Great Expectations

Psalm 95:1-7A

1Come, let us sing to the LORD!

Let us give a joyous shout to the rock of our salvation!

2Let us come before him with thanksgiving.

Let us sing him psalms of praise.

3For the LORD is a great God,

the great King above all gods.

4He owns the depths of the earth,

and even the mightiest mountains are his.

5The sea belongs to him, for he made it.

His hands formed the dry land, too.

6Come, let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the LORD our maker,

7for he is our God.

We are the people he watches over,

the sheep under his care.

In the late 1700s William Carey, a simple shoemaker, had a dream to reach the whole world for Jesus Christ. But his fellow Englishmen weren’t crazy about his ideas. If God wanted to save the heathen, they figured, he would find a way to do it. Carey kept insisting that he and other British Christians were the way.

“Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” That was Carey’s motto as he awakened a complacent church. He believed that since God created the whole world and loves everyone, his worshipers should help spread the worship of the true God throughout the world. So Carey founded the Baptist Missionary Society and sailed to India in 1793.

It must have been a lonely time for Carey. He had to debate with other Christians over the value of foreign missions. His journey was long and uncertain. His wife and children only grudgingly agreed to join him. At times Carey must have wondered how carefully God was watching over him. Was he really a “sheep under his care” (verse 7)?

Well, it turned out that a German named Christian Friedrich Schwartz had been sent forty years earlier by the Danish Missionary Society and had started churches in various areas of India and Ceylon. William Carey was greatly comforted when he saw the inscription Schwartz had placed over the door to the mission church: “Come, let us worship and bow down” (Psalm 95:6).

Where no fruit appears to cheer them

And they seem to toil in vain,

Then in mercy, Lord, draw near them,

Then their sinking hopes sustain,

Thus supported, let their zeal revive again.

THOMAS KELLY

Notable Quotable

“When the heart is full, it brims over in some outward act of devotion.”

F. B. MEYER