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“A popular speaker started off a seminar by holding up a $20 bill. A crowd of 200 had gathered to hear him speak. He asked, ‘Who would like this $20 bill?’
200 hands went up.
He said, ‘I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.’ He crumpled the bill up.
He then asked, ‘Who still wants it?’
All 200 hands were still raised.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘What if I do this?’ Then he dropped the bill on the ground and stomped on it with his shoes.
He picked it up, and showed it to the crowd. The bill was all crumpled and dirty.
‘Now who still wants it?’
All the hands still went up.
‘My friends, I have just showed you a very important lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, life crumples us and grinds us into the dirt. We make bad decisions or deal with poor circumstances. We feel worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.
When a friend urgently texted Florida mom Stacey Philpot about a Facebook post she just had to see, she wasn’t sure what to expect. The post showed a teenaged boy standing alone at the flagpole and it seemed as if everyone had something to say about him. And that’s when it hit Stacey - she was looking at her son!
As a blogger, Stacey Philpot spends a good amount of time online. So, she decided to take a little break from Facebook. But then a friend sent her an urgent text about a post Stacey “wouldn’t want to miss.”
The post showed a boy standing alone at the flagpole praying as part of See You At The Pole Day. This yearly event encourages students everywhere to gather at their school’s flagpole to pray for their school, friends, families, churches, and communities. Usually the event draws a crowd. But at Minneola High School, only one young man turned up. The brave boy stood all alone, praying by himself.
“God, I know surely that You do not exist. But if perchance You exist, which I contest, it is not my duty to believe in You; it is Your duty to reveal Yourself to me.”
The young Jewish atheist who uttered that flippant prayer was Richard Wurmbrand, born in 1909 in Bucharest, Romania. Little did he know how completely God would answer him, call him to a life of service to Christ, and use him to raise up one of the strongest ministries in the world today that helps the persecuted church.
Salvation and Service
In 1938, in a remote Romanian village, an old German carpenter named Christian Wolfkes lay sick. The only person by his side giving aid and comfort was a Jewish follower of Christ. When Wolfkes recovered, he was so grateful to God that he prayed earnestly for the opportunity to share the gospel with a Jewish person. Although none lived in his village, still he prayed.
One day a young, newly married Jewish couple arrived on vacation. They were Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand. The carpenter enthusiastically gave Richard a Bible. Richard had read the Scriptures once but had gotten nothing from them. However, this time, his heart was stirred. He didn’t know why, until he learned the secret. The carpenter and his wife had spent many long hours every day praying for his salvation. “The Bible he gave me was written not so much in words, but in flames of love fired by his prayers,” Richard would write later.
The carpenter spoke about God’s unconditional love for the Jewish people (Dt. 7:6–7; Jer. 31:3), the Messianic fulfillments in Jesus, and Jesus’ purpose in coming to Earth: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (Jn. 3:17). The Spirit of God freed Richard’s heart, and he believed. Sabina also came to faith and was so deeply changed she soon brought others to the Messiah. >>>>
Mother’s father worked as a carpenter. On this particular day, he was building some crates for the clothes his church was sending to some orphanage in China.
On his way home, he reached into his shirt pocket to find his glasses, but they were gone. When he mentally replayed his earlier actions, he realized what happened; the glasses had slipped out of his pocket unnoticed and fallen into one of the crates, which he had nailed shut. His brand new glasses were heading for China!
The Great Depression was at it’s height and Grandpa had six children. He had spent $20 for those glasses that very morning. He was upset by the thought of having to buy another pair.
“It’s not fair,” he told God as he drove home in frustration.
“I’ve been very faithful in giving of my time and money to your work, and now this.”
Several months later, the director of the orphanage was on furlough in the United States.
He wanted to visit all the churches that supported him in China, so he came to speak one Sunday at my grandfather’s small church in Chicago. The missionary began by thanking the people for their faithfulness in supporting the orphanage.
“But most of all,” he said, "I must thank you for the glasses you sent last year.
You see, the Communists had just swept through the orphanage, destroying everything, including my glasses. I was desperate. Even if I had the money, there was simply no way of replacing those glasses.
Along with not being able to see well, I experienced headaches every day, so my coworkers and I were much in prayer about this. Then your crates arrived. When my staff removed the covers, they found a pair of glasses lying on top.
The missionary paused long enough to let his words sink in. Then, still gripped with the wonder of it all, he continued: “Folks, when I tried on the glasses, it was as though they had been custom-made just for me! I want to thank you for being a part of that.”
The people listened, happy for the miraculous glasses. But the missionary surely must have confused their church with another, they thought. There were no glasses on their list of items to be sent overseas.
But sitting quietly in the back, with tears streaming down his face, an ordinary carpenter realized the Master Carpenter had used him in an extraordinary way.
Its very true God loves everyone, as God knows that many people are challenged by wicked spirit would are familiar to their tolerances and will hide with people who don't even believe that these wicked spirits are there ..... So when people are abusive to me then rejecting them would be the natural way to be, but if God has a plan then you have to go back and make up and let go of the offences, as God loves these people who have wicked spirits ... God don't love the wicked spirits but God does love the person who is infested and people not infested by these wicked spirits ..... Most people have some wicked spirits, or they must seek deliverance of spirits a lot of times like daily
There are more words in the Oxford English Dictionary than any one individual could possibly know.
In the second edition of the 20-volume series, published in 1989, there are 171,476 words in current use and 41,156 obsolete words. With so many to choose from, could you select just three to live by? The three that come to mind when I pondered this question are faith, hope and love. To me, these are more than just words—they are powerful forces in life that fuel my spirit to live, survive and thrive. As water, oxygen and food are needed to fuel the body…faith, hope and love are needed to fuel the spirit.
Without faith, hope and love, it would be difficult to live a life full of meaning and purpose.
When life events shake our foundation, it is our faith that provides us with the courage to endure and overcome hardship. When fear gets the best of us, our hope for a better tomorrow keeps us moving forward. And as the Apostle Paul wrote, “There are three things that remain—faith, hope and love—and the greatest of these is love.”Love is a gift from God Himself; it allows us to overcome hate, evil, resentment and other destructive emotions. Our love for ourselves and for others defines what we want in life and the actions we take to achieve it.
In her memoir, The Choice: Embrace the Possible, author and holocaust survivor, Dr. Edith Eva Eger wrote, “At Auschwitz, at Mauthausen, on the Death March, I survived by drawing on my inner world. I found hope and faith in life within me, even when I was surrounded by starvation and torture and death.”
She survived because her hope and faith remained strong; she knew that she wanted to live so she never gave up. Her love for herself and life got her through this horrid time in history.
Our lives are enhanced when hope, love and faith are the essence of our existence. They help us to live each and every day with meaning and purpose.
Lord, let hope, faith and love infuse our being, living and thinking.
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