For the next few posts I would like to share the writings of other people, people who have been helpful to me in recent days, not only in my preaching but most importantly in my walk with Christ. We begin with Ray Stedman.
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Ray Stedman was a well-respected pastor, for 40 years at Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, CA. He was born in N. Dakota and grew up in Montana (Miles City; for a brief time in his youth he was a bull-rider). These quotes are taken from a web page that PBC has maintained since his death in 1992.
In Ray's book Authentic Christianity, he tells the story of Paul's escape from Damascus by being let down over the wall in a basket. Ray commented that Paul was useless to God until he became a basket case! He adds that we also are useless until we are 'utterly bankrupt before some demand of life, and then discover it to be a blessing,' because it forces us to 'depend wholly on the Lord at work in you.'
In a sermon he preached just a year before his death, he quoted Paul's statements about our "light affliction" working in us "an exceeding great and eternal weight of glory" and followed that with a call to break out of the limitations of this-world thinking:
"The world tells us, if you don't take it now, you're never going to get another chance. I have seen that misunderstanding drive people into forsaking their marriages after 30 or40 years and running off with another, usually younger, person, hoping they can still fulfill their dreams because they feel life is slipping away from them. Christians are not to think that way. This life is a school, a training period where we are being prepared for something that is incredibly great but is yet to come. I don't understand all that is involved in that, but I believe it, and sometimes I can hardly wait until it happens."
In the same message, Ray spoke of being readied for "something tremendous" and warned his congregation, "Don't succumb to the philosophy that you have to have it all now or you will never have another chance. You can pass by a lot of things now and be content because you know that what God is sending you now is just what you need to get you ready for what he has waiting for you when this life is over. One of my favorite quotations is the words of Robert Browning, which you sometimes see carved on sundials:
Grow old along with me!
The
best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made."
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