We have heard the bad news: the world is lost in the darkness of sin, and each of us is responsible for bearing the light to that darkness. Here's the good news: when we attempt great things for God, we can expect great things from God. Our lives can matter. Our work can achieve significance. Our days can affect eternity. Our gifts and abilities can change souls forever. The "desolate woman" can have more children than she "who has a husband" (v. 1b). There is hope—great hope. What are we to do?

Give generously: "Enlarge the place of your tent." Make it bigger, and broader, and higher, and longer, so more can come in. Such enlarging takes material, substance, money. It costs to do this. And so we give what is required, sacrificially and generously.

On January 9, 1793, the Baptist Missionary Society took its first offering, in William Carey's snuff box, to send Carey to India. It was not much, but it was enough to get him across the ocean and to the need. Without that offering, no missions movement could have been possible, then or now.

Today we give for exactly the same reason. Our unified missions offering supports 10,688 full-time missionaries, and multiplied thousands more in other roles. It helps to get the gospel to more than 120 countries. Last year alone, it supported ministries which led 451,030 people to Jesus.

But missions takes money, more than ever before. So we give generously. What will you give this year?

Love greatly: "Stretch your tent curtains wide." Open your tent to let others inside. Bring others with you to your Lord. Love them to your God.

The ministers of Nottingham in 1791 considered the heathen to be God's problem. Their concern was not the souls of others, but the status of their own churches. They wanted not to give to others, but to themselves. They had nothing of God's love for the world. So the world knew nothing about his love.

Not so with William Carey. He braved swamps swarming with alligators, tigers which threatened to eat him alive, poisonous cobras, malaria, dysentery, and cholera. He went to the world, because he had the love of God on his heart.

We will give and pray and go to the degree that we love. Who will know God's love because of you this week?

Go sacrificially: "Do not hold back."

Following God to India cost William Carey the death of his five-year-old son, Peter, from dysentery in their first year. His wife Dorothy never recovered from the blow, and suffered depression and mental illness to the day of her death. His missionary partner, John Thomas, deserted him. His supporters in England began to question his integrity. His son, Felix, died in the years to come, as did his second wife. But through it all, he committed himself sacrificially to God's call to his field, his mission.

What has it cost you to share God's love with yours?

Serve expectantly: "Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes."

Carey said to his fledgling mission society: "Yonder in India is a gold mine. I will descend and dig, but you at home must hold the ropes." And they did, expecting that God would use them together to change the world.

Lengthen the cords, because more are coming. Strengthen the stakes, because more are at hand. Believe God will use your life beyond your ability to predict or measure. What are you hoping God will do with you this week?