Village Schools of the Bible

God has prepared great things for those who love Him (I Cor 2:9)

by Monty Sholund

I have been pondering how powerfully God is using various people whom we know, many of them graduates of the Village Schools of the Bible. It is amazing what God can do through an individual who is totally committed to knowing Him, sharing Him, and enjoying Him with others. The verse quoted above is a thrilling incentive and promise: No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. I, with you, long to be totally available so that all that God has prepared for us will be fulfilled in our abandonment to His will, to the fellowship of love to which the verse refers.

From time to time one picks up an article which is challenging and encouraging, which is provocative and powerful, as it illustrates what God can do with just some individual who is eagerly available to know and to do His will. I share with you one such article today and trust it will be a blessing to you. Dr. A. J. Gordon, who gives us a sketch of David Brainerd who was a man of great spiritual power, writes it. The work which he accomplished by prayer was simply marvelous. Brainerd's early Christian service was with American Indians. Dr. Gordon, in giving a sketch of Brainerd's experience, says of him: In the depths of these forests alone, he was unable to speak the language of the Indians, but he spent whole days literally in prayer. What was he praying for? He knew the he could not reach these savages. He did not understand their language. If he wanted to speak at all, he must find somebody who could vaguely interpret his thoughts; therefore he knew that anything he could do must be absolutely dependent upon the power of God. So he spent whole days in prayer simply that the power of the Holy Spirit might come upon him so unmistakably that these people should not be able to stand before him. What was his answer? Once he preached through a drunken interpreter, a man so intoxicated that he could hardly stand up. That was the best he could do. Yet scores were converted through that sermon. We account for it only in that it was the tremendous power of God behind him. And God used his life to stir others to be free from the bondage of the safe, successful and familiar.

A. C. Dixon comments as follows: "William Carey read of Brainerd's life and he was so moved by it that he went to India. Henry Martyn read his life and by its impulse, he also went to India. Payson read it, as a young man of twenty, and he said he had never been so impressed by anything in this life as by the story. Murray McCheyne read it, and was powerfully impressed by it. The prayer and consecration of that one man, David Brainerd, did more for the great missionary revival of the nineteenth century than did any other single force. The hidden life, a life whose days are spent in communion with God in trying to reach the Source of power, is the life that moves the world. Prayer without faith is but husk, with faith it contains the seed-corn of a million harvests. When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do; when we depend upon education, we get what education can do; when we depend upon man, we get what man can do; but when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do!"

I was hugely challenged a couple of years ago when my pastor. Dr. George Kenworthy, referred to William Carey, who, like Brainerd, was eager to experience the power of God available to any individual. Dr. Kenworthy listed some of the great things Carey achieved in India over the forty years he lived there. He translated the Bible into dozens of Indian dialects and languages. He planted churches through the Ganges Delta and even sent forth missionaries to other nations from some of them. He organized a network of schools for Indian children, including girls, and finally launched Serampore College where Christian theology was taught alongside Indian literature and Western science. He was a founder of the Indian Agricultural society and published essays on the improvement of crops. He was a respected Professor at Fort Williams College and brought out critical editions of the ancient Hindu writings. He set up a leper hospital and a mission to seamen. He worked to eliminate infanticide, abortion and sati (the ritual burning to death of widows.)

Each year Carey used the occasion of his birthday to look back over his life and take stock of his spiritual progress. Writing to his son, Jabez, on his birthday in 1819, he confessed, " am this day 58 but how little I have done for God." On his birthday in l839 he wrote: "I am this day 78 years old, a monument of Divine mercy and goodness, though on review of my life I find much, very much for which I ought to be humbled in the dust. My direct and positive sins are innumerable, my negligence in the Lord's work has been great, I have not promoted His cause nor sought His glory as I ought. Not withstanding all this, I am spared till now and am retained in His service and I trust I am received into the divine favor through Him. I wish to be more and more entirely devoted to His service, more completely sanctified and more habitually exercising all the Christian graces, bringing forth the fruits of righteousness to the praise and honor of that Savior who gave His life a sacrifice for me."

How important it is for all of us to have a periodic inventory of our walk and work with the Lord. It is so easy to sink into unproductive, impersonal church-life and to become content with the familiar, the convenient, the costless, the oft-fruitless round of the socially and spiritually acceptable routine of reading, casual praying and attending a quota of meetings. Am I making a difference in the world? May God sharpen our vision of what we can experience as those who love Him. Nothing is too great, nothing too costly, nothing too daunting, when we hear His call. What He has prepared for us is experiencing the impossible with Him. Let's not miss it!

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