John D. Rockefeller On Making Money Order Printed Copy

Author: John D. Rockefeller
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About the Book

"John D. Rockefeller on Making Money" is a collection of excerpts from letters and speeches by the famous American businessman, providing insight into his views on achieving financial success through hard work, discipline, and strategic thinking. The book offers practical advice and timeless wisdom for anyone looking to build wealth and achieve success in business.

Lilias Trotter

Long before the concept of the 10-40 window was invented or became a popular term in missions circles, a thirty-four-year-old promising artist named Isabella Lilias Trotter (1853–1928) landed in North Africa in 1888 along with two of her friends. They had neither mission agency support nor training but immediately began studying the Arabic language with the intention of sharing the gospel as widely as they could for as long as they could. For the next forty years, this creative, dynamic woman poured out her life, her artistic abilities, and her linguistic skills to make the gospel known amid many difficulties. Her journals tell of her daily experience of desperately depending on the divine resources of the Holy Spirit.[1] “The life of Lilias Trotter challenges the world’s meaning of success, potential, and fulfillment.” The life of Lilias Trotter challenges the world’s meaning of success, potential, and fulfillment. Through Trotter’s art, writings, and life story come glimpses of Christ’s power in the prayers of his child and faithful witness. Her day-by-day, decade-by-decade journals reveal a life characterized by trust in her Savior and inward rest in his power for victory over sin and darkness. Her success should not be measured numerically, but rather in the fact that Lilias succeeded in learning about prayer and love for Muslims. Her life attests to the exceeding value of knowing and preferring Christ above all else. Her personal devotion to Jesus Christ is exemplary and instructive not only for aspiring missionaries but for all who desire to live wholeheartedly for the glory of God. Laying down Her Life Lilias was born into a wealthy Victorian family, and they considered the value of walking humbly before God to be of first importance. A talented artist, she attracted the attention of John Ruskin, the noted Victorian art critic and Oxford lecturer. Some of her paintings and leaves from her sketchbook can be found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. In 1874, Lilias attended a six-day convention that emphasized the importance of the daily application of Scripture in her quest for deeper intimacy with God. She experienced a renewed vitality in personal and corporate worship. Her call to wholeheartedly follow Christ in obedience came during a call to prayer. She wrote of this in her journal: “To bear His name with all that is wrapped up in it of fragrance and healing and power, to enter into His eternal purpose, is the calling for which it is well worth counting all things as loss.” [2] From then on, rather than invest her extraordinary life in the things of this world, Lilias was compelled by a strong yearning for her Savior and the world he loves. In radical obedience, she left the promising artistic career that Ruskin offered her and the comforts of England for a life of missionary service in Algeria. “In radical obedience, she left a promising artistic career and the comforts of England for a life of missionary service in Algeria.” Praying with Passion Trotter’s intercession for Algerians provides inspiration to those who desire to see all peoples worship God. She spent lengthy, frequent sessions of retreat in the hills overlooking the city of Algiers. She prayed and turned her eyes on Jesus, his Word, and his revelation in creation. As she watched the broken waves pushed by the heart of the ocean crashing on the shore of the bay, she waited with faith to see “God’s high tide” sweep across the Muslim world. Lilias was a contemporary of the great missionary to Muslims, Samuel Zwemer. She learned much from him about the power of prayer to pierce the veil of darkness shrouding the Muslim hearts and to engage in the spiritual battle for souls of those held captive by the adversary. Her example of perseverance in prayer is an encouragement for those today who are interceding for God’s high tide to fill the earth and sweep away the veil of darkness. The writings of Lilias Trotter recognize the work of the adversary to hold nonbelievers captive through their unbelief and his power to keep the life-giving truth from reaching them. She pled for Christians to ask God to do a new work among “hard-bound peoples and to generate a fire of the Holy Spirit to melt away though icy barriers and set a host free!” [3] Proclaiming God’s Word in Power Courageous and innovative in her witness to the Algerians, Lilias observed and learned to witness effectively to her neighbors. In 1919, Trotter began writing tracts for Nile Mission Press. She assisted a Swedish missionary in translation and editing the gospels of Luke and John in colloquial Arabic, “into a language that the Arab mother could read to her child.”[4] She also wrote stories in parable form that appealed to her audience, and she creatively illustrated them in Eastern style, the results of which gained wide circulation. The story of Lilias Trotter continues to inspire and mobilize those who long to worship around the throne of Christ with all peoples. She laid down her life and talents and allowed Christ to use her in creative and innovative ways. Her life was one of passionate prayer, dependence on God’s overcoming power, and confidence in proclaiming the life-giving Word of God. Her story encourages others to follow in her footsteps and consecrate their life to the “hardest work and the darkest sinners.” [5] Paula Hemphill and her husband, Ken, have shared fifty years of ministry together. The stories of missionary pioneers in North Africa captured Paula’s heart as a young pastor’s wife, calling her to a lifetime of prayer for Muslim peoples. The Hemphills have three married daughters and twelve grandchildren. Endnotes: For more on Lilias Trotter, see Many Beautiful Things: the Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter (Oxvision Films, 2016) or read the excellent biography by Miriam Huffman Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible (Discovery House, 2003). [1] One journal entry later became the inspiration for “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus,” a popular hymn written by Helen H. Lemmel: “Turn your soul’s full vision on Jesus and look and look at Him, and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him and the divine attributes by which God’s saints are made, even in the twentieth century, will lay hold of you.” (I.R. Stewart, The Love that Was Stronger: Lilias Trotter of Algiers (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958), 54.)

Our God Listens

You have been invited to speak to the God of the universe, the Almighty. Not just the mightiest, but the all-mighty. All power is his, and under his control. And he is the one who made you, and keeps you in existence. This God, the one God — almighty, creator, rescuer — speaks to us to reveal himself, that we might genuinely know him, but he doesn’t only speak. In one of the great wonders in all the world and history, this God listens. First he speaks, and bids us respond. Then he pauses. He stoops. He bends his ear toward his people. And he hears us in this marvel we so often take for granted, and so flippantly call prayer. What Comes Before Prayer The wonder of prayer might lead us to rush past a critical reality before we start “dialing up” the God of heaven. There is an order to his speaking and listening, and to ours. He is God; we are not. Mark it well every day, and forever. He speaks first, then listens. We first listen, then speak. “He is God; we are not. Mark it well every day, and forever. He speaks first, then listens. We first listen, then speak.” Prayer is not a conversation we start. Rather, God takes the initiative. First, he has spoken. He has revealed himself to us in his world, and in his word, and in the Word. And through his word, illumined by his Spirit, he continues to speak. “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking” (Hebrews 12:25). His word is not dead and gone but “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). And in his word, and by his Word, he extends to us this stunning offer: to have his ear. Golden Scepter When Esther learned of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews, a great barrier stood before her. Mordecai directed her “to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people” (Esther 4:8). Easier said than done. Esther knew these were life-and-death stakes, not just for the Jews but for her: “If any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law — to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live.” And she knew the threat that lay before her: “But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days” (Esther 4:11). Yet in the end, in faith and courage, she resolved, “I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). One does not simply saunter into the presence of a great king “without being called.” And all the more with God Almighty. Not simply because it’s a great risk, as with an earthly king, but with God it’s not even physically possible. He is no man on earth, that one might slip past the palace guards and approach him. He is utterly unapproachable — “without being called.” Yet in Christ, the throne of heaven has taken the initiative, and now holds out the golden scepter. Why We Can Come Near The two great bookends (4:14–16; 10:19–25) of the heart of the epistle to the Hebrews (chapters 5–10) make clear why we can draw near and how. Hebrews is set against the backdrop of God’s first covenant with his people, through Moses. What Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers say about “drawing near” or “coming near” to God is sobering. For one, the tabernacle, and the whole system of worship given at Mount Sinai, taught the people of their distance from God, with barriers between them, because of their sin. The people must stay back, lest God’s righteous anger break out against their sin (Exodus 19:22, 24). First, Moses alone is permitted to come near (Exodus 24:2), and then Moses’s brother, Aaron, and his sons, serving as priests, may “come near” (Exodus 28:43; 30:20). No outsider may come near (Numbers 1:51; 3:10), nor any priest with a blemish (Leviticus 21:18, 21). Only the ordained priests may “draw near to the altar” to make atonement for themselves and for the people (Leviticus 9:7) — and only in the way God has instructed, as memorably taught in the horrors of Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10) and Korah’s rebellion (Numbers 16; also 17:13; 18:3–4, 7, 22). “It is almost too good to be true — almost — that we have access to God.” But now, in Christ, “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God” (Hebrews 4:14). In him, “we have a great priest over the house of God,” a priest who is ours by faith, and so we “enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19–21). Not only does Christ enter God’s presence on our behalf, but he welcomes us in his wake. He is our pioneer, who blazes our trail. We now may “draw near” to God, “come near” to heaven’s throne of grace, because of Christ’s achievements for us, in his life and death and resurrection. How We Can Come Near Then, to add wonder to wonder, we not only draw near to God himself in Christ, but we are invited, indeed expected, to do so with confidence — with boldness and full assurance. Since we have such a high priest as Christ, “let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). In him, “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19). Not by our own value, status, or achievements, but his. We “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 10:22), a faith looking outside ourselves to ask not “Am I worthy?” to approach God’s throne, but “Is Jesus worthy?” Wait No Longer It is almost too good to be true — almost — that we have access to God (Ephesians 2:18) and “access with confidence” at that (Ephesians 3:12). In Christ, the King of the universe holds out the golden scepter. The question is no longer whether we can come, but will we, and how often? We have access. God expects us to take hold on his Son by faith, and approach his throne with confidence. Our God listens. He hears our prayers. What are you waiting for? Article by David Mathis