My name is Bernie Elliot, national BQ Coordinator.
Thank you for being part of this great discipleship ministry we call Bible quizzing. I am excited to share a thought from the Word of God with you. James was the first book I memorized many years ago in the King James version. One thing I’ve learned over the years it not how much Scripture you have studied, or even memorized, or even ‘quizzed out” on, that really counts-it’s being a doer of the Word, not a hearer only. All Scripture should make us more Christ like. So with that said, I want to focus on one verse today.
James 2:8 “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right.” The phrase “Love your neighbor as yourself” is found way back in the Levitical law, part of the originally Torah. The first 13 verses of James Chapter 2 deals with the fact that “Favoritism is Forbidden”.
It gives examples of rich vs poor, and an assumption that some were treating one sin different than another. The man that is a street criminal is not to be treated any different than the man in a $300.00 suit who is a white collar criminal. All forms of favoritism are to be forbidden and if we do not obey the Scriptures, we are not loving our neighbor as ourselves. Other examples would be treating the person tomorrow in church who has a Bentley car (BTW I know a person who drives a Bentley-A new one today costs about $370,000) different then one driving a old clunker that barely has 4 tires on it. (In Syracuse we use to call them winter rats) Another example might be treating the person with a PHD different than the high school dropout or treating a millionaire different than a person on welfare. I think you get the picture. Enough of the negatives-let me read something that will inspire you. (Story of Granny Brand below)
Here is what I want you to do in the next 30 days. I want all of you – quizzers, coaches and officials – to live this scripture out and by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, minister in whatever way, at least 1 time to at least 1 person. It’s up to you and the Lord how you will, Love your neighbor as yourself.
I believe if you look around the world, you can plainly see the need for Christ’s love. Again, the main purpose of the BQ ministry is to make you more Christ like. If we are not showing the world Christ’s love, who is? The more Scripture you study and memorize should make you more loving. Let’s be a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. There is an old song that goes “they will know we are Christians by our Love.”
Andy Stanley posted recently on Twitter: Imagine a world where people were skeptical of what we believed,
But envious of how we treated one another.” John 13:35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Evelyn “Granny” Brand
Evelyn Brand felt called by God to go to India as a missionary. For a single woman in 1909 that took a truck load of Faith.
Evie was 30 when she spent a few weeks in Australia, helping a sister. Sailing home, she sensed a divine calling to be a missionary. Yet how was she to break the news to father? The arrival of a young missionary from India helped. Evie found Jesse Brand too intense for her taste. But at a missionary meeting, he seemed to look directly at her as he described the filth and squalor on the mission field. She heard an unspoken question in his words: could she, a fashionable girl, handle such things? Resolve rose within her. Yes, with God’s help she could!
The beginning of their work in the mountains was not glamorous. At the start, a dying man gave his heart to Christ. It was seven years before they saw another convert on the Kolli range. Because Hindu priests feared to lose their influence and revenue, they opposed the Gospel. People wanted to follow Jesus because God enabled Jesse to heal many of their diseases; but the priests frightened the people away from the new faith. The two went from village to village preaching the Gospel and tending the sick for seven year. Yet the people always pulled back from Christianity for fear of their Hindu priests. A breakthrough came when a priest caught fever. Jesse hurried to his aid. As he died, the priest entrusted his children to the Brands. The Jesus God must be the true one, he said, because the Brands alone had helped him in his hour of death.
The people marveled at a God who made Jesse care for an enemy’s orphaned children.
Thirteen years later Jesse died. Everyone expected Evie to return home. But she continued his work for another 20 year before returning home.
Evie Brand pleaded with the mission board to return to the filed, but its leaders would not yield. Rules were rules; she was too old to go back to India. She must retire. The decision was hard for the board. Evie had long sacrificed comforts and family to the mission. Year after year, she had lived entirely on a small inheritance and set aside her official salary to buy land for the mission. But ever since her husband Jesse died of fever, pioneering with her in the Mountains of Death, the mission had not been sure what to do with her. The one task she wanted–to open new work in the mountains–was denied her because she was elderly, single…and opinionated.
From the board’s point of view it was senseless to appoint a 68-year-old woman to another five-year term. But years before, Jesse and Evie had vowed to reach five mountain ranges with the Gospel. Four still had to be reached. Evie felt God was calling her to fulfill that vow.
“Please just send me back for one year,” she pleaded. “I promise not to make any more trouble. At the end of one year I will retire.” Reluctantly, the board agreed. Had they known the secret plan that Evie had confided to her daughter, they surely would have refused permission.
At 70, she began to fulfill Jesse’s dream. Everyone called her “Granny,” but she felt young. Just as in the old times, she traveled from village to village riding a hill pony, camping, teaching, and dispensing medicine. She rescued abandoned children. The work was harder now and she was thin. Carriers whacked her head on a rock. She never got her balance back after that and walked with bamboo canes. Yet she was full of joy and laughter. “Praise God!” she exclaimed continually.
Despite broken bones, fevers, and infirmities, she labored on. In fifteen years, she almost eradicated Guinea worm from the Kalrayan range. Through her efforts, the five ranges were evangelized, and a mission work planted on each. She added two more ranges to her plans. Granny insisted this extraordinary accomplishment was God’s doing, not hers. Wherever she was, she proclaimed Christ.
When her son, Paul, visited her in the mountains, he found her looking younger. Her smile, brighter than ever, made the difference. “This is how to grow old,” he wrote. “Allow everything else to fall away, until those around you see just love.”