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About the Book
"Be All You Can Be" by John Maxwell is a motivational book that focuses on personal growth and achieving one's full potential. The author encourages readers to set high standards for themselves and take steps to become the best version of themselves. Maxwell provides practical advice and strategies for overcoming obstacles, developing key leadership qualities, and pursuing success in all areas of life. Overall, the book aims to inspire readers to strive for excellence and make the most of their abilities.
Smith Wigglesworth
Smith Wigglesworth was born in 1859 to a very poor family. His father did manual labor, for very little pay. Smith himself went to work at the age of six to help with the family income. At six he was pulling turnips and at seven he was working in a woolen mill twelve hours a day. His parents did not know God, but Smith hungered in his heart to know Him. Even as a youngster he would pray in the fields. His grandmother was the critical Christian in his life. She was a Wesleyan Methodist and would take Smith to meetings with her. At one of these meetings there was a song being sung about Jesus as the lamb and Smith came into the realization of God's love for him and his decision to believe Christ for his salvation was decided that day. He was immediately filled with the desire to evangelize and led his own mother to Christ.
Smith has various church experiences as he was growing up. He first went to an Episcopal church and then at thirteen a Wesleyan Methodist church. When he was sixteen he became involved in the Salvation Army. He felt deeply called to fast and pray for lost souls. He saw many people come to Christ. At seventeen a mentor shared with him about water baptism and he decided to be baptized. The Salvation Army was experiencing a tremendous level of the power of God in those days. He describes meetings where "many would be prostrated under the power of the Spirit, sometimes for as long as twenty-four hours at a time." They would pray and fast and cry out for the salvation of fifty or a hundred people for the week and they would see what they had prayed for.
At eighteen Smith left the factory and became a plumber. He moved to Liverpool when he was twenty and continued to work during the day and minister during his free time. He felt called to minister to young people and brought them to meetings. These were destitute and ragged children, whom he would often feed and care for. Hundreds were saved. Smith was often asked to speak in Salvation meetings and he would break down and weep under the power of God. Many would come to repentance in those meetings through this untrained man. At twenty-three he returned back Bradford and continued his work with the Salvation Army.
In Bradford Smith met Mary Jane Featherstone, known as Polly, the daughter of a temperance lecturer. She left home and went to Bradford to take a servants job. One night she was drawn to a Salvation Army meeting. She listened to the woman evangelist, Gipsy Tillie Smith, and gave her heart to Christ. Smith was in that meeting and saw her heart for God. Polly became an enthusiastic Salvationsist and was granted a commission by General Booth. They developed a friendship, but Polly went to Scotland to help with a new Salvationist work. She eventually moved back to Bradford and married Smith, who was very much in love with her.
The couple worked together to evangelize the lost. They opened a small church in a poor part of town. Polly would preach and Smith would make the altar calls. For a season, however, Smith became so busy with his plumbing work that his evangelistic fervor began to wane. Polly continued on, bringing Smith to conviction. One day while Smith was working in the town of Leeds he heard of a divine healing meeting. He shared with Polly about it. She needed healing and so they went to a meeting, and Polly was healed.
Smith struggled with the reality of healing, while being ill himself. He decided to give up the medicine that he was taking and trust God. He was healed. They had five children, a girl and four boys. One morning two of the boys were sick. The power of God came and they prayed for the boys and they were instantly healed. Smith struggled with the idea that God would use him to heal the sick in general. He would gather up a group of people and drive them to get prayer in Leeds. The leaders of the meeting were going to a convention and left Smith in charge. He was horrified. How could he lead a meeting about divine healing? He tried to pass it off to someone else but could not. Finally he led the meeting and several people were healed. That was it. From then on Smith began to pray for people for healing.
Smith had another leap to make. He had heard about the Pentecostals who were being baptized in the Holy Spirit. He went to meetings and was so hungry for God he created a disturbance and church members asked him to stop. He went to prayer and prayed for four days. Finally he was getting ready to head home and the vicar's wife prayed for him and he fell under the power of God and spoke in tongues. Everything changed after that. He would walk by people and they would come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and be saved. He began to see miracles and healings and the glory of God would fall when he prayed and preached.
Smith had to respond to the many calls that came in and gave up his business for the ministry. Polly unexpectedly died in 1913, and this was a real blow to Smith. He prayed for her and commanded that death release her. She did arise but said "Smith - the Lord wants me." His heartbroken response was "If the Lord wants you, I will not hold you". She had been his light and joy for all the years of their marriage, and he grieved deeply over the loss. After his wife was buried he went to her grave, feeling like he wanted to die. When God told him to get up and go Smith told him only if you "give to me a double portion of the Spirit – my wife’s and my own – I would go and preach the Gospel. God was gracious to me and answered my request.” His daughter Alice and son-in-law James Salter began to travel with him to handle his affairs.
Smith would pray and the blind would see, and the deaf were healed, people came out of wheelchairs, and cancers were destroyed. One remarkable story is when He prayed for a woman in a hospital. While he and a friend were praying she died. He took her out of the bed stood her against the wall and said "in the name of Jesus I rebuke this death". Her whole body began to tremble. The he said "in the name of Jesus walk", and she walked. Everywhere he would go he would teach and then show the power of God. He began to receive requests from all over the world. He taught in Europe, Asia, New Zealand and many other areas. When the crowds became very large he began a "wholesale healing". He would have everyone who needed healing lay hands on themselves and then he would pray. Hundreds would be healed at one time.
Over Smith's ministry it was confirmed that 14 people were raised from the dead. Thousands were saved and healed and he impacted whole continents for Christ. Smith died on March 12, 1947 at the funeral of his dear friend Wilf Richardson. His ministry was based on four principles " First, read the Word of God. Second, consume the Word of God until it consumes you. Third believe the Word of God. Fourth, act on the Word."
who is the fairest in the land - lessons for young men on attraction
Some single men miss wonderful women because they’re fixated on all the wrong things. Whether suffering from worldly ideals or an inflated sense of self, somehow all of the Christian women they meet are never quite their “type.” This is not all men, to be sure, but it is some men. I was once one of them. I wrote before on the possibility that the woman some men hold out for does not actually exist. Some responded, wanting to lay aside their search for the full-time Christian, part-time model — who is nothing less than exotic, enchanting, ethereal — and come to appreciate the imperishable beauty of the existent, born-again daughters of God around them. These men wanted to know how . How do you begin to change the eye’s definition of beauty or shape the heart’s attractions? They wanted to break free from the pit of unrealistic expectations. They no longer desired to keep as many doors open as possible, and wanted to lay aside their fear of “forsaking all others.” They desired deliverance from that subtly dangerous question: “Who is the fairest in the land?” The following counsel, by no means exhaustive, may offer helpful steps in the right direction. 1. Live for Something Higher Than Her Men should not spend more energy looking for the perfect spouse than they do on becoming a godly future husband. If they have no garden to tend, why would they need a helper? If a man has no vision for his life, why would he invite a woman to sit idly next to him on a bus traveling nowhere? At different seasons of my life I lived as though marriage was my mission. With nothing higher to put my hands to, I could sculpt many romantic fantasies. Godly men, however, invite women into a mission bigger than the relationship itself; they seek a helpmate to adventure with in service of Christ. This need not mean a clean and tidy ten-year plan, but it is nothing less than knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, following him, and desiring to win souls and advance his glory in our spheres of influence. And living for Christ always entails putting to death our lust (Colossians 3:5). A man who consistently indulges in pornography and gives himself to sexual fantasy endangers his soul and anyone close to him. He also inevitably develops expectations shaped not by God and his word, but by the collage of digitally-enhanced images swimming around in his head. His “type” will gravitate more and more towards lust than beauty, more toward the physically distorted than the spiritually attractive. His “love” will devour for its own gratification rather than sacrifice for a bride and children in the name of Christ. If you want to be attracted to the true and imperishable beauty in godly women, live for the glory of Christ and give up the fleshly drug that fills the mind with prostitutes (Psalm 101:3). God places emphasis on a woman’s godliness far above her physical appearance. He cherishes the beauty that does not fade or wrinkle. And so can you, if you are his son. Instead of only inquiring about a woman’s spiritual character after we are attracted physically, intentionally search out the inner beauty in the Christian women around you, ask God for help to love what he loves, and then see if they do not become more and more attractive to you. 2. Anticipate the Loveliness in Possession Men who sit in the restaurant looking meticulously through the menu, for hours and hours, drinking the free water but never ordering, do not know the pleasure of God’s covenant meal. They do not eat from the table of marital love. Perpetual daters have never savored the rare sweetness of these words: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3). They pass, like I once did, on the three-course meal of possessing, belonging, and enjoying a creature fit for them within the safety of commitment. Solomon addresses his bride saying, “O most beautiful among women” (Song of Solomon 1:8). As a single man, I often wondered if I would ever be able to truthfully say that to my wife. Surely, I will eventually meet another more physically beautiful.  Time catches up to us all, even the most beautiful faces. Surely he flirted with flattery , I thought, when he said, “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” (Song of Solomon 4:7). No flaw? Of course there was. She herself bid him not to gaze at her imperfections from the very beginning (Song of Solomon 1:6). I was ignorant of how covenant enhances the beauty of the beautiful, how her being his  made her fairer than any other, how covenant changes the lover himself, even as his beloved ages. He spoke to her, “ My  dove, my  perfect one, is the only one” (Song of Solomon 6:9). She wasn’t someone else’s; she was his and he was hers (Song of Solomon 1:8; 1 Corinthians 7:4). What did he care for flowers on other hillsides, flowers he could not hold or enjoy, while this one, unlike any other flower God ever made or gave, now grew on his  hill? “Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?” (Song of Solomon 6:10). His  wife. His wife, as should be the case with all men, was the most beautiful woman in the world to him , for she was his. And he was hers. If God gives us a wife, she is our one lily among the brambles (Song of Solomon 2:2). She is the one we walk with, talk with, laugh with, cry with, make memories with. She is our lover, our companion, our crown. There is no other. And this love ages well. Even when we can no longer walk, we can still rejoice in the wife of our youth, “a lovely deer, a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:19). Others may not look at her weathered skin, grey hair, and changed body as the fairest in the land, but we still do. We have changed with her. After years of setting our hearts on her, our one, our ideals conform to who she is, to the woman God’s grace has made her. And on that day, I am credibly told, we delight in a beauty whose physical allure is merely a petal. 3. Ask Instead “Can I Love Her?” A paradigm-shifting question for young men to ask is not whether they already love the girl they see, but can they love her — until death do you part. Tim Keller writes, “Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love” ( Meaning of Marriage , 79). I admit this is baffling to today’s conceptions of dating and romance. It is old advice given by many others, including the Puritans. Puritan love . . . was not so much the cause as it was the product of marriage. It was the chief duty of husband and wife toward each other, but it did not necessarily form a sufficient reason for marriage. . . . The advice was not that couples should not marry unless they love  each other but that they should not marry unless they can  love each other. (Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family , 54) Love can be the product of marriage, not just the cause of it. I knew enough about my wife to know that I could love her (largely, because I knew God did). We did not have years of history together. We married after only knowing each other for nine months, half of which was spent continents apart, but I knew the quality of woman she was and everyone in her life corroborated that beauty. After following Christ, it was the best decision of my life. Once you and your wife have answered the question of can  with “I do,” the question for husbands becomes: “Will you continue  to love her?” And by God’s grace, our answer will most certainly be, “Yes, with all my heart.” This is something you can resolve and pledge. That’s what wedding vows are. In Love with a Shadow In the Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King , the warrior-king Aragorn says of a girl who fell in love with him, or rather the ideal picture of him as king, In me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far. . . . Men, do not fall in love with thoughts and shadows, of great romance, mighty deeds, and lands far away, all while unthinkingly passing over future queens of heaven and earth. Retain standards that God calls you to have, and question the rest. Make war on rebel lusts. Consider the beauty a covenant bestows. Begin asking, “ Can  I love her?” And above all, get serious about living for Christ.
