Link
Isaac McCoy
Born: June 13, 1784, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
Died: June 21, 1846, Louisville, Kentucky, at age 62.
McCoy was a missionary to the Indians. He moved to Kentucky at the age of six with his family. The McCoy family rafted down the Ohio River to Kentucky, settling first near Louisville, and in 1792 in Shelby County. Isaac’s mother was a Native American. His father was a Baptist minister, and though Isaac and his father had profound arguments on religion due to the elder McCoy’s opposition to missionizing, Isaac still set his eyes on becoming a missionary. In 1804 at the age of 20, Isaac McCoy married Christiana Polke, age 16. They had 14 children.
Isaac rode hundreds of miles through the wilderness and swam the swollen streams, often sleeping on the wet ground at night, for the sake of his missions, which he carried on for 29 years. One of the severest trials that Mr. McCoy was called to bear was the sickness and sometimes death that would visit his family during his absences from home. Five of his children died at different times while he was away.
From 1822 to 1832 he and his family ran a mission to the Indians, called the Carey Mission, in Niles, Michigan, named after William Carey, the English missionary to India. Two of the biggest problems, besides culture shock, that the Indians faced due to mingling with the settlers were alcoholism and exploitation. McCoy’s solution was to move the Indians beyond where they could be corrupted and exploited by the white people. But the tide of westward expansion in the U.S. was too strong, and his plans failed. Still, the vision of this preacher and pioneer was amazing to many. He worked as a surveyor, teacher, and government commissioner, besides running the school and preaching in the church.
He made ten trips on horseback to Washington D.C. to stir interest in Congress to implement measures beneficial to the Indians. In 1842, he organized the American Indian Mission Association. McCoy is remembered as a pioneer in Indian evangelistic efforts outside of the Northeast.
His wife, Christiana McCoy, also dedicated her life to working in the wilderness of Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Indian Territory, aiding her husband in his work of feeding, clothing, and teaching the Indians and their children about Jesus. She possessed the same spirit of love and determination as her husband, and zealously labored on behalf of the Indians until her death at age 73.
(Jesus:) “If you believe you are called by Me to a certain area, as McCoy was called to reach the Indians in his homeland, have courage to take the first step toward that calling. I’ll meet you in that first step with the anointing and blessings you need for the following steps. Some people know what their calling is, but are afraid to move forward. Don’t be afraid. Even if things don’t work out exactly as you expect, you’ll still not lose because you will have the blessings of fulfillment, of being a help to others, and of doing what you felt called to do for Me. Your calling doesn’t have to work out perfectly; it just has to have a beginning, a middle, and eventually a ‘well done’ from Me.”
For more information see:
http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/mccoy.isaac.indian.miss.html
https://www.kshs.org/p/isaac-mccoy-papers/14076
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/isaac-mccoy
http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/497
http://bit.ly/1mCHwpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_McCoy
Helen Steiner Rice
Born: May 19, 1900, Lorain, Ohio.
Died: April 23, 1981, Wyoming, Ohio, at age 81.
“A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men” (Proverbs 18:16 KJV).
Helen was a talented woman with an exceptional ability to write short inspirational and religious poems. As a child she loved to write rhyming couplets and to preach about God’s love to her family. Her life was tempered by bouts of depression, physical pain, and sorrow. Her father, a railroad worker, died suddenly in the worldwide Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, which ended any aspirations she may have had of attending college.
While working at the Lorain Electric Light and Power Company, she learned to decorate lampshades and taught other women how to do this. She was soon promoted to advertising manager, promoting the power company with both her poems and knack for window decorating. This is when she began her public speaking career, and by the age of 25 she was a nationally known speaker. In 1927 she founded her own speaker’s bureau. In June of 1928, Helen spoke at a bankers’ convention in Dayton, Ohio. Mr. Franklin Rice was assigned to escort Helen, and the following January they were married. Everything in life looked hopeful and promising.
Franklin invested most of their wealth in the stock market, but when it began to fluctuate, Helen wanted Franklin to stop buying securities. Franklin thought it was only a temporary fluctuation. In October of 1929, the market crashed, bringing on the Great Depression. Within only a few months, all their money was gone. Instead, they had countless bills. Franklin lost his job at the bank, leading to his tragic suicide a short time later. He and Helen had been married almost three years.
In 1931, she joined Gibson Greeting Cards in Cincinnati, where she worked for the next 40 years. Whatever the occasion, there was a verse from her heart and pen. Although she was a deeply religious woman, her religious greeting card poems were relatively few because of company restrictions. So in the evenings at home, she began to write inspirational verses to friends and co-workers and to enclose them in personal notes and letters. These reflected her growing and deepening faith in God.
When the greeting card editor at Gibson died suddenly in the mid-1930s, Helen took over the job. With her flourishing success, she began to have an ever-widening influence. Her fame skyrocketed when she wrote “The Priceless Gift of Christmas,” which was read on The Lawrence Welk Show in 1960.
Later she wrote poems like “A Child’s Faith,” “When I Must Leave You,” and “The End of the Road Is but a Bend in the Road.” In the years that followed, Helen was approached to write books of inspirational verses. She compiled many of the rhymed stanzas originally sent to those she loved as well as many new inspirational verses into books. This was done in addition to her full-time work producing greeting cards for Gibson. At the time of her mother’s death in the mid-1940s, she penned a condolence verse.
Her simple, sincere expressions of profound religious truths touched hearts and lives in the United States and beyond. People from around the world began to write to Helen for encouragement and support with their personal problems. She tried to answer as many of their letters as she could. She saw her correspondence as another form of service to God. Helen believed that her talent for easing human heartache through her verses was a God-given gift, one through which she could channel God’s love to the world.
When she retired from Gibson in 1971, she decided to retain an office there. This allowed her to continue working with Mary Jo Eling, her secretary, as they attempted to answer her volumes of correspondence. Rice insisted, “I go there every day, but I’m working for God now, not for Gibson.” She remained amazingly active until she was nearly 80 years old, despite the fact that she battled an increasingly painful and crippling arthritic condition.
Helen’s legacy is one of immense compassion. She remains one of America’s most prolific poets. She has been acclaimed as “the poet laureate of inspirational verse.” Her strong religious faith and ability to express deep emotion gave her poems a timeless appeal. She left behind a foundation so that her sizeable estate would be used to help the poor, the sick, and the needy. Helen believed that through this charitable foundation she would continue, even after her death, to give both inspiration and assistance to those in need. She said, “I only put to rhyme the truths God placed on my heart.”
The joy of unselfish giving
Time is not measured by the years that you live
But by the deeds that you do and the joy that you give.
And each day as it comes brings a chance to each one
To love to the fullest, leaving nothing undone
That would brighten the life or lighten the load
Of some weary traveler lost on life’s road.
So what does it matter how long we may live
If as long as we live we unselfishly give.
Helen Steiner Rice
(Jesus:) “Who might be comforted, encouraged, and blessed through your words if you would only put pen to paper? Helen didn’t personally know all the people her poems touched. She wrote because it gave her pleasure to do so, and because she felt that someone, somewhere, might be blessed through her poems with enough hope to carry on. What if that one person was your child, your spouse, someone dear to your heart? Helen’s faith is what motivated her love and care for those who looked to her for guidance and hope in dark times. But you don’t have to have the gift of writing poetry to convey God’s Spirit in a form that will help others. Consider what I have given you—whatever talent or gift—and put it to use. Whatever form My love takes as it pours through you, it is desperately needed in this world. It’s up to you to make use of it.”
For more information on Helen Steiner Rice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Steiner_Rice
http://www.poemhunter.com/helen-steiner-rice/biography/
http://bit.ly/1S4DPFi
Dawson E. Trotman
Born: March 5, 1906, Bisbee, Arizona.
Died: June 18, 1956, Schroon Lake, New York, at age 50.
Quotation: “Do what others cannot and will not do. The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.”
Dawson Trotman, a California lumberyard worker, became a Christian after memorizing several verses of Scripture in a contest at church. Suddenly, John 1:12 and John 5:24 turned his life around. He began a Bible study group in his home that grew to become the movement known as the Navigators. This worldwide Christian organization supported various Christian ideals: maintaining the basic disciplines of the Christ-centered Spirit-filled life, abiding in the Word of God, the importance of personal follow-up, one-on-one discipleship training, Scripture memorization, and principles for multiplying Christian disciples, laborers, and equippers around the world. It was officially named the Navigators in 1934. Their mission as an international, interdenominational Christian ministry is to help people grow in Jesus Christ as they navigate through life.
Dawson and his friends extended their work to sailors in the U.S. Navy. There Dawson met a sailor, Les Spencer. They spent many hours together praying, studying the Bible, and memorizing Scripture. Dawson’s emphasis on living every area of life with and for the Lord came at an important time in Spencer’s life, who soon had 125 men on board the U.S.S. West Virginia who were growing in Christ and actively sharing their faith. By the end of World War II, thousands of men on ships and bases around the world were learning the principles of spiritual multiplication by the person-to-person teaching of God’s Word.
Dawson said, “You can’t treat a command in the Bible as advice. A command is a command!” He was a living protest against a form of Christianity that wanted to understand the Bible but wasn’t serious about obeying it.
In the early 1950s, Billy Graham, then a young, up-and-coming evangelist, pleaded with Dawson Trotman to help him follow up on the thousands who were committing their lives to Christ at his crusades. Dawson assigned key men to help Graham develop materials and train workers. Dawson and Graham became close friends.
Dr. Billy Graham said, “I think Dawson has personally touched more lives than anybody I have ever known.”
His work and writings were instrumental in the creation of the Campus Outreach ministry, which focuses on discipleship as a method of building up the community of Christians on college campuses. He wrote a book called Born to Reproduce, which has become a classic.
He drowned at Schroon Lake, possibly of a heart attack. He was attempting to rescue a girl who fell while water skiing. His wife and daughter carry on his work.
The Navigators is a worldwide Christian parachurch organization. Its purpose is the training of Christians, with a particular emphasis on enabling them to share their faith with others. The Navigators work alongside local churches by providing resources such as Bible study booklets and study aid materials, scripture memory aids, and Christian-oriented books.
Parachurch organizations are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside of and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism, usually independent of church oversight.
(Jesus:) "Some people are afraid to let My Word really influence their lives because they don’t want to do what they feel it’s telling them to do. It’s hard to give up some things in life in order to follow through with what you believe I am asking of you. But I’ve promised not to give you burdens that are more than you can bear. I can show you a way to fulfill what I am speaking to your heart about. Dawson stepped out with just a Bible study, and I multiplied his efforts because he did what he could with what he had. What is important is your faithfulness to do what you can. What matters is the position of your heart and the desire to turn what you have into a tool to help others find My love and truth. I will bring the results as you are diligent to follow what I show you to the best of your ability. It’s not the number of years in a life but what is put into the years that makes a life complete.”
For more information see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_Trotman
http://bit.ly/1PNacXV
http://www.navigators.org/Home
http://www.navigators.org/About-Us/History
Born: June 13, 1784, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
Died: June 21, 1846, Louisville, Kentucky, at age 62.
McCoy was a missionary to the Indians. He moved to Kentucky at the age of six with his family. The McCoy family rafted down the Ohio River to Kentucky, settling first near Louisville, and in 1792 in Shelby County. Isaac’s mother was a Native American. His father was a Baptist minister, and though Isaac and his father had profound arguments on religion due to the elder McCoy’s opposition to missionizing, Isaac still set his eyes on becoming a missionary. In 1804 at the age of 20, Isaac McCoy married Christiana Polke, age 16. They had 14 children.
Isaac rode hundreds of miles through the wilderness and swam the swollen streams, often sleeping on the wet ground at night, for the sake of his missions, which he carried on for 29 years. One of the severest trials that Mr. McCoy was called to bear was the sickness and sometimes death that would visit his family during his absences from home. Five of his children died at different times while he was away.
From 1822 to 1832 he and his family ran a mission to the Indians, called the Carey Mission, in Niles, Michigan, named after William Carey, the English missionary to India. Two of the biggest problems, besides culture shock, that the Indians faced due to mingling with the settlers were alcoholism and exploitation. McCoy’s solution was to move the Indians beyond where they could be corrupted and exploited by the white people. But the tide of westward expansion in the U.S. was too strong, and his plans failed. Still, the vision of this preacher and pioneer was amazing to many. He worked as a surveyor, teacher, and government commissioner, besides running the school and preaching in the church.
He made ten trips on horseback to Washington D.C. to stir interest in Congress to implement measures beneficial to the Indians. In 1842, he organized the American Indian Mission Association. McCoy is remembered as a pioneer in Indian evangelistic efforts outside of the Northeast.
His wife, Christiana McCoy, also dedicated her life to working in the wilderness of Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Indian Territory, aiding her husband in his work of feeding, clothing, and teaching the Indians and their children about Jesus. She possessed the same spirit of love and determination as her husband, and zealously labored on behalf of the Indians until her death at age 73.
(Jesus:) “If you believe you are called by Me to a certain area, as McCoy was called to reach the Indians in his homeland, have courage to take the first step toward that calling. I’ll meet you in that first step with the anointing and blessings you need for the following steps. Some people know what their calling is, but are afraid to move forward. Don’t be afraid. Even if things don’t work out exactly as you expect, you’ll still not lose because you will have the blessings of fulfillment, of being a help to others, and of doing what you felt called to do for Me. Your calling doesn’t have to work out perfectly; it just has to have a beginning, a middle, and eventually a ‘well done’ from Me.”
For more information see:
http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/mccoy.isaac.indian.miss.html
https://www.kshs.org/p/isaac-mccoy-papers/14076
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/isaac-mccoy
http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/497
http://bit.ly/1mCHwpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_McCoy
Helen Steiner Rice
Born: May 19, 1900, Lorain, Ohio.
Died: April 23, 1981, Wyoming, Ohio, at age 81.
“A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men” (Proverbs 18:16 KJV).
Helen was a talented woman with an exceptional ability to write short inspirational and religious poems. As a child she loved to write rhyming couplets and to preach about God’s love to her family. Her life was tempered by bouts of depression, physical pain, and sorrow. Her father, a railroad worker, died suddenly in the worldwide Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, which ended any aspirations she may have had of attending college.
While working at the Lorain Electric Light and Power Company, she learned to decorate lampshades and taught other women how to do this. She was soon promoted to advertising manager, promoting the power company with both her poems and knack for window decorating. This is when she began her public speaking career, and by the age of 25 she was a nationally known speaker. In 1927 she founded her own speaker’s bureau. In June of 1928, Helen spoke at a bankers’ convention in Dayton, Ohio. Mr. Franklin Rice was assigned to escort Helen, and the following January they were married. Everything in life looked hopeful and promising.
Franklin invested most of their wealth in the stock market, but when it began to fluctuate, Helen wanted Franklin to stop buying securities. Franklin thought it was only a temporary fluctuation. In October of 1929, the market crashed, bringing on the Great Depression. Within only a few months, all their money was gone. Instead, they had countless bills. Franklin lost his job at the bank, leading to his tragic suicide a short time later. He and Helen had been married almost three years.
In 1931, she joined Gibson Greeting Cards in Cincinnati, where she worked for the next 40 years. Whatever the occasion, there was a verse from her heart and pen. Although she was a deeply religious woman, her religious greeting card poems were relatively few because of company restrictions. So in the evenings at home, she began to write inspirational verses to friends and co-workers and to enclose them in personal notes and letters. These reflected her growing and deepening faith in God.
When the greeting card editor at Gibson died suddenly in the mid-1930s, Helen took over the job. With her flourishing success, she began to have an ever-widening influence. Her fame skyrocketed when she wrote “The Priceless Gift of Christmas,” which was read on The Lawrence Welk Show in 1960.
Later she wrote poems like “A Child’s Faith,” “When I Must Leave You,” and “The End of the Road Is but a Bend in the Road.” In the years that followed, Helen was approached to write books of inspirational verses. She compiled many of the rhymed stanzas originally sent to those she loved as well as many new inspirational verses into books. This was done in addition to her full-time work producing greeting cards for Gibson. At the time of her mother’s death in the mid-1940s, she penned a condolence verse.
Her simple, sincere expressions of profound religious truths touched hearts and lives in the United States and beyond. People from around the world began to write to Helen for encouragement and support with their personal problems. She tried to answer as many of their letters as she could. She saw her correspondence as another form of service to God. Helen believed that her talent for easing human heartache through her verses was a God-given gift, one through which she could channel God’s love to the world.
When she retired from Gibson in 1971, she decided to retain an office there. This allowed her to continue working with Mary Jo Eling, her secretary, as they attempted to answer her volumes of correspondence. Rice insisted, “I go there every day, but I’m working for God now, not for Gibson.” She remained amazingly active until she was nearly 80 years old, despite the fact that she battled an increasingly painful and crippling arthritic condition.
Helen’s legacy is one of immense compassion. She remains one of America’s most prolific poets. She has been acclaimed as “the poet laureate of inspirational verse.” Her strong religious faith and ability to express deep emotion gave her poems a timeless appeal. She left behind a foundation so that her sizeable estate would be used to help the poor, the sick, and the needy. Helen believed that through this charitable foundation she would continue, even after her death, to give both inspiration and assistance to those in need. She said, “I only put to rhyme the truths God placed on my heart.”
The joy of unselfish giving
Time is not measured by the years that you live
But by the deeds that you do and the joy that you give.
And each day as it comes brings a chance to each one
To love to the fullest, leaving nothing undone
That would brighten the life or lighten the load
Of some weary traveler lost on life’s road.
So what does it matter how long we may live
If as long as we live we unselfishly give.
Helen Steiner Rice
(Jesus:) “Who might be comforted, encouraged, and blessed through your words if you would only put pen to paper? Helen didn’t personally know all the people her poems touched. She wrote because it gave her pleasure to do so, and because she felt that someone, somewhere, might be blessed through her poems with enough hope to carry on. What if that one person was your child, your spouse, someone dear to your heart? Helen’s faith is what motivated her love and care for those who looked to her for guidance and hope in dark times. But you don’t have to have the gift of writing poetry to convey God’s Spirit in a form that will help others. Consider what I have given you—whatever talent or gift—and put it to use. Whatever form My love takes as it pours through you, it is desperately needed in this world. It’s up to you to make use of it.”
For more information on Helen Steiner Rice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Steiner_Rice
http://www.poemhunter.com/helen-steiner-rice/biography/
http://bit.ly/1S4DPFi
Dawson E. Trotman
Born: March 5, 1906, Bisbee, Arizona.
Died: June 18, 1956, Schroon Lake, New York, at age 50.
Quotation: “Do what others cannot and will not do. The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.”
Dawson Trotman, a California lumberyard worker, became a Christian after memorizing several verses of Scripture in a contest at church. Suddenly, John 1:12 and John 5:24 turned his life around. He began a Bible study group in his home that grew to become the movement known as the Navigators. This worldwide Christian organization supported various Christian ideals: maintaining the basic disciplines of the Christ-centered Spirit-filled life, abiding in the Word of God, the importance of personal follow-up, one-on-one discipleship training, Scripture memorization, and principles for multiplying Christian disciples, laborers, and equippers around the world. It was officially named the Navigators in 1934. Their mission as an international, interdenominational Christian ministry is to help people grow in Jesus Christ as they navigate through life.
Dawson and his friends extended their work to sailors in the U.S. Navy. There Dawson met a sailor, Les Spencer. They spent many hours together praying, studying the Bible, and memorizing Scripture. Dawson’s emphasis on living every area of life with and for the Lord came at an important time in Spencer’s life, who soon had 125 men on board the U.S.S. West Virginia who were growing in Christ and actively sharing their faith. By the end of World War II, thousands of men on ships and bases around the world were learning the principles of spiritual multiplication by the person-to-person teaching of God’s Word.
Dawson said, “You can’t treat a command in the Bible as advice. A command is a command!” He was a living protest against a form of Christianity that wanted to understand the Bible but wasn’t serious about obeying it.
In the early 1950s, Billy Graham, then a young, up-and-coming evangelist, pleaded with Dawson Trotman to help him follow up on the thousands who were committing their lives to Christ at his crusades. Dawson assigned key men to help Graham develop materials and train workers. Dawson and Graham became close friends.
Dr. Billy Graham said, “I think Dawson has personally touched more lives than anybody I have ever known.”
His work and writings were instrumental in the creation of the Campus Outreach ministry, which focuses on discipleship as a method of building up the community of Christians on college campuses. He wrote a book called Born to Reproduce, which has become a classic.
He drowned at Schroon Lake, possibly of a heart attack. He was attempting to rescue a girl who fell while water skiing. His wife and daughter carry on his work.
The Navigators is a worldwide Christian parachurch organization. Its purpose is the training of Christians, with a particular emphasis on enabling them to share their faith with others. The Navigators work alongside local churches by providing resources such as Bible study booklets and study aid materials, scripture memory aids, and Christian-oriented books.
Parachurch organizations are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside of and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism, usually independent of church oversight.
(Jesus:) "Some people are afraid to let My Word really influence their lives because they don’t want to do what they feel it’s telling them to do. It’s hard to give up some things in life in order to follow through with what you believe I am asking of you. But I’ve promised not to give you burdens that are more than you can bear. I can show you a way to fulfill what I am speaking to your heart about. Dawson stepped out with just a Bible study, and I multiplied his efforts because he did what he could with what he had. What is important is your faithfulness to do what you can. What matters is the position of your heart and the desire to turn what you have into a tool to help others find My love and truth. I will bring the results as you are diligent to follow what I show you to the best of your ability. It’s not the number of years in a life but what is put into the years that makes a life complete.”
For more information see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_Trotman
http://bit.ly/1PNacXV
http://www.navigators.org/Home
http://www.navigators.org/About-Us/History
