IT'S NEVER TOO LATE

I first met Dr. Ed Cole in the late 1960’s when he was pastor of a church near the San Francisco Bay Area. I was David Wilkerson’s Crusade Director at the time and we had some very large crusades in Northern California. Dr. Cole and I maintained our contact over the years and in the late 90’s I began to do part-time work for him and his ministry, The Christian Men’s Network.

Until his death in 2002, I helped Dr. Cole with some of his men’s events around the nation. I occasionally traveled with him and handled the scheduling, planning and management of his events and speaking engagements. Dr. Cole will always be one of my favorite teachers—his teaching for men was simply superb. If you have not read his book Maximized Manhood, do so; it’s a classic. Here is the website of The Christian Men’s Network: www.cmnworld.com.

Dr. Ed Cole is looked upon by many as the father of the modern men’s movement. When Dr. Cole started writing, teaching and traveling with a focus on men in 1977, there was no men’s movement in the nation. Promise Keepers did not exist and there was almost nothing being done for the men of the church on a regional or national basis. It was in one of Ed Cole’s men’s events that a football coach named Bill McCartney was touched by God’s Spirit, and out of that spiritual encounter Promise Keepers was birthed.

Dr. Ed Cole was 55 when he founded The Christian Men’s Network in 1977 and he maintained his focus and calling right up to his death.

A few days ago I read a brief article about the founder of the J.C. Penney department stores. I was more than intrigued, because the world headquarters of J.C. Penney Company is about a mile from my home.

J.C. Penney launched his first chain of stores, “The Golden Rule” stores, in 1907. The stores apparently did well until the stock market crash of 1929 and J.C. Penney lost $40 million. In 1932 he was forced to sell out in order to satisfy creditors; his spirit was crushed, his health began to fail, and he was virtually broke. While in a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, one morning Penney heard singing in the distance and went to investigate. Staff members of the sanitarium gathered each morning for worship before beginning their work day and the words of the song that Mr. Penney heard were from the song “God will take care of you.”

"Be not dismayed whate'er betide,
God will take care of you;
Beneath His wings of love abide,
God will take care of you."

Penney slipped into the back of the room and listened. He left a short time later a changed man, his health and spirit renewed. He went out and started over with the J.C. Penney Company; he was 56 when he started the long climb back.

As far as we know Joshua was about 85 years of age when he assumed leadership of the Jewish nation and led them into their conquest of the Promised Land. Joshua 11:23 says in summarizing Joshua’s life: “So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had said to Moses; and Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Then the land rested from war.” Not a bad epitaph.

“So (your name inserted here) did all that God had laid on his heart.” I could rest with that on my grave marker!

It is never, ever too late to step out in faith and do something that the Lord has put on your heart.