Transforming Spirit

Transforming Spirit

Have you ever comprehended how marvelous is the transforming power of God?
May I use the ministry of one of my lifelong heroes to illustrate that
transforming
power of God available this morning through the Spirit of God.

Nowhere on earth was the transforming power of God’s Spirit more needed than
the land to which CT Studd gave his life. Born in 1858 to an incredible
successful
English family with vast real estate and business interests all over the the
British Colonial Empire. In the 1880’s, CT inherited a substantial amount
of money—several hundred thousand dollars in that day, tens of millions of
dollars in ours.

On January 13th, 1887, CT and his wife wrote nine checks and gave away their
fortune as carefully as a business man invests in some ‘gilt-edged’
securities.
They chose safe and high yielding securities in the Bank of Heaven. This was
no fool’s plunge on their part, but a public testimony before God and man
that they believed God’s Word to be the surest thing on earth. God promised
an hundredfold interest in this life, not to speak of the next. This became
a reality for all those who believe God's Word and act on it.

On July 3, 1888, he wrote the following letter to General Booth the founder
of the Salvation Army explaining why he and his new bride gave everything to
God:

“Henceforth our bank is in heaven. You see we are rather
afraid—notwithstanding the great earthly safety of the Bank of England—we
are, I say, rather afraid
that they may both break on the Judgment Day. And this step has been taken
not without most definite reference to God’s Word, and the command of the
Lord
Jesus, Who said, “Sell that ye have and give alms. Make for yourselves
purses which wax not old.” ’

When we had given all our money away, I packed up my new bride, and went to
China (15 yrs.), then India (6 yrs.) and finally Africa (21 yrs.) as
missionaries
for the rest of our days. That is the gift of giving that God prompted in my
heart and all those with me who love Him more than life!

My ambition and prayer had always been to die a soldier's death on the field
of battle, and not be a drag on my fellow-workers through months or years as
an invalid. I was a museum of diseases when I left China, and was
afterwards hardly ever free. I had a life long battle with asthma, recurring
malaria
and dysentery as well as the chills and pains of gallstones ever with me in
varying combination. Yet God enabled me to go on working not 8 but 18 hours
a day, addressing, often for hours, thousands of his fellow-creatures in the
heart of Africa’s darkest jungles, telling them of Jesus Christ and the
wonders
of His Love-and this to the very end of my days.

Think about what came out of the gift of my life to Christ: through the
fortune Igave to Christ Hudson Taylor was helped in the founding of the
China Inland
Mission, George Mueller’s orphanages were expanded in London, great
Salvation Army extensions were made, and the founding of the Moody Bible
Institute.

In Africa when I began to invest in the natives in 1910 I arrived to
villages of black skinned, naked cannibals who were totally given over to
witchcraft.
By night they spent their time with orgies to the demons, worshiping the
gods of darkness in every impure act imaginable. To the pulsating beat of
the
drums, dancing by dim and flickering fires passion gave in to beast-like
frenzy. Sometimes it was incest, sometimes it was adultery, sometimes it was
murder,
always it was hard, godless and cruel.

By day there was hatred and guilt. Stealing others wives, sometimes
murdering and eating even their own relatives. Always hateful, always mean,
always deceptive,
always harsh and always cruel. Always enduring a mind tormented by lives of
shame and filth. That was the picture at my arrival in 1910 to the North
east
corner of the Belgian Congo and the 22 tribal settlement areas.”

Is it possible to change the entire disposition of a murderous cannibal? Is
it possible to see a lifetime of lust, filth, gross immorality and
debauchery
stop? Is it possible to see murderers become loving, cannibals become
tender, adulterers become faithful, demonized become holy? Yes to all these
and much
more. In 21 years of constant labors CT and his team saw God totally
transform those 22 villages. That is the transforming power of God.

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Listen to
Dr. John Barnett