Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn Order Printed Copy
- Author: John C Maxwell
- Size: 1.29MB | 212 pages
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About the Book
"Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn" by John C. Maxwell explores the idea that setbacks and failures can be powerful learning experiences that lead to personal growth and success. Through stories and practical advice, Maxwell shows how embracing failure as a chance to learn and improve can ultimately lead to greater achievements in life.
Aimee Semple McPherson
Aimee Semple McPherson was born on Oct. 9, 1890, on a farm in Salford Ontario, Canada. Her father, James Kennedy, was a farmer and came from a Methodist background. Her mother, Mildred, known as “Millie,” came from a Salvation Army background.
Although she was raised in a Christian home, she began to question the Bible during her teen years.
When she was 17, she attended a revival Pentecostal meeting presented by evangelist Robert Semple, where she heard the message of repentance. He also spoke of baptism in the Holy Spirit, an experience for which she hungered. After receiving the infilling of the Holy Spirit, she also was filled with a great love and compassion for souls and a fervent passion to serve the Lord throughout her whole life.
The meeting Aimee attended changed her life not only spiritually but also romantically. The evangelist Robert Semple later become Aimee’s husband. They were married when she was 18. Their ministry desires were compatible. After their ministry trips in Chicago and the Ingersoll area, they headed to China as missionaries.
In 1910 while in China, Robert and Aimee contracted Malaria within months of arriving in Hong Kong. Robert didn’t survive, leaving Aimee pregnant and a widow at 19. When her daughter, Roberta Star, was a month old, Aimee returned to United States to raise her. Aimee and Roberta lived in New York with Aimee’s mother.
She assisted her mother raising money for the Salvation Army. It was there she met and married a Christian businessman named Harold McPherson. They had a son, Rolf Kennedy McPherson. After a decline in health, two major surgeries and a near-death experience, God asked her one last time, “Now, will you go?” She answered yes to God’s call and almost immediately was healed. She never again questioned the call to preach the gospel.
Aimee is known for founding the Foursquare Gospel Church in 1918. She also was a woman ahead of her time, possessing boldness in her speaking ability and creative ways to communicate the gospel.
The name Foursquare Gospel originated from the Book of Ezekiel. It represents the four phases of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the face of the Man, she saw Jesus our Saviour. In the face of the lion, she saw Jesus the mighty Baptiser with the Holy Spirit and fire. In the face of the ox, she saw Jesus the Great Burden Bearer. In the face of an eagle, she saw Jesus the coming King, who will return in power and glory. It was, in Aimee’s opinion, “a perfect gospel. A complete gospel for body, for spirit and for eternity.”
Her ministry was dynamic. She witnessed thousands saved and healed during her evangelistic meetings. Being creative and theatrical, Aimee used drama, music and opera to appeal to the audience. Bands, choirs and other crowd-pleasing touches enhanced her dynamic preaching. Though she was well-versed in the Bible, Aimee’s success wasn’t based on her knowledge, but rather the delivery of her messages.
She also was known as a faith healer, with claims of physical healing occurring during her meetings. Her faith healing demonstrations were written about extensively in the media, as they were a large focus of her early ministry. Aimee was an evangelistic pioneer, determined to spread the message of the Pentecostal faith, and used her fervour and flamboyance to win a huge following.
She had achieved what no one had yet done in ministry, which was to build a 5,000-seat auditorium in an influential area of Los Angeles. This paved the way for other female evangelists during a time when women were not accepted in the pulpit. She also launched the first Christian radio station and established a Bible college. By 1917, she had started her own magazine The Bridal Call, for which she wrote many articles about women’s roles in religion; she portrayed the link between Christians and Jesus as a marriage bond.
Jan. 1, 1923, the new Angelus Temple was opened in a flamboyant style. Aimee was seated on a red velvet throne dressed in a nurse’s uniform and cape. Accompanying her were 200 singers, three bands, two orchestras and six quartets. The Angelus Temple was featured on a float in Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses parade, while the extravagant dedication service was given full coverage in The New York Times. What became the home of The Church of the Foursquare Gospel filled four times each Sunday and twice weekly. Aimee also ministered at highly sought-after healing services during the week.
Reporters marveled at her oral skills, saying, “Never did I hear such language from a human being. Without one moment’s intermission, she would talk from an hour to an hour and a half, holding her audience spellbound.” Rather than using fire-and-brimstone preaching, Aimee resorted to a style of joyous celebration, representing the loving face of God.
She also brought old-time religion into the modern age, using illustrated sermons to help people understand the gospel better. Also, stage productions were incorporated, drawing people who usual didn’t attend church. In an era prior to television, these services proved entertaining, and she used this method to present the message of salvation through faith in Jesus.
Aimee welcomed all walks of life. She preached to the high class of society, as well as the poor and disadvantaged. She treated everyone equally regardless of race, gender or status.
In the 1920s, Aimee became a well-known voice among civic leaders, politicians, actors and actresses, and pastors from various denominations. Her sermons were reprinted in hundreds of newspapers in Canada, the United States and Mexico and were read by millions. In 1927, she opened a commissary to feed the marginalized and supply them with clothing and other necessities. Aimee set up a 24/7 soup kitchen at her temple in 1936 to help families through the Great Depression .She also became involved with war bond rallies and linked religion to patriotism in her sermons when America joined the Second World War in 1941.
Aimee’s legacy is threefold. Using the dramatic arts to reach the lost (an innovative tool) and the latest technology to spread the gospel. She reached out to the poor, helping thousands in the Los Angeles area who were starving. She taught a full-gospel message and regularly saw thousands of healings and miracles in her meetings.
Aimee passed away due to an accidental overdose in 1944 and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in California. Her son, Rolf, has kept her memory and ministry alive by carrying the ministry for 40 four years. The Foursquare church is still standing strong with 8 million members worldwide.
He Called Death Sweet Names
To me Erwin Rudolph will always be Dr. Rudolph. He was my professor and, when I was in college, I revered professors. But with all the reverence, he was a gentle rock of stability for this nervous, insecure sophomore, who that year — 1965 — declared an English major at Wheaton College. One of the reasons I was nervous and insecure was that I read so slowly. I knew I could not read a lot of long books in one semester, so I never took a lit class on “The Novel.” Instead I took poetry classes. That meant three classes with Dr. Rudolph: Pre-Renaissance, English Renaissance, and Eighteenth Century. In these classes, I did not have to read huge books. Instead I had to read poems really carefully — even memorize some. Dr. Rudolph required that we memorize and recite 42 lines of Chaucer in the original Middle English. This was terrifying to me. I was too nervous to speak in front of a whole class. Mercifully and patiently, Dr. Rudolph took the time to let me recite the lines to him alone in his office. He became my faculty adviser in the fall of 1965 and shepherded me through to graduation in the spring of 1968. I loved his classes. One reason is that he cared about substance, not just form. He cared about meaning and truth, great truth. To this day, the poets I love most (George Herbert, John Donne, Alexander Pope) are the ones who care about beauty and truth. Form and substance. Craft and content. I met these masters first in Dr. Rudolph’s classes. He awakened me to a world of truth and beauty in poetry which I did not know existed. I sought his counsel even after I left Wheaton. Although I sensed a vocational call to Scripture and went on to seminary after college, I was not sure if I could be a preacher, and I pondered for a year or two the serious possibility of following in Dr. Rudolph’s steps by getting a Ph.D. in English, and becoming a theologically serious English teacher. That didn’t happen. I think Dr. Rudolph was okay with that choice. His counsel was always balanced. He probably saw that my slow reading ability did not suit me well for an academic career in literature! My dominant memory of Dr. Rudolph is the one most relevant to his own death. Zeke, Dr. Rudolph’s son, was in my wife’s class at Wheaton, a year behind me. Zeke died of Multiple Sclerosis in August of 1969, three months after his graduation. I remember the very room I was in at my parents’ house when I read Dr. Rudolph’s tribute to Zeke. There was one immortal line that I have returned to again and again — as I return to it again now at Dr. Rudolph’s own death: “Near the end Zeke called death sweet names.” It has been almost 50 years, and I have not forgotten these words, nor the man who spoke them. I didn’t know Zeke. But I knew his father. And what an impact his farewell to his son had on me. It was full of sober sorrow in the face of the horrors of death, but also full of confidence that Zeke had not lived in vain, or died without hope. The same is true now for my professor, Dr. Rudolph. He did not live in vain. And he did not die without hope. Perhaps I should let him have the last word of triumph. In his book, Good-by, My Son , he wrote, We do not pretend to understand why God’s time-table differs so markedly from our own. But it was ours which was out of adjustment, not his. . . . I strongly affirm that belief in Divine Providence affords the Christian an undergirding he can ill afford to lose. I also discover that God may personally allow suffering to come upon us for reasons which please him. When he does, we ought not to demur, for God knows what is best for us. With deep love and appreciation, I say, Amen.
