Illustrations

Though he would later be acclaimed as one of the greatest inventors of history, Thomas Edison’s school career lasted three months. The teacher believed he was incapable of learning anything and sent him home. Edison’s mother taught him, and he was on his way to a lifetime of overcoming what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles. Among his most famous inventions were the commercial incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the fluoroscope. Most of his inventions required months if not years of dedication to overcoming obstacles before seeing any results.

When silver is mined from the ground it is commonly mixed with a number of other elements. In order to get pure silver that can be used for commercial or industrial purposes, it must be refined. Silver has an extraordinarily high melting point—it must be heated to nearly 2,200 degrees in order to be refined to complete purity. Only when it has been through that process does the silver become useful for its intended function. Beautiful service pieces, high tech equipment, and collectible coins all become possible once the silver has been refined.

“Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love. There are some things only learned in a fiery furnace.”— Oswald Chambers

Source: Run Today’s Race, Oswald Chambers

In his book The Pursuit of God, author A.W. Tozer wrote the following:

“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”

In each day there are 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, and 86,400 seconds-and every one of them is a precious gift from God.

Time is something we feel we never have enough of, yet we give it away so easily. Someone once said, “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”

David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and explorer who spent thirty-three years in the heart of Africa. He endured much suffering as he labored to spread the Gospel and open the continent to missionaries. This godly missionary once remarked:

There is an old story that illustrates the principle of honor within marriage. A drunkard husband, spending the evening with his jovial companions at a tavern, boasted that if he took a group of his friends home with him at midnight and asked his Christian wife to get up and cook supper for them, she would do it without complaint. The crowd considered it a vain boast and dared him to try it. So the drunken crowd followed him home, and he made the unreasonable demands of his wife.

During World War II, the United States government became concerned that a number of German spies were operating in America, sending information back to Germany regarding Allied war plans and specific troop and ship movements. To keep them from impacting the war effort, the Office of War Information launched a national campaign around the slogan “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” It was a solemn warning to people not to repeat information that might be damaging or even deadly if it fell into the wrong hands.

For more than thirty years, archaeologist Howard Carter searched the deserts of Egypt for something that most people thought didn’t exist—the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Most experts believed that everything in the Valley of the Kings had already been discovered, but Carter continued his search. Eventually after five more years without result, Carter’s sponsor, Lord Carnarvon of England, declared that he would stop funding the search.

Have you heard the story of Waylon Prendergast? The man from Tampa, Florida, had been out drinking when he decided to rob a house on his way home. The drunken man forced his way into a house, filled a suitcase he found there with the valuables he discovered, and made his way to the living room. In his stupor he decided it would be a good idea to set a fire to cover his tracks, so he ignited a blaze before making his way out the back door.