folks wait in vain for something exciting and satisfying to happen to their lives but it never comes!

But, for those of us who plant God’s Truth in our minds it is different. The harvest might seem mysteriously slow but we have no choice but to submit to God’s laws! And why not … they never fail!

The Bullet of Growth: The Right Sized Burdens (Part 1)

“Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” These words were part of a sermon William Carey preached before he gave himself to missionary service in India in 1793. Carey is recognized as the key igniter of the modern mission movement and is without question one of “the greats” of the Christian church.

Although he was untrained as a linguist and had no formal education, he taught himself Greek, Hebrew, Bengali, Sanskrit and eight other India dialects! He labored seven long years before he won his first person to Christ. He fought tremendous battles including minimal finances, opposition by the English government, persecution by the native populace, the fatalism of the cast system, the emotional horror of sati (the burning of a man’s widow on his funeral pyre), personal illness that brought him close to death, the mental breakdown and insanity of his wife and the illness and death of his youngest son … to name a few!!

Yet, Carey built one of the greatest works for Christ of any who ever sought to obey our Lord’s Great Commission. “God fits our burdens to our backs” were the words that sustained him!

What a great thought! Those of us who are parents would never deliberately “overload” our children! I would never have insisted, when unloading the car after a vacation, that my young son or daughter carry three suitcases, a hanging bag and four shoe boxes at the same time! Parents fit children’s burdens to their ability.

So it is with the Heavenly Father. He gives us enough burdens to stretch us and grow us but He never overloads us! God has promised that He allows only the burdens we can handle (I Corinthians 10:13)! Wonderful!

The Bullet of Time: Enough Time (Part 2)

The profound truth for all of us to realize is that God has given us all the time we need to do all we were created to do. Twenty-four hours is enough for any man, woman or child. College students often complain to me about how little time they have. The truth is that they have more free time in college then they’ll ever have in their life! The person who says, “I’m behind” or “I don’t have enough time” or "I’m frantically trying to catch up” is admitting he is occupied with areas God never intended him to be concerned with. Jesus Christ had plenty of time to do all the Father sent Him to do. He was never in a hurry. He was always “on schedule.” He never allowed second-rate activities to pull Him away for first-rate priorities. Thomas Fuller said, “Time misspent is not lived but lost!” A person doesn’t “find time” for anything; he must dedicate it.

Time cannot be expanded, accumulated, mortgaged, hastened or retarded. It is the one thing completely beyond man’s control. The only way man can escape enslavement to time is to make time his servant. The God who made time is the only adequate source to this discovery. When Jesus Christ said, “My time is at hand,” He indicated He held the key to the mystery and power of time. I hope you’ll “take time” to check Him out!

Sermon Audio Available

Listen to Dr. McCarty preaching at Fellowship Bible Church, Fort Smith, Arkansas, this past Sunday, July 15, 2007.

Go to www.fellowshipfortsmith.com
Select "Listen to Recent Sermons" from the menu, scroll down the sermon archive page to 7-15-07, Dr. H.D. McCarty. This will launch the player in your web browser window.

Thanks to Pastor Chris Moore for sending us the link to this great sermon.

The Bullet of Time: A Thirty-Hour Day (Part 1)

Someone has well remarked that “busyness” is the great sin of our age! Even those who supposedly have everything don’t have the time to enjoy it! Comments of “I’m too busy,” “I’m too far behind,” “When I find the time,” “This week is too rushed,” etc., seem to be on the increase as never before! The great prayer of our age could easily be … “If I only had more time!”

The greatest lesson God has ever taught me about time came as a result of a phone conversation with another church member. In concluding the call the good lady commented … “Pastor, you’re so busy. You need thirty hours in a day!” I used my most humble voice denying this and mumbled something about all of us needing more time. After hanging up the receiver, however, I leaned back in my chair, meditated on my self-appointed importance, the critical nature of my work and decided that I did need thirty hours a day! I was joyfully meditating on all I was going to accomplish in this “extra” time when the Truth of God, in its usual fashion, blew my mind with a different thought! God’s voice seemed to speak to me saying … “what an oversight on My part! When I created the twenty-four hour day, I didn’t anticipate that H.D. McCarty would come along and need thirty!!” ZAP! BOOM! POW! What a shot!

Then the truth began to dawn. When returning from Israel many years ago I experienced one of those “thirty-hour days.” We flew and flew with the sun, and it never got dark! It took me a week to recover my lost sleep from only one “thirty-hour” day!

Globalization: 17th Century Style
By Ruth Ann Stites

In an article in the May, 2007, National Geographic, “America Found and Lost: Legacy of Jamestown” by Charles C. Mann, the author examines the changes the arrival of settlers had on America and the world. Chronicling the movement of species, called the Columbian exchange, from the old to new world and visa versa, the article provides a new perspective on the changes colonization brought. While looking specifically at Jamestown, a much wider picture emerges, a global one. In one sense, the global economy we live in began with the first European settlements of the 1500 and 1600’s.

One import in particular provides an example of the scope of this globalization – the malaria parasite. The Indians did not understand that there were a vast number of settlers waiting in the old world for a chance of life in the new. They did not understand the forces they faced nor the hidden dangers presented by these people.

… records suggest a substantial fraction – as much as a third – of the immigrants in Virginia before 1640 were from the marshes of southern and eastern England. In the 17th century, these areas were rampant with malaria. It was not unusual for 10 to 20 percent of the marsh population to die in a single year according to Mary Dobson, a medical historian. In contrast to the rest of England, burials outstripped baptisms during much of the 17th and 18th centuries. Little wonder people from these areas wanted to emigrate to the Americas.

Due to its complex lifecycle, the plasmodium parasite moved rapidly from humans to new world mosquitoes. “This type of malaria rarely kills victims directly, but leaves them weak for months until the body gradually fights if off.” This weakening effect, as well as leaving the victims susceptible to other diseases, may very well have sapped the strength and vitality of the Indian efforts to drive out the settlers once the danger they represented to the Indian way of life became clear.

Contemporary reports indicate that malaria was well established as far north as the Massachusetts Bay Colony by 1640. “Since many more early colonists went to Virginia than Massachusetts, malaria could have been stalking the Tidewater there as early as the 1620’s.” The abuse heaped on the settlers of Jamestown – “Strachy was one of many who denounced what he saw as their propensity for ‘sloth, riot, and vanity’” – may have been the result of malaria rather than bad character.

Mann continues his analysis of the impact of malaria,

… we know that malaria spread throughout the East Coast, eventually playing a major part in the pageant of U.S. history. Without malaria, slaves would have been less desirable to southern planters: Most people from tropical Africa are resistant to the plasmodium parasite, the product of millennia of evolution in its presence. The disease became especially endemic in the Carolinas, where it crippled the army of British Gen. Charles Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War. England had by that time drained its marshes and largely been freed of malaria. Meanwhile, the colonists had become seasoned. ‘There was a big imbalance. Cornwallis’s army was simply melting away,’ says J.R. McNeill, an environmental historian at Georgetown University. McNeill takes pains to credit the bravery of the Revolution’s leaders. But a critical role was played by what he wryly refers to as ‘revolutionary mosquitoes.’ Cornwallis surrendered, effectively ending the war, on October 19, 1781.

Consider the results of the introduction of malaria in Virginia: Indian culture was destroyed and the people died or were displaced. An independent and hardy Colonial nation rose out of the early settlements sending the riches of the new world back to the old. Slavery moved populations and cultures from Africa to the Americas. The British Empire lost the Colonies. The world shifted and changed in part because of a single-celled parasite. The commerce between the old and the new worlds sealed the globalization of planet Earth.

There is, of course a spiritual moral to this story: One small change can have huge effects. When a person enters into a living relationship with Jesus Christ, the world shifts – nothing can or will ever be the same again. If countries can rise and fall over a single-celled parasite, how much more can a life lived for Christ change the destiny of those around him or her? May this be our vision for all we touch with Messiah Love. It is a wonderful “infection,” this Messiah Love, and it is our privilege to be carriers of the “Christ Life” to our world. So let’s get out there and “pass it on!”

Neither Dancing nor Weeping, Part 2

They treat God the same way. People say they want Him but find excuses to ignore Him. According to Jesus, the greatest of all the prophets was John the Baptist. He was an ascetic. He wore only a camel’s hair coat. He ate locusts and wild honey. He showed radical commitment to God. He preached the Kingdom. No one could accuse him of hypocrisy, but the people rejected him. Why? Too fanatical!

Jesus came with the exact opposite life style. He was well dressed, enjoyed life, attended their feasts, mixed with sinners. He was God’s Son, perfect. He was the greatest example ever of man in fullness. He came “living it up.” But the people rejected Him. Why? He was a hypocrite – not fanatical enough! He loved sinners and spent time with them.

So there you have it! The greatest of the prophets rejected! The excuse? Too fanatical! The greatest “man” ever to be viewed on earth, Jesus, rejected! The excuse? Too hypocritical! Let’s face it – for those who don’t want to face God’s truth about themselves, “any old excuse will do.”

Jesus ended His comments by saying, “Wisdom is always proven by those who listen to Him and obey His teaching.” Those who excuse themselves from obeying God always end up with “the short stick of life.”

It is obvious to me that the church can’t ever satisfy those who are excuse oriented. If the church asks for money for the poor or for missions, “All we want is money!” If Christians sell all we have and don’t “get ahead” in life, we’re called “impractical!”

Harry Emerson Fosdick once said that “A man may wait to make up his mind, but he can’t wait to make up his life!” You are deciding today, right now, what you are living for. If you are not living under the authority of God today, you are rejecting Him!

Jesus said, “I am the way … without Me you can do nothing.” Will you follow Him? There are only two kinds of people on earth: those who want to do something and find a way and those who always find an excuse.

Neither Dancing nor Weeping, Part 1

May God deliver us from excuses! It seems we always have a “good” reason for why something “bad” happens in our life. I suppose I hate my excuses as much as any other failure of my life. Oh, to be free from them! Emerson once said that, “Excellence is the perfect excuse. Do it well, and it matters not what follows.”

People are masters at giving excuses for ignoring God. Too busy … too young … too old … too tired … too dumb … too intelligent … too rich … too poor … too early … yet they all fall in the same camp … excuses! Alexander Pope said, “An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a guarded lie.”

While on earth, the Lord Jesus commented on the pitiful excuses of men in Luke 7:31-35. Men play games. Nothing satisfies them. They are like children who want to play wedding or funeral but find excuses to play neither.

31 "To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.' 33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' 34 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners. ' 35 But wisdom is proved right by all her children." Luke 7:31-35

“We Hold These Truths…”
By RA Stites, Ventures staff

The booming of the cannon in the 1812 Overture while the fireworks finale showers the sky with brilliant flashes of light provides a sensory extravaganza that epitomizes the celebration of the Forth of July in America. Whether seen from the National Mall with the Washington Monument in the foreground, as in the picture above, or from a lawn chair in a local park, a fireworks display stirs our senses and reminds us of both the joy and the sacrifice inherent in our nation’s freedom.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence that fateful summer of 1776 promised, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” It was a solemn oath the founders of our nation made – they had so much to gain but also everything to lose. That is always the way with freedom; the benefits are enormous but to achieve and preserve them requires total commitment of life, possessions and heart.

The requirements of freedom are the same in the life of nations and in the realm of the spirit. Jesus said, “… If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. … If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:31-36) And in another place when asked the cost of this discipleship he said, “ … If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). The requirements of freedom are immutable – to possess this treasure fully requires a complete commitment to possessing it.

We, at Ventures for Christ, wish you peace and freedom this Independence Day, but, most of all, that you know the inexpressible joy of picking up your cross and following the Master.

Check This Out:
Visit the Ventures for Christ website for an outline of Dr. McCarty’s inspirational message, “The Biblical Patriot.”