Topic : Dedication, cf. commitment

David Brainerd was an American colonial missionary to the Indians who died at the age of twenty-nine. His diary reveals a young man intensely committed to God. Brainerd once said to Jonathan Edwards: “I do not go to heaven to be advanced but to give honor to God. It is no matter where I shall be stationed in heaven, whether I have a high seat or a low seat there...My heaven is to please God and glorify Him, and give all to Him, and to be wholly devoted to His glory.”

Today in the Word, November 19, 1997

I will tell you the secret: God has had all that there was of me. There have been men with greater brains than I, even with greater opportunities, but from the day I got the poor of London on my heart and caught a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with me and them, on that day I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life.

William Booth

Source unknown

The first date Jim (Elliot) asked me for was to a missionary meeting at Moody Church in Chicago, late in April. Not surprising that he would choose an event like this rather than a concert or dinner out. The speaker was one of the daughters of the famous missionary to Africa C.T. Studd. She told of her father’s last hours. He lay on his cot, gazing around the little hut and at his few possessions. “I wish I had something to leave to each of you,” he said to the handful of people present, “but I gave it all to Jesus long ago.”

Passion and Purity, Elizabeth Elliot, Revell, 1984, p. 43

“Will you please tell me in a word,” said a Christian woman to a minister, “what your idea of consecration is?”

Holding out a blank sheet of paper the pastor replied, “It is to sign your name at the bottom of this blank sheet, and to let God fill it in as He will.”

The Baptist Challenge

In his book One Crowded Hour, Tim Bowden describes an incident in Borneo in 1964. Nepalese fighters known as Gurkhas were asked if they would be willing to jump from airplanes into combat against the Indonesians. The Gurkhas didn’t clearly understand what was involved, but they bravely said they would do it, asking only that the plane fly slowly over a swampy area and no higher than 100 feet. When they were told that the parachutes would not have time to open at that height, the Gurkhas replied, “Oh, you didn’t mention parachutes before!”

Our Daily Bread, January 30, 1994

Lt. Col. Terence Otway, commander of the 9th Parachute Battalion of the British 6th Airborne Division, has an assignment to destroy the four powerful guns of a coastal battery in Merville, overlooking Sword Beach. If the 9th could not complete the task on time, naval gunfire would try. The bombardment was to begin at 5:30 a.m.

Otway had an elaborate strategy to overrun the guns, but the plan misfired. An initial air attack was a total failure, and then his battalion was dropped across almost 50 miles of the countryside. Of his 700-man battalion, Otway could find only 150 soldiers.

Nevertheless, the men improvised brilliantly. They cut gaps through the outer barricade of the gun battery with wire cutters. One group cleared a path through the minefields, crawling on hands and knees while feeling for tripwires and prodding the ground ahead with bayonets. Now they waited for the order to attack.

Otway knew casualties would be high, but the guns had to be silenced. “Everybody in!” he yelled. “We’re going to take this bloody battery!”

And in they went.

Red flares burst over their heads, and machine-gun fire poured out to meet them. Through the deadly barrage, the paratroopers crawled, ran, dropped and ran some more. Mines exploded. There were yells and screams and the flash of grenades as paratroopers piled into the trenches and fought hand to hand with the enemy.

Germans began surrendering. Lt. Michael Dowling and his men knocked out the four guns. Then Dowling found Otway. He stood before his colonel, his right hand holding the left side of his chest.

“Battery taken as ordered, sir,” Dowling declared. The battle had lasted just 15 minutes. Otway fired a yellow flare—the success signal—a quarter of an hour before the naval bombardment was to start.

Moments later Otway found Dowling’s lifeless body. He had been dying at the time he made his report.

Reader’s Digest, June, 1994, pp.196-197

If Thou canst make so wonderful
This thrilling thing—a tree,
I wonder, Lord, what Thou couldst make
If man should yield to Thee;

If every time earth-born root
Drank from the wells of God,
If all day long his every breath
Answered Thy slighted not'

Bent, twisted, gnarled, time-eaten,
But a glorious thing this tree,
With hands and heart uplifted
Seeking the face of Thee!

O Thou who made s wondrous fair
This trilling thing, my tree,
Because its every hour is lived
an offering unto Thee,

Oh, take me, root and branch and all
(The years go on apace!)
Grow up in me that radiant life
That shines, Lord, from Thy face!

Resource, Sept./Oct., 1992, p. 9

Former pro basketball star Bill Bradley tells that at the age of 15 he attended a summer basketball camp that was run by Easy Ed Macauley, a former college and pro star. “Just remember that if you’re not working at your game to the utmost of your ability,” Macauley told his assembled campers, “there will be someone out there somewhere with equal ability who will be working to the utmost of his ability. And one day you’ll play each other, and he’ll have the advantage.”

Our Daily Bread, April 3

Charles Spurgeon was saved on January 6, 1850, and on February 1 he wrote the following prayer of consecration: O great and unsearchable God, who knowest my heart, and triest all my ways; with a humble dependence upon the support of Thy Holy Spirit, I yield up myself to Thee; as Thy own reasonable sacrifice, I return to Thee Thine own. I would be for ever, unreservedly, perpetually Thine; whilst I am on earth, I would serve Thee; and may I enjoy Thee and praise Thee for ever! Amen.

Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 235

• The motto of every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or schoolmaster, ought to be “Devoted for life.”

Adoniram Judson in To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson

Persistence paid off for American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the planet Pluto. After astronomers calculated a probable orbit for this “suspected” heavenly body, Tombaugh took up the search in March 1929. Time magazine recorded the investigation: “He examined scores of telescopic photographs each showing tens of thousands of star images in pairs under the dual microscope. It often took three days to scan a single pair. It was exhausting, eye-cracking work—in his own words, ‘brutal, tediousness.’ And it went on for months. Star by star, he examined 20 million images. Then on February 18, 1930, as he was blinking at a pair of photographs in the constellation Gemini, ‘I suddenly came upon the image of Pluto!” It was the most dramatic astronomic discovery in nearly 100 years.

Today in the Word, November 26, 1991

• Nothing that is valuable is achieved without effort. Fritz
• It does not take great men to do great things; it only takes consecrated men. - Philipps Brooks

Source unknown

Kreisler, the famous violinist, testified to this point when he said, “Narrow is the road that leads to the life of a violinist. Hour after hour, day after day and week after week, for years, I lived with my violin. There were so many things that I wanted to do that I had to leave undone; there were so many places I wanted to go that I had to miss if I was to master the violin. The road that I traveled was a narrow road and the way was hard.”

Source unknown

Not long ago Newsweek magazine reported on what it called the new wave of mountain men. It’s estimated that there are some sixty thousand serious mountain climbers in the U.S. But in the upper echelon of serious climbers is a small elite group knows as “hard men.” For them climbing mountains and scaling sheer rock faces is a way of life. In many cases, climbing is a part of their whole commitment to life. And their ultimate experience is called free soloing: climbing with no equipment and no safety ropes. John Baker is considered by many to be the best of the hard men. He has free-soloed some of the most difficult rock faces in the U.S. with no safety rope and no climbing equipment of any kind. His skill has not come easily. It has been acquired through commitment, dedication and training. His wife says she can’t believe his dedication. When John isn’t climbing, he’s often to be found in his California home hanging by his fingertips to strengthen his arms and hands.

Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p. 236

At a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Bobby Richardson, former New York Yankee second baseman, offered a prayer that is a classic in brevity and poignancy: “Dear God, Your will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen.”

Source unknown

Plato wrote the first sentence of his famous Republic nine different ways before he was satisfied.

Cicero practiced speaking before friends every day for thirty years to perfect his elocution.

Noah Webster labored 36 years writing his dictionary, crossing the Atlantic twice to gather material.

Milton rose at 4:00 a.m. every day in order to have enough hours for his Paradise Lost.

Gibbon spent 26 years on his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Bryant rewrote one of his poetic masterpieces 99 times before publication, and it became a classic.

Source unknown

• Johnny Fulton was run over by a car at the age of three. He suffered crushed hips, broken ribs, a fractured skull, and compound fractures in his legs. It did not look as if he would live. But he would not give up. In fact, he later ran the half-mile in less than two minutes.
• Walt Davis was totally paralyzed by polio when he was nine years old, but he did not give up. He became the Olympic high jump champion in 1952.
• Shelly Mann was paralyzed by polio when she was five years old, but she would not give up. She eventually claimed eight different swimming records for the U.S. and won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
• In 1938, Karoly Takacs, a member of Hungary’s world-champion pistol shooting team and sergeant in the army, lost his right hand when a grenade he was holding exploded. But Takacs did not give. up. He learned to shoot left-handed and won gold medals in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics.
• Lou Gehrig was such a clumsy ball player that the boys in his neighborhood would not let him play on their team. But he was committed. He did not give up. Eventually, his name was entered into baseball’s Hall of Fame.
• Woodrow Wilson could not read until he was ten years old. But he was a committed person. He became the twenty-eighth President of the United States.
• At the age of seven, he had to go to work to help support his family. At nine, his mother died. At twenty-two, he lost his job as a store clerk. At twenty-three, he went into debt and became a partner in a small store. At twenty-six, his partner died leaving him a huge debt. By the age of thirty-five, he had been defeated twice when running for a seat in Congress. At the age of thirty-seven, he won the election. At thirty-nine, he lost his reelection bid. At forty-one, his four-year-old son died. At forty-two, he was rejected for a land officer role. At forty-five, he ran for the Senate and lost. At forty-seven, he was defeated for the nomination for Vice President. At forty-nine, he ran for Senate again and lost again. At the age of fifty-one, he was elected President of the United States. During his second term of office, he was assassinated. But his name lives on among the greats in U.S. history—Abraham Lincoln.

Heaven Bound Living, Knofel Stanton, Standard, 1989, pp. 43-44

In the December 1987 LIFE magazine, Brad Darrach wrote:

“Meryl Streep is gray with cold. In IRONWEED, her new movie, she plays a ragged derelict who dies in a cheap hotel room, and for more than half an hour before the scene she has been hugging a huge bag of ice cubes in an agonizing effort to experience how it feels to be a corpse. Now the camera begins to turn. Jack Nicholson, her derelict lover, sobs and screams and shakes her body. But through take after take—and between takes too—Meryl just lies like an iced mackerel. Frightened, a member of the crew whispers to the director, Hector Babenco, ‘What’s going on? She’s not breathing!’

“Babenco gives a start. In Meryl’s body there is absolutely no sign of life! He hesitates, then lets the scene proceed. Yet even after the shot is made and set struck, Meryl continues to lie there, gray and still. Only after 10 minutes have passed does she slowly, slowly emerge from the coma-like state into which she has deliberately sunk.

Babenco is amazed. ‘Now THAT,’ he mutters in amazement ‘is acting! THAT is an actress!’“

Total dedication amazes people. How wonderful to be so dedicated to Christ that people will say, “Now THAT is a Christian!”

LIFE Magazine, December 1987.

• C.T. Studd, the famous English cricketer and member of the English XI cricket team, gave away his vast wealth and became a missionary a century ago. His slogan was, “If Jesus Christ be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.
• In 1912 William Borden, a graduate of Yale University, left one of America’s greatest family fortunes to be a missionary to China. He got as far as Egypt and died of cerebral meningitis. He died—and was only in his 20s—but there was “no reserve, no retreat, no regrets” in his consecration to God.
• When D.L. Moody was visiting England he heard Henry V. Arley say, “the world has yet to see what God will do with a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to the Holy Spirit.” Moody would later comment, “He said ‘a man.’” He did not say a ‘great man’ nor ‘a learned man’ nor a ‘rich man’ but simply ‘a man.’ I am a man, and it lies within the man himself whether he will or will not make that entire and full consecration. I will try my utmost to be that man.”

Sources unknown

Govern my heart, that I may be willing and even eager to profit, lest the opportunity which thou now givest me be lost through my sluggishness. Be pleased at the same time to root out all vicious desires of seeking thee. Finally, let the only end at which I aim be so to qualify myself in early life, that when I grow up I may serve thee in whatever station thou mayest assign me.

John Calvin

Source unknown

Bertoldo de Giovanni is a name even the most enthusiastic lover of art is unlikely to recognize. He was the pupil of Donatello, the greatest sculptor of his time, and he was the teacher of Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor of all time. Michelangelo was only 14 years old when he came to Bertoldo, but it was already obvious that he was enormously gifted. Bertoldo was wise enough to realize that gifted people are often tempted to coast rather than to grow, and therefore he kept trying to pressure his young prodigy to work seriously at his art. One day he came into the studio to find Michelangelo toying with a piece of sculpture far beneath his abilities. Bertoldo grabbed a hammer, stomped across the room, and smashed the work into tiny pieces, shouting this unforgettable message, “Michelangelo, talent is cheap; dedication is costly!”

Gary Inrig, A Call to Excellence

A woman rushed up to famed violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and cried: “I’d give my life to play as beautifully as you do.” Kreisler replied, “I did.”

Bits and Pieces, Vol F, #41

A wife who is 85% faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ.

Vance Havner

Source unknown

I think of David Livingstone, the pioneer missionary to Africa, who walked over 29,000 miles. His wife died early in their ministry and he faced stiff opposition from his Scottish brethren. He ministered half blind. His kind of perseverance spurs me on. As I run, I remember the words in his diary: Send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. Sever me from any tie but the tie that binds me to Your service and to Your heart.

Joseph Stowell, Through The Fire, Victor Books, 1988, p. 150

Let Me Burn Out For You

In his book Facing Loneliness, J. Oswald Sanders writes, 'the round of pleasure or the amassing of wealth are but vain attempts to escape from the persistent ache...The millionaire is usually a lonely man and the comedian is often more unhappy than his audience.'

Sanders goes on the emphasize that being successful often fails to produce satisfaction. Then he refers to Henry Martyn, a distinguished scholar, as an example of what he is talking about.

Martyn, a Cambridge University student, was honored at only 20 years of age for his achievements in mathematics. In fact, he was given the highest recognition possible in that field. And yet he felt an emptiness inside. He said that instead of finding fulfillment in his achievements, he had "only grasped a shadow.'

After evaluating his life's goals, Martyn sailed to India as a missionary at the age of 24. When he arrived, he prayed, 'lord, let me burn out for You.? In the next 7 years that preceded his death, he translated the New Testament into three difficult Eastern languages. These notable achievements were certainly not passing 'shadows.'

Our Daily Bread, January 21, 1994