You can cultivate a spirit of perseverance to accomplish God’s plans and purposes for your life—even through pain, discouragement, loss and failure. Dr. Doug Gehman, president of Globe International, shares biblical leadership wisdom from his recently released book, Before You Quit, about how non-quitters have changed the world.
“The primary story that’s in the introduction is about a missionary leader that my wife and I trained under,” Gehman shared with Dr. Langley on a recent episode of the Pinnacle Leaders Podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network titled Before You Quit.
“We were just young people with one child when we worked with this missionary evangelist I call W.C. in the book,” Gehman said.
“He had a vision to preach the gospel to tens of thousands of people all over Southeast Asia. I remember when we first went to Thailand with him and he sat down with both missionary and church leaders to share his vision,” Gehman continued. “With one accord, they all poured cold water on his vision and said, ‘You’ll never see that happen in this country. This is a Buddhist country and they’ll never come to a Christian meeting.’
“We worked with W.C. for three years and didn’t see any fruit from the ministry, but he refused to quit. The last meeting we were going to have before going back to the U.S. for a furlough, we went to a place in Thailand and did the same thing we had always done before.” Gehman recalled, “The first night, maybe 300 people came; by the ninth night, there were 20,000 people on that field. If W.C. had quit before that moment, if he’d allowed disappointments, the naysayers, the delays and lack of money to stop him, he would have never arrived at that moment.”
From this, Gehman learned, “Live faithfully when you’re going through difficult times. Put one foot in front of the other even when the road seems like it’s going nowhere. Trust God that he’s going to get you through this tunnel, and the sun is going to come out again.”
Listen and subscribe to the Pinnacle Leaders Podcast with Dr. Langley for more biblical wisdom for today’s kingdom-minded leaders.
