“Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God!”
William Carey (1761-1834)
At the Northampton Baptist Association convention the morning of May 30, 1792, William Carey spoke on Isaiah 54: ‘Enlarge the place of thy tent…!’ He went on to once again urge his fellow ministers to begin a missionary society for spreading the Gospel. “Brothers,” he exhorted them in conclusion, “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God!”
Yet the next day William could not believe Andrew Fuller, the ferocious bulldog William thought was an ally, actually moved to adjourn the convention. Once again the association was concluding its annual meeting with no approval for a missionary society. William hesitated to protest. After all, at 30 he was surely the youngest minister in the association. Shouldn’t he defer to older, more experienced ministers? William was by nature reticent anyway. Rarely did he ever persist right away when rebuffed. But this rebuff was one too many.
“Is nothing going to be done again, sir?” William shouted at Fuller.
The ministers seemed in shock. Was this mild-mannered young William Carey who was all red-faced and shouting? Andrew Fuller was red-faced himself. He looked like William had slapped his face. Was he angry with William? Now silent, William watched in wonder as Fuller harangued, bullied, scolded and reprimanded the other ministers like an avenging angel. Within minutes the association had passed the following resolution:
Resolved, that a plan be prepared against the next ministers’
meeting at Kettering, for forming a Baptist Society for
propagating the Gospel among the Heathens.
The door was at last opening to William Carey’s missionary society![source: William Carey: Father of Modern Missions by S. Pearce Carey, 1923]
I have a Charismatic brother in Christ. He has often been telling me lately how there are new young (charismatic believers) moving down into the inner-city of Kansas City. I may be speculating slightly but it seems that as people gain a deeper understanding of God’s word, as they are thrust into the depths of understanding who God is, what the state of man is without Christ, and Christ as the only mediator between God and man; you would think that my peeps within Reformed theology would be those at the forefront in transforming society, and in fact some are doing this precisely.
Let me make a quick distinction which I may elaborate on at a later time. It seems we’re doing a wonderful job at being authoring books, attempting to transform culture through thought, which is a much needed and good endeavor. However how are we doing on a personal one on one level at making disciples? In other words we talk and discuss theology until we have said the names MacArthur and Piper until we’re blue, but how are we doing in the living it out?
I fully understand not everyone needs or has a need to be called into the inner-city, I would like to also admonish & encourage my own theological family that we must at some point put feet to our faith whether it is in the inner-city or the outer burbs.
We say, or think there is a “New Reformation” of sorts of men and women regaining an understanding of Reformed theology but a theology that does not have power to change lives is not a theology lived out, and thus is just as powerless as the false gospel of the ‘pray the prayer inoculation gospel.’
This high theology becomes only a white washed tomb in which does not contain any divine substance but only contains proper form.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
Now to bring this into our neighborhood where we would like to encourage other believers to consider where they live as they grow in Christ and are moved to shed the vanities of the world for the riches found in Christ.
My wife took a walk down to Independence Avenue last evening, a pretty drug invested area, to a local Sonic. I reflected over the great intense need of “True Christianity” to be represented in this place. What I’m not talking about is another mix of culture in one hand, and compromised truth in the other, but the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives. The power of God that then regenerates a man into a new creation and dumps the priorities/vanities of this life on its head where they see all the materialism, all the homes, houses, security that they reinforce around them is false and the only secure one is Christ. Once people are truly “born again,” there is then the true hope of Christ.
There should be nothing more motivating that a true understanding of God, the sin of men, and Christ. And there should be no greater group of actualizers of the faith or doers of the word than those who have grasped this deep theological understanding of God’s sovereignty.
This understanding is the type of understanding that should move more believers into the city hoping in Christ, not for a metropolis of Utopian Christianity but desiring to preach, teach, and live the word of God before the world, oh how we’ve hidden the light of Christ under the bowl of the suburbs never to be seen….
Have you ever noticed that when you’re in the city and you can see the stars they are difficult to make out but if you go out into the country where there is no false light to distract from the light of the stars you can see the brilliance of God’s creation.
In the opposite way spiritually, God’s light so shining before men and women in dark places has all the more opportunity to demonstrate His Glory and Grace.
Won’t you again consider the echo of William Carey to radical Christianity, not simply missions over seas but in this time, missions in our own country; to our neighbors? to our cities?
Somewhere in an NASB Bible I read that Luke 9:23-25 was still in there today!
And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. “For (whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?
Can’t we all consider daily, this quote from Carey, “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God!”
May we all be propagating the Gospel among the Heathens. 
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