Frank Charles Laubach

1. Frank Charles Laubach September 2, 1884 – June 11, 1970 Jeff Bennett – Lead Pastor January 1st 2011

3. Early Years • Born September 2, 1884 • BA from Princeton • Masters and PhD from Columbia University. • 1915 he was commissioned serve in the Philippines as a missionary, and to teach at the Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in Manila. • He worked among Christian Filipinos establishing churches and teaching. • Almost elected president of UTS: he lost by one vote.

4. Moros - Maranao Tribe • 1929 • Islamic Tribe in South • Near Islamic City of Marawi on Lake Lanao • Moros Rebellion (1889-1913) against US Military.

5. Dissatisfaction After 15 Years as a Christian minister he still was not living his days in Communion with God I do not make the "minute by minute effort to follow the will of God."

6. Goal To live all my waking moments in conscious listening to the inner voice

7. Goal Asking without ceasing: What, Father, do you desire said, this minute?”? What, Father, do you desire done, this minute?”

8. The example of Jesus Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. John 5:19

9. Who for? "Can a laboring man successfully attain this continuous surrender to God? Can a man working at a machine pray for people all day long, talk with God all day long, and at the same time do his task efficiently?“ "Can a merchant do business, can an accountant keep books, ceaselessly surrendered to God?“ "Can a mother wash dishes, care for the babies, continuously talking to God?“ "Can a politician keep in a state of continuous contact with God, and not lose the following of the crowds?“ "Can little children be taught to talk and listen to God inwardly all day long, and what is the effect upon them?"

10. Response His confidants at the time told him he was seeking the impossible.

11. Learnings Can we have this contact with God all the time? All the time awake, fall asleep in his arms, and awaken in His presence, can we attain that? Objection If one thinks of God all the time, he will never get anything else done.

12. Learnings We can keep two things in mind at once. Indeed we cannot keep one thing in mind more than half a second. Mind is a flowing something. It oscillates. Concentration is merely the continuous return to the same problem from a million angles. We do not think of one thing. We always think of the relationship of at least two things, and more often of three or more things simultaneously. So my problem is this: Can I bring God back in my mind-flow every few seconds so that God shall always be in my mind as an after-image, shall always be one of the elements in every concept and percept?

13. Learnings The sense of being led by an unseen hand which takes mine while another hand reaches ahead and prepares the way grows upon me daily.

14. Learnings • My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversations with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will, to make this hour gloriously rich. • This seem to be all I need to think about.

15. The Struggle • This conscious, incessant submission to God has proven extremely difficult, and I have surrendered for the past few days. And today and yesterday I saw evidences of the result. In an effort to be witty I have said biting things which have hurt the feelings of others, and have been short and impatient.

16. The Struggle • If this record of a soul struggle to find God is to be complete it must not omit the story of difficulty and failure. I have not succeeded very well so far. • I have undertaken something which, at my age at least, is hard, harder than I had anticipated. But I resolve not to give up the effort.

17. The Struggle • The experiment is interesting, although I am not very successful, thus far. The idea of God slips out of my sight for I suppose two thirds of every day, thus far.

18. The Struggle • I am not succeeding in keeping God in my mind very many hours of the day, and from the point of view of experiment number one I should have to record a pretty high percentage of failure. But the other experiment--what happens when I do succeed--is so successful that it makes up for the failure of number one. God does work a change. The moment I turn to Him it is like turning on an electric current which I feel through my whole being.

19. Learnings • Now I like God's presence so much that when for a half hour or so he slips out of mind--as he does many times a day--I feel as though I had deserted him, and as though I had lost something very precious in my life.

20. Learnings • I have tasted a thrill in fellowship with God which has made anything out of conformity with God disgusting. This afternoon the possession of God has caught me up with such sheer joy that I thought I never had known anything like it. God was so close and so amazingly lovely that I felt like melting all over with a strange blissful contentment. Having had this experience, which comes to me now several times a week, the thrill of filth repels me, for I know its power to drag me from God. And after an hour of close friendship with God my soul feels clean, as new fallen snow.

21. People • I choose another road for myself. I choose to look at people through God, using God as my glasses, colored with his love for them. • Clearly my job here is not to go to the town plaza and make proselytes, it is to live wrapped in God, trembling to His thoughts, burning with His passion. That is the best gift you can give to this town. • People over all the world are withering because they are open toward God only rarely. Every waking minute is not too much."

22. People • If asked my chief difficulty in meeting these Moros, I should have to reply, "No chief difficulty excepting to keep ready spiritually." And I wonder whether here is not the only serious difficulty anywhere. This year I am readier than I have ever been before, and perhaps this is why people seem readier also.

23. People • God needs my help to do His will for others. • My prayers release that power. • I must confront the Moros with a divine love which will speak Christ to them though I never use His name.

24. People • One need not tell God everything about the people for whom one prays. Holding them one by one steadily before the mind and willing that God may have his will with them is the best, for God knows better than we what our friends need, yet our prayer releases his power, we know not how.

25. As you work • Last year, as you know, I decided to try to keep God in mind all the time. That was rather easy for a lonesome man in a strange land. It has always been easier for the shepherds, and the monks, and anchorites than for people surrounded by crowds. • But today it is an altogether different thing. I am no longer lonesome. The hours of the day from dawn to bed time are spent in the presence of others. Either this new situation will crowd God out or I must take him into it all. I must learn a continuous silent conversation of heart to heart with God while looking into other eyes and listening to other voices. If I decide to do this it is far more difficult than the thing I was doing before. • Yet if this experiment is to have any value for busy people it must be worked under exactly these conditions of high pressure and throngs of people.

26. As you Work • All I have said is mere words, until one sets Out helping God right wrongs, helping God help the helpless, loving and talking it over with God. Then there comes a great sense of the close up, warm intimate heart of reality. God simply creeps in and you know he is here in your heart. He has become your friend by working along with you. • So if anybody were to ask me how to find God I should say at once, hunt out the deepest need you can find and forget all about your own comfort while you try to meet that need. Talk to God about it, and--he will be there. You will know it.

27. His Ministry • At first he was not accepted bv the Maranao. They were suspicious of this white foreigner. • So he just lived among them, listened to them, learned their language. • They seemed such a sad people. • He learned that they were sad because when loved ones moved to another village there was no way to for them to keep in touch: • they had no written language.

28. His Ministry • Developed hieroglyphics pictures which represented objects, and then later came to represent syllables. • The results were amazing! People learned to read and write in two weeks or less! Dr. Laubach soon had a corps of paid teachers teaching others in their own and other village. • The famous "Each One Teach One" program was born, and with the generalization of his linguistic methods the foundation was laid for his worldwide efforts to promote literacy, beginning with India in 1935. • Word of Dr. Laubach's success began to spread. He had written letter after letter to heads of state: Presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens...offering to advise them on how to teach their illiterates. • Requests came in from all over the world. He spent 40 years as a literacy consultant to governments. church missions. and private organizations. • He worked with native speaking teams in over 100 countries in more than 300 languages and dialects. • India alone has 12 major languages. He is credited with the basic education of millions of adults whom he called the "Silent Billion".

29. His Ministry • His personal contacts with President Truman were thought to be partly responsible for "point four" in Truman's inaugural address of 1949, sponsoring a "bold new program ... for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas" of the world. • In 1955, he founded Laubach Literacy, which helped introduce about 150,000 Americans to reading each year and had grown to embrace 34 developing countries. • Laubach is the only American missionary to be honored on a US postage stamp, a 30¢ Great Americans series stamp in 1984. • Time magazine called him Mr. Literacy..... • Many others called him the "Apostle to the Illiterates"....... • Lowell Thomas called him the 'greatest teacher of our time'......

30. Legacy • Because of Laubach's immense involvement with worldwide social problems, he came to be generally known for his work, not for his inner life. Many of those who have written about him say little about his spiritual side, and obviously do not know what to make of it. But his own words and writings (he published more than fifty books) reveal that he remained primarily a spiritual man — fundamentally living from his moment-to-moment relation to God — to the end of his days. He knew this relation in a way that did not bear many of the external trappings conventionally associated with spirituality. But to observe his effect is to see that he was truly one of those born of the spirit, of the "wind" that invisibly produces visible results (John 3:8).

31. Advice • Pray. • Recall God. • Sing or hum a devotional hymn. • Talk or write about God. • Seek to relieve suffering of any kind in a prayerful sprit. • Whisper to God. • Look at a picture or a symbol of Christ. • Read a scripture verse or poem about God. • Give somebody a helping hand for the Lord’s sake. • Breathe a prayer for the people you meet. • Follow the leading of the Inner Voice, • Plan or work for the Kingdom of God. • Testify to others about God or the church. • Share suffering or sorrow with another. • Hear God and see Him in flowers, trees, water, hills, sky.

32. Advice • I must talk about God, or I cannot keep him in my mind. • I must give Him away in order to have Him. • Never start with a time more than an hour, and not that long if tires you.

33. Conclusion • God is always awaiting the chance to give us high days. We so seldom are in deep earnest about giving Him His chance. • It is difficult to convey to another the joy of having broken into the new sea of realizing God's "here-ness." • The privilege of fellowship with God is infinitely more than any thing that God could give. When he gives himself he is giving more than anything else in the universe.

34. Joys • Any minute can be paradise, that any place can be heaven! That any man can have God! That every man does have God the moment he speaks to God, or listens for him! • As I analyze myself I find several things happening to me as a result of these two months of strenuous effort to keep God in mind every minute. This concentration upon God is strenuous, but everything else has ceased to be so. I think more clearly, I forget less frequently. Things which I did with a strain before, I now do easily and with no effort whatever. I worry about nothing, and lose no sleep. I walk on air a good part of the time. Even the mirror reveals a new light in my eyes and face. I no longer feel in a hurry about anything. Everything goes right.

35. Joys • I have found such a way of life. I ask nobody else to live it, or even to try it. I only witness that it is wonderful, it is indeed heaven on earth. And it is very simple, so simple that any child could practice it. Just to pray inwardly for everybody one meets, and to keep on all day without stopping, even when doing other work of every kind. • This simple practice requires only a gentle pressure of the will, not more than a person can exert easily. It grows easier as the habit becomes fixed.

36. Joys • This hour can be heaven • Any hour for anybody can be as rich as God. • It can be as wonderful as any hour that any human being has ever lived. • Neither tomorrow matters, nor yesterday. Every now is an eternity if it is full of God.

37. Joys • Everybody can learn to hold God by the hand and rest. And when God is ready to speak the fresh thoughts of heaven will flow in like a crystal spring. Everybody rests at the end of the day, what a world gain if everybody could rest in the waiting arms of the Father, and listen until he whispers.

39. People • If this entire universe is a desperate attempt of love to incarnate itself, then "important duties" which keep us from helping little people are not duties but sins--or am I all the while trying to justify my own failure?

40. The Struggle • And back of that failure there was something else. A crowd of people arrived who, when they are in a crowd, wish to talk or think nothing of religion. I fear I have not wanted some of them to think me religious for fear I might cease to be interesting.