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About the Book
"Faith and the Marketplace" by Bill Winston explores how faith can be applied in the business world to achieve success and prosperity. The book emphasizes the importance of aligning one's beliefs with one's actions in order to see positive outcomes in the marketplace. Winston discusses how faith can transform businesses and lead to abundance and fulfillment in all aspects of life.
C.T. Studd
“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
- C.T. Studd
Charles Thomas Studd ("C.T. Studd") was born in England in 1860, the son of wealthy Edward Studd, who had made a fortune in India. Charles Studd liked sports just like most young men. He had a passion for cricket because it was the most popular sport in England at the time. His older brother Kynaston Studd, was a member of the Cambridge cricket team and well known. C.T., however, wasn't a great athlete but determined to master the sport. He would practice for hours, using a mirror to help him adjust his swing. He kept away from any harmful habits that may diminish his cricket ability. Soon he began to master the sport and became the captain of his high school cricket team. In 1879, when Studd entered Trinity College of Cambridge University, his popularity as a cricket star took off. He became what others have referred to as "the Michael Jordan of cricket," a household name throughout Great Britain. He soon became the captain of the Cambridge cricket team, an idol to students and legend in his time. and he had a particular passion for cricket, the most popular sport in England at the time. Studd was claimed then, and today as the greatest player to have ever played the game. But that is just a footnote compared to what has really marked C.T. Studd's life in history.
C.T. was saved in 1878 at the age of 18 by the confrontation of a pastor, who really questioned him as to his personal relationship with Christ. Both his brothers gave their lives to Christ the same day that he did. His passion for Christ diminished as his cricket career grew in college and soon he was hardened to spiritual things. However, in November 1883, his younger brother George got very sick and was dying. As C.T. watched in horror and grief at the suffering of his brother, he reflected, "Now what is all the popularity of the world to George? What is all the fame and flattering? What is it worth to possess the riches of the world, when a man comes to face Eternity?" With a surprising turn, God miraculously healed George and C.T. was so dramatically changed through the event that he consecrated himself to the Lord's work. The things of this world were not worthy of his life, Studd would begin to invest himself in the eternal.
C.T. was part of a small group of Christian men at Cambridge, mostly athletes, who were beginning to devote themselves to prayer and the evangelization of the world. Starting at their campus they began sharing their faith openly and telling all of the salvation found in Jesus Christ. Many were being won because of Studd's influence among other collegians. During this time, an influential missionary Hudson Taylor began to challenge the students of England to join him in reaching the millions of lost in China. His high calling and deep passion for China, captured the hearts of these young men at Cambridge, and there was discussion of joining Hudson's mission agency and pioneering to the unreached parts of China with the gospel.
Despite a promising career in cricket and the life of comfort he had grown up in C.T. determined to follow God's heart for the world and join Him in reaching China. Studd's decision to go to China influenced the other seven men at Cambridge to live for God's glory and devote themselves to China also. From the rowing team at Trinity, Stanley Smith, Montague Beauchamp, and William Cassels joined. Two students, Dixon Hoste and Arthur Polhill-Turner, were officers who also left a promising career in the military to join Studd. And from C.T. Studd's own cricket team came Cecil Polhill-Turner.
Studd faces opposition as well. His father, Edward passed away, causing the family to pressure C.T. not to leave his widowed mother at such a time. His older brother tried to talk him out of going and C.T. simply quoted Micah 7:6, "a man's enemies are the men of his own house."
Before going to China, Hudson organized a tour of the college campuses in England, allowing the "Cambridge Seven," as they came to be known, to share their testimonies, and challenge students to consecrate their lives to the glory of God. Through these months traveling and speaking, God drew people to faith in Christ and awakened the church to His global cause.
In the last meeting of the tour, C.T. Studd urged students saying, "Are you living for the day or are you living for life eternal? Are you going to care for the opinion of men here, or for the opinion of God? The opinion of men won't avail us much when we get before the judgment throne. But the opinion of God will. Had we not, then, better take His word and implicitly obey it?"
Authenticity marked the power of the message of these seven that were on their way to the unreached. C.T. Studd admitted, "Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary." After calling students to obey the Great Commission, the Cambridge Seven, left for China, arriving in Shanghai on March 18, 1885.
C.T. Studd had inherited a fortune from the death of his father Edward but gave most of it away, keeping only ÂŁ3400 pounds. Keeping that only until his wife, Priscilla Livingstone Stewart said, "Charlie, what did the Lord tell the rich young man to do?" "Sell all." "Well then, we will start clear with the Lord at our wedding." And they gave the rest away to missions work.
Studd would return to England and America occasionally because of ill health and challenge students to give their lives to the Great Commission. During the beginnings of the Student Volunteer Movement, in 1896 -1897, his brother J.E.K. Studd spoke at Cornell University, having a deep impact on the future point man for the SVM, John R. Mott. Mott walked in late for the meeting and heard J.K. Studd quote, "Young man, are you seeking great things for yourself? Seek them not! Seek first the Kingdom of God!"
Mott gathered the courage to meet with him the next day and later said that the meeting with Studd was the "decisive hour of his life". Mott went on to become one of the greatest missions mobilizers in world history.
C.T. Studd's work impacted China, India and Africa. Upon the last days of his life he reflected in his life's work saying, "As I believe I am now nearing my departure from this world, I have but a few things to rejoice in; they are these:
That God called me to China and I went in spite of utmost opposition from all my loved ones.
That I joyfully acted as Christ told that rich young man to act.
That I deliberately at the call of God, when alone on the Bibby liner in 1910, gave up my life for this work, which was to be henceforth not for the Sudan only, but for the whole unevangelized World.
My only joys therefore are that when God has given me a work to do, I have not refused it."
One night in July,1931, C.T. Studd went to be with His Lord.
The last word he spoke was "Hallelujah"!
By Claude Hickman
the bride satan loves to insult
My Dear Globdrop, I’ve had the misfortune of receiving the protestation you called a letter. My favorite line was when you asked how we  (your superiors) could expect you  (a mere afterthought) to damn souls with all those bombs exploding night and day outside your barracks? You assume Glubgore and our Cannon Battalion are engaged in endless target practice. This, your great error, is somewhat understandable. Headquarters may have, I admit, exaggerated our current position in the war. They did not want to unsettle morale, you see, and thus their reports these past centuries make it perhaps unthinkable that the unpleasant tremor at our gates could be, in reality, the Enemy’s troops firing upon us. But so it is. The humans, though mostly harmless, can make a great deal of noise. They press at the door; their cannons knock. Now, you mustn’t lose your nerve, nephew. I remember my initial discomfort when Screwtape allowed me my first gaze over the wall, writing, “we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners .” “That,” Screwtape confessed, “is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy .” Although you might assume that we stand in a defensive  position, two thousand years have passed, nephew, and our flag still flies firmly overhead. And firm overhead it shall always fly. The Enemy shall not advance; noise is all we need fear. Why? Screwtape alluded to one of the main reasons in his very next sentence: “But fortunately it is quite invisible  to these humans.” They cannot see themselves as we do. Where might we be if they did? The Church (Invisible) When the humans look about them in the pews, what do they see? Do they see what we see: handfuls of saints dressed in their Enemy’s blinding armor — golden helmets, shields, and swords — a horror which makes even our boldest tempters tense? When they gather, what do they hear? You complain of all the blasts and screams of warfare — but do they? Do they hear that cloud of witnesses behind them, the living saints beside them, their dreadful Commander before them urging them onwards? May it never be! They mean to take up that barren banner, The Church Triumphant , but we must show them other, more accurate, slogans. The Church Insignificant Even their best soldiers can be deceived into looking at his clumsy comrades with unimpressed glances. As he looks about the congregation at our bitterest foes, show him the Arnett family sneaking into church late (once again); let him catch a whiff of silly Mr. Jones who always smells of his cats; amplify the joyful noise  of always-out-of-tune Mrs. Johnson upon him; extinguish any belief that he could possibly be in the presence of anything grand. Wonder loud enough for him to overhear: How could this  group possibly be a threat to all that is wrong with the world? The Enemy, in his matchless arrogance, helps us on this point by choosing mostly the weak, lowly, despised of the world. He wages his warfare with the ducks and squirrels, leaving us the lions and bears. By fighting with these blunt spoons, of course, he means to make fools of us. The Church Impotent Periodically, place upon your man’s mind doubt as to how these people’s bumbling prayers, their simple faith, their small acts of love, and ordinary obedience — spurred on somehow by something like that  man’s preaching — could really make any difference at all in the world. Ask him how could this ragtag assembly of misfit toys really be the grand temple of the Spirit of the living God? Is this really God’s great response to evil? Old widow Ortiz cannot even see the words in her Bible anymore — should she  have anything to do with our  undoing? Highlight all the real  (worldly) movements for change happening outside the narrow confines of the so-called “buttress of truth.” Enflame the itch to bring about real  change, and allow him to recognize the impotence of the church to engage in anything of real  importance. Make him clamor to combat the earthly darkness with more of the same, never the cosmic powers behind it. The Church Dying Next, you must show the church severely wounded. Show her dying out. Of course, to our shame, she has been “dying” now for centuries, and yet never “dead.” The humans, unversed in history, do not consider how vexing this has been to us. The more we have mauled her in the Roman Coliseum, or burned her to light the streets, or cut off heads on foreign beaches, the larger she grew. When we persecute her most violently, our gates begin to shake most forcefully. She is never fiercer, we almost discovered too late, than when covered in her own blood. We contend with a warrior, nephew, who gains more arms, ears, and eyes with each swipe at her. Even when the age of our persecution is bloodiest, she seems the healthier for it in the end. Who is this that grows stronger when wounded? The humans must never know. The Church Hideous Make it sport — especially among the most spiritual — to insult the church. Call her a whore in as many ways as you can devise. The Enemy, as pointless as it was, claims to have given himself up for her to dress her in the finest clothes and beautify her completely. He claims her as his family , his own body, his bride, and boasts to have “filled her with his Spirit,” “reformed her ways of life,” and “made her precious to him” (all Enemy propaganda, of course). We cannot allow these lies to take hold. Don’t let them think well of her. The church, with all her reported crusades, abuses, divorces, racism, pornography, adultery, and deformity (this among the “professed” church, of course) is to be apologized for profusely. Suggest, and this constantly, that there is not an actual  difference from those who belong to the Enemy and those who belong to us. Don’t let them see that sickening splendor, that horrid stateliness, that perverse potency, that actual transformation in them that has stood despite all our missiles throughout the ages. Play the Devil Globdrop, though this army has proven an inconvenience for us, though it may appear we fight with our backs temporarily against the wall, to guarantee our campaign, we must keep their blood from stirring at a sight of themselves as eternity sees them. Veil who they are and the effect of what they accomplish while continuing to unveil the oddities, the annoyances, the awful mundaneness of the day-to-day and the week-to-week. Assure your man that this mission is small, the stakes smaller, and those with him the smallest of all — hardly anything to take too seriously. Nothing of value transpires during their prayers, their sermons, their evangelism, their gatherings — at least, nothing to outweigh the afternoon sports game. Your Concerned Uncle, Grimgod