Valiant Men

Ray Stedman


Ray Stedman

Ray Stedman is one of the foremost pastors and biblical expositors of the twentieth century. Ray's message of authentic Christianity continues to revolutionize the lives of countless individuals and churches worldwide.

"If we will admit our inadequacy, we can have God's adequacy... The greatest problem in the church is trying to do God's work with man's strength... The key to Christian sufficiency is realizing that everything comes from God and nothing comes from me."

Stedman's sermons and books


"What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use -- men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men -- men of prayer."

-E. M. Bounds



E.M. Bounds E. M. Bounds was a Methodist Pastor around the time of the American Civil War. At the age of 58, and for the next nineteen years (till he went home to be with the Lord at age 77), he started and continued to write books. The rest of his time was spent in intercessory prayer and in an itinerant revival ministry. It is said that he prayed daily from 4 A.M. to 7 A.M. before he would begin work on his writings.

E. M. Bounds was born in Missouri in 1835. He studied deeply in the scriptures, and was greatly inspired by the writings of John Wesley. At the age of twenty-four he felt called to be a preacher, and became pastor of a small Methodist congregation in Monticello, Missouri.

In 1861 he was arrested by Union troops, and held with other non-combatants in a Federal prison for a year and a half. Released in a prisoner trade, he served as a Chaplain with the Confederacy. After the war, he became Associate Editor of the Christian Advocate, official weekly paper for the entire Methodist Episcopal Church.

The writings of E.M. Bounds


Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore
Roosevelt


From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910






It is not the critic who counts,
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,
who strives valiantly,
who errs and comes short again and again,
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
and spends himself in a worthy cause,
who at best knows achievement and
who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.



The Apostle Paul

Speaking on men of faith

Who through faith subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness,
obtained promises,
stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the violence of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword,
out of weakness were made strong,
became valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the strangers.
Women received their dead raised to life again,
and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.
(Heb 11:33-35 MKJV)