"'Not called' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.

Put your ear down to the Bible, and year Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin.

Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help.

Go and stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there.

And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world."

- William Booth

Allow Me To Re-introduce The Christ

This is good. Be sure to listen to the whole thing.

(Don't forget to pause the i-pod music so that you can listen)

A Letter From Brainerd

The following is a portion of a letter from David Brainerd to an anonymous friend of his. Though it was written about 262 years ago, I felt like it was written to me personally. His language is a little bit foreign to us now days, so read carefully. This is a letter to you.

(You may not have heard of David Brainerd. Here is a little bit of information about him that I gathered from the little bit I have read of him:
David Brainerd [1718-47] spent his life for his Lord. He was a man of prayer and devotional life like few who ever walked this earth. He was a young missionary to the Indians during the Great Awakening of our early colonial history. He had hoped to marry Jerusha Edwards, daughter of Jonathan Edwards, that they might spend their lives serving their King; however, he was completely "burned out" in the service of his God, and died at the Edwards' home in Northampton at the age of 29. Before he died, he said to his beloved Jerusha, "If I thought I should not see you, and be happy with you in another world, I could not bear to part with you. But we shall spend an happy eternity together." She, who attended him during the last year of his life, contracted the same disease of tuberculosis and died a few months later at the age of 18.
David Brainerd counted not his life dear unto death, and in a letter to his brother said, "I declare now I am dying; I would not have spent my life otherwise for all the world.")

Here is the letter; I have emboldened a few places that I especially like:

"How amazing it is, that the living who know they must die, should notwithstanding, 'put far away the evil,' in a season of health and prosperity; and live at such an awful distance from a familiarity with the grave and the great concern beyond it!...How rare are the instances of those who live and act, from day to day; as on the verge of Eternity; striving to fill up all their remaining moments in the service, and to the honour of their great Master! We insensibly trifle away time, while we seem to have enough of it; and are so strangely amused, as in a great measure to lose a sense of the holiness and blessed qualifications necessary to prepare us to be inhabitants of the heavenly paradise. But O, dear Sir, a dying bed, if we enjoy our reason clearly, will give another view of things. I have now, for more than three weeks, lain under the greatest degree of weakness; the greater part of the time, expecting daily and hourly to enter into the eternal world: sometimes have been so far gone, as to be wholly speechless, for some hours together. O of what vast importance has a holy spiritual life been appeared to me at this season!

I have longed to call upon all my friends, to make it their business to live to God; and especially all that are designed for, or engaged in the service of the sanctuary. O dear Sir, do not think it enough, to live at the rate of common Christians. Alas, to how little purpose do they often converse, when they meet together! The visits, even of those who are called Christians indeed, are frequently barren; and conscience cannot but condemn us for the misimprovement of time, while we have been conversant with them. But the way to enjoy the divine presence, and to be fitted for distinguishing service for God, is to live a life of devotion and constant self-dedication to Him; observing the motions and dispositions of our own hearts, whence we may learn the corruptions that lodge there, and our constant need of help from God for the performance of the least duty. And O dear Sir, let me beseech you frequently to attend the great and precious duties of secret fasting and prayer.

I have a secret thought, for some things I have observed, that God may perhaps design you for some singular service in the world... Suffer me therefore, finally, to intreat you earnestly to give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them, and never be content with superficial knowledge. By this means, your thoughts will gradually grow weighty and judicious; and you hereby will be possessed of a valuable treasure, out of which you may produce 'things new and old,' to the glory of God"