Enlarge Your Tent
Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited. – Isaiah 54:2-3.
Long before William Carey (Born in Paulerspury, England in 1761.) became the founder of modern day missions and missionary to India he was a promoter of evangelism. While still a cobbler Carey put up a homemade map of the world above his workbench and talked openly of world evangelism. Carey wrote a book entitled “An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians” and soon afterwards preached a long remembered sermon from Isaiah 54:2-3. Carey ended his sermon with his motto: “Attempt great things for God! Expect great things from God!” Finally, as a result of Carey’s efforts a Baptist society was born with the purpose of “the propagation of the gospel among the heathen, according to the recommendations of Carey’s Equiry.” Carey was sent out as the societies’ first missionary.
Lottie Moon continued to enlarge the tent of overseas missions in the 1800s. She was born in 1840 and grew up with her mother reading the Bible to her. Because there was not a church in their area Lottie led the services every Sunday for her family, and neighbors. When Lottie was 33 years old, she heard a sermon from John 4:35 about how the harvest fields were, “white unto harvest.” Lottie committed her life to being a missionary to China and for forty years she worked there in the midst of disease, poverty and the storms of war. When a famine came upon China, she gave her food and her last dollar to help those starving. She died on Christmas Eve 1912. Lottie said, “I would that I had a thousand lives that I might give them to the women of China.” As a result of her passionate service the Southern Baptist Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for foreign missions (Now International Missions) has raised millions to support thousands of missionaries across the world.
Even though we may never go to India or China to serve as missionaries are, we not also called to enlarge our tent by reaching out to the fields of souls that are “white unto harvest?” What great things have you attempted for God? What great things are you expecting from God?
Begin where you are. Carey and Moon both began to passionately serve where they lived and then God enlarged their tents and sent them forth to even greater harvest fields. Place your life in the hands of God and allow Him through you to touch hearts and lives across this world.
(God would have you to continually expand your influence for Christ.)