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A Good Word

Celebrating Milestones of Faith

by Jill Briscoe

In Life Verses: The Bible’s Impact on Famous Lives, Volume 2, by F. W. Boreham, the author tells the spiritual journey of William Penn, Quaker, philanthropist, and founder of Pennsylvania. Son of Admiral William Penn, the younger William was a contemporary of the Puritans. Milton was putting finishing touches to Paradise Lost, and John Bunyan was writing Pilgrim’s Progress while languishing in Bedford Jail for his faith. All influenced Penn, but it was Thomas Loe, a simple Quaker preacher who was preaching the gospel in the British Isles as Penn grew up that God used as the catalyst to revolutionize this man for good and for God. Three times their paths crossed, and God used this simple preacher with fire in his bones and the love of God in his heart.

The first time Penn heard the Quaker preach was in Cork in Ireland, the town where Penn grew up on his father’s Irish estate. He was 12 years old. His father, hearing that the preacher had the town flocking to his meetings, invited him to the estate to speak to his household. As the 12-year-old Penn looked around, he saw a servant deeply moved. He looked at the Admiral and to his amazement saw tears running down his father’s face. He wondered greatly about the God that lived in and through Loe’s uncompromising preaching and its powerful effect on the people that day. The second time Loe was used in Penn’s spiritual journey was a turning point for him.

I can think of pivotal sermons that have winged their way through my defenses and found a resting place in my heart, setting my sails in a different direction than I thought I would ever go. Like sitting in the great Harringay Arena in London as a student, listening to a young evangelist from America named Billy Graham calling the youth of England to find the plan God had for their lives and do it! The Lord used that night to turn my attention to a world outside mine that needed reaching for Christ.

Can you pinpoint any such words that the Spirit of God used to take you deeper into the mysterious workings of God in your soul? Has God paid a visit to your life as He did to William Penn’s? It does us good to take note of our past directives and trace the Spirit’s footsteps.

In Penn’s words: “God visited me with a certain testimony of his Eternal Word through a Quaker named Thomas Loe.” A commentator notes that at that meeting: “Penn was exceedingly reached and wept much. He renounced any hope he had ever cherished in order that he might realize this one.”

I remember being at an intercollegiate conference while still in school. I had been converted about a year, and I was taken to this wonderful gathering of Christian youth in between semesters. I sat under evangelical teaching from the epistles of Paul by a master Bible teacher. At the end of the conference there was a call to set our sails for missions. I didn’t know what it was all about, but under the insistence of the Spirit that night, I was ready to do whatever God wanted me to do with my life. But I remember being deeply convicted that I needed to “renounce any hope but this one” if I were to impact my world. I sat down by the side of my friend Elspeth at that final meeting, as the speaker called for renewed commitment and allowed God to deal with my ambitions and dreams as He would. I was at the point where I was, “exceedingly reached and wept much!”

Have you had milestones in your life of faith? They will, of course, be different from mine and from everyone else’s. All of us, being unique creatures, will have our special way of understanding what God is saying to our soul. The way it happens doesn’t matter. That it happens, does! Each, in our different way, need to come to a point of no return when we say to God: “Anytime, anywhere, any how!”

This article adapted from one that appeared in Telling the Truth, Jill Briscoe’s newsletter.

Excerpted by permission from Gifted for Leadership/Christianity Today International.

www.giftedforleadership.com ©2007

JILL BRISCOE is executive editor of Just Between Us, a magazine for ministry wives and women in leadership, and serves on the boards of World Relief and Christianity Today International.

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