# workoutyourfaith.org


## Posts

- [Timothy](https://workoutyourfaith.org/timothy/): Timothy was from the Lycaonian city of Lystra in Asia Minor. Timothy was converted to Christ in the year 52 by the holy Apostle Paul (June 29). When the Apostles Paul and Barnabas first visited the cities of Lycaonia, Paul healed one crippled from birth. Many of the inhabitants of Lystra then believed in Christ, and among them was the future Timothy, his mother Eunice and grandmother Loida (Lois) (Acts 14:6-12; 2 Tim. 1:5). The seed of faith, planted in Timothy’s soul by the Apostle Paul, brought forth abundant fruit. He became Paul’s disciple, and later his constant companion and…
- [Cornelius the Centurion](https://workoutyourfaith.org/cornelius-the-centurion/): Soon after the Lord Jesus Christ’s Ascension into Heaven, a centurion by the name of Cornelius settled at Caesarea in Palestine, who had lived previously in Thracian Italy. Although he was a pagan, he distinguished himself by deep piety and good deeds, as the holy Evangelist Luke records in Acts 10:1. The Lord did not disdain his virtuous life and led him to the knowledge of truth through the enlightening light of faith in Christ. Once, Cornelius was at prayer in his home. An angel of God appeared to him and said that his prayer had been heard and accepted…
- [Ambrose of Milan](https://workoutyourfaith.org/ambrose-of-milan/): Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, was born in the year 340 into the family of the Roman prefect of Gaul (now France). Even in the saint’s childhood there appeared presentiments of his great future. Once, bees covered the face of the sleeping infant. They flew in and out of his mouth, leaving honey on his tongue. Soon they flew away so high that they could no longer be seen. Ambrose’s father said that the child would become something great when he reached manhood. After the death of the father of the family, Ambrose journeyed to Rome, where the future saint…
- [Damaris](https://workoutyourfaith.org/damaris/): Damaris is mentioned in Acts 17:34 as the first woman of Athens who, along with Dionysius the Areopagite and others, came to believe in the Gospel preached by the Apostle Paul in 52 A.D. The fact that she is named could mean she had a high social status or was an educated woman among the philosophical men of Athens, or at least she was later well known in the early Church. Contrary to popular belief, Acts does not state Damaris was converted while listening to the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill, with Dionysius, but that she converted while Paul preached…
- [Dionysius The Areopagite](https://workoutyourfaith.org/dionysius-the-areopagite/): Dionysius lived originally in the city of Athens. He was raised there and received a classical Greek education. He then went to Egypt, where he studied astronomy at the city of Heliopolis. It was in Heliopolis, along with his friend Apollophonos where he witnessed the solar eclipse that occurred at the moment of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ by Crucifixion. “Either the Creator of all the world now suffers, or this visible world is coming to an end,” Dionysius said. Upon his return to Athens from Egypt, he was chosen to be a member of the Areopagus Council…
- [Hudson Taylor](https://workoutyourfaith.org/hudson-taylor/): He recounted a moment he felt his prayer answered. In his words, “Something seemed to say, ‘Your prayer is answered. Your conditions are accepted.' And from that time the conviction has never left me that I was called to China.”
- [Charles Schulz](https://workoutyourfaith.org/charles-schulz/): Charlie Brown’s says, "Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel." Linus responds with a reading from Luke 2:8-14.
- [Thomas Baker](https://workoutyourfaith.org/thomas-baker/): In the records of history, the story of Thomas Baker stands as a stark reminder of the perils faced by missionaries during the 19th century. Born on February 6, 1832, Baker was a Methodist missionary who ventured to Fiji, eager to spread the Christian faith. Little did he know that his journey would end in a gruesome act of cannibalism, making him the only known missionary to suffer such a fate in the archipelago. Baker’s Journey to Fiji Baker’s journey to the heart of Viti Levu began with a trip through the Taukei ni Waluvu’s Christian enclave, situated on the…
- [Óscar Romero](https://workoutyourfaith.org/oscar-romero/): OSCAR ROMERO was born in Ciudad Barrios, a town in the mountainous east of El Salvador, on 15th August 1917. He was the second of seven children. When he was thirteen he declared a vocation to the priesthood. He went to a seminary in San Miguel, then to the capital San Salvador, and from there to Rome. He was ordained in 1942. In January 1944 he was recalled to San Miguel by his bishop and was soon secretary of the diocese. This position he held for twenty-three years. In San Miguel his work flourished and his reputation grew. He established…
- [Dorothy Kazel](https://workoutyourfaith.org/dorothy-kazel/): Dorothy Kazel was born on June 30,1939, and joined the Ursuline Sisters, a teaching order in Cleveland, in 1960. Before entering religious life, she was engaged to be married. Feeling called to the life of a religious, she postponed her marriage in order to test her calling. She remained with the Ursulines until her death. Dorothy taught for seven years in Cleveland and later became involved in ecumenical and interracial community programs in the city. At a 1968 community retreat, another sister remembers Dorothy saying that she wanted to be remembered as “an alleluia from head to foot.” In 1974…
- [Maura Clarke](https://workoutyourfaith.org/maura-clarke/): Sister Maura John Clarke was born Mary Elizabeth Clarke on January 13, 1931, the eldest of three children. Her parents, both born in Ireland, settled in Belle Harbour, Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York in the late 1920’s. It was in Manhattan that Maura, as we affectionately called her, was born. She entered Maryknoll in 1950, and made her first vows in 1953. Initially, as she stated in a letter of January 25, 1950, she had been attracted to Maryknoll by a deep desire “to become closer to God and to serve Him.” After graduation from Maryknoll Teachers College in 1954,…
- [Ita Ford](https://workoutyourfaith.org/ita-ford/): Sister Ita Ford “I never said, ‘Help, or save me, or I’m drowning’,” Ita told her mother on a tape she sent home describing her close call with death on August 23rd 1980 in a flash flood which took her friend, Sister Carol Piette, M.M. “Something was happening and I said, ‘Receive me, Lord, I’m coming.” The Lord made her wait for three more months before he accepted the offering of her life. Much of Ita’s life had been spent waiting. When she was a child, she, her brother Bill, and her sister Irene often waited in hospital rooms to…
- [Charlie Kirk](https://workoutyourfaith.org/charlie-kirk/): Charlie Kirk’s life was a testament to faith, courage, and conviction. From his earliest days, he believed America was worth fighting for, and he dedicated every moment of his 31 years to that cause. He lived with eyes fixed on eternity, grounded in the truth of God’s Word, and driven by a calling bigger than himself. Charlie was a servant of the Lord, a devoted husband to Erika, a loving father to two beautiful children, and a leader of uncommon clarity and strength. He did not seek influence for its own sake. Instead, he poured his life into others, raising…
- [Maria Laura Mainetti](https://workoutyourfaith.org/maria-laura-mainetti/): “Lord, forgive them.” Teresina Elsa Mainetti was born in 1939 in Lecco, Italy, and was baptized within 2 days. She was the 10th and last child and her mother died when she was just 12 days old. After turning 18, she attended the Istituto Magistrale and decided to join the Sisters of the Cross. In 1959, she made her 1st vow and took the name Laura in honor of the late daughter of another Sister. She devoted her life to help young people and taught at primary schools run by the Sisters of the Cross in Vasto, Rome, Parma and…
- [John Allen Chau](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-allen-chau/): John spent almost a decade preparing to take the gospel to the Sentinelese, one of the last uncontacted people groups. His journey began in 2008, the year he turned 17, when he became what he described as “an apprentice to Jesus.” After taking his first missions trip the following year, he began to pray about spending his life serving as a missionary. “I know that God used that time to mark my life,” he said later. In his prayers, John asked God where He wanted him to go, echoing Isaiah’s affirmation — “Here I am! Send me.” Soon after making…
- [Thomas Becket](https://workoutyourfaith.org/thomas-becket/): Thomas Becket was an English archbishop and martyr, famously murdered by knights of Henry II at Canterbury Cathedral. After his death, his tomb and relics became a focus for pilgrimage and he was made a saint. Thomas Becket was born in Cheapside, London, to reasonably affluent Norman parents who had settled in England some years earlier. He was given a good primary education at Merton Abbey and in Paris, becoming a financial clerk. In around 1142 he entered the service of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. He was then sent abroad to Bologna and Auxerre to study canon law. In 1154 Becket was ordained as a deacon and became Archdeacon of Canterbury.…
- [Anne Askew](https://workoutyourfaith.org/anne-askew/): A hot day in July 1546 was about to get hotter for Anne Askew, who was tied to a bundle of sticks between two similarly restrained friends. Her jailers had secured the wood to her mid-section because she’d been tortured to the point where she could no longer hold herself upright. Anne was the married mother of two young children. She was twenty-five years old and was about to be burnt to death for her faith. Anne was born to an up-and-coming gentry family in Lincolnshire. At the age of fifteen, she was forced to marry her dead sister’s fiancé,…
- [Charles Carroll](https://workoutyourfaith.org/charles-carroll/): Greatness is not happenstance, a mere collision of incidents. Education, effort, and resources are key components. Hardship is also a frequent antagonist of those who attain levels of prestige and clout. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was a man who descended from a lineage of royalty and preeminence. His ancestors trace their roots to a group of Irish revolutionaries, the O’Carrolls, who came from the early Irish kings, the O’Cearbhaill chiefs of Eile. His Catholic grandfather, Charles the Settler, came to Maryland in 1688 to serve as the state’s Attorney General after he was appointed to the post by Lord Baltimore.…
- [Roger Sherman](https://workoutyourfaith.org/roger-sherman/): In the modern world, signing one’s name on a document might involve a fiduciary commitment, or communicate a covenantal agreement, or denote the acquisition of property at a cost to the signee. A person’s signature represents his promise to fulfill the obligations of the agreement. Rarely does one’s name on a piece of paper place that person’s life in danger. It also does not assist in setting in motion a transformative government that will determine and/or affect future, world history in such a significant manner. In all of history, only one man’s pen threatened his own life with termination and…
- [Simon Peter](https://workoutyourfaith.org/simon-peter/): Peter was born at Bethsaida, near the Sea of Galilee. Peter, whose name was originally Simon, was a fisherman along with his brother Andrew. Andrew was one of the first followers of Jesus and he encouraged his brother to join him. During Jesus’ ministry, the gospels show Peter as the foremost apostle in declaring faith in him as the Christ. The name Peter, meaning ‘rock’, was selected by Jesus to indicate that he would be the rock-like anchor for the unity of the Church. Jesus also promised to give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which is why…
- [James Dobson](https://workoutyourfaith.org/james-dobson/): ames C. Dobson, Ph.D., was founder and chairman emeritus of Focus on the Family. His vision and philosophy shaped the ministry at its inception and supplied the impetus for its outreach for over three decades. Even after his departure in 2010, the ministry’s mission continued to be a reflection of Dr. Dobson’s commitment to strengthening and defending the institution of the family. The initial inspiration for Focus was conceived in the 1960s, when Dr. Dobson was completing his Ph.D. in child development at the University of Southern California. He joined the faculty of Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles and, in…
- [John Knox](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-knox/): John Knox was born in Haddington, near Edinburgh around 1514. In 1536 he graduated from St Andrews University and was ordained a priest. He became a notary and tutor, but in 1543 was converted to Christ and embraced the Reformed faith. He was much influenced by the preacher George Wishart, and became his bodyguard. After Wishart was martyred in St Andrews in 1546, and Cardinal Beaton was murdered in retaliation, the Protestants took refuge in St Andrews Castle, which was besieged. Having been Wishart’s bodyguard meant that Knox himself was now in danger, and after being harried around Scotland for…
- [George Fox](https://workoutyourfaith.org/george-fox/): In 1647, as a 23-year-old, Fox was already a discerning critic of his culture. When human counselors could not fill his spiritual void, he turned to Bible reading and prayer, often in the sanctuary of “hollow trees and lonesome places.” On some of these occasions he received “openings,” e.g., that attending a university does not make a minister, that “the people, not the steeple, is the church,” and that the same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures is their true interpreter. Even as a child Fox was unusually sensitive to God, having been well taught by godly parents. He remembered experiencing…
- [Matthew Henry](https://workoutyourfaith.org/matthew-henry/): Matthew Henry was born at Broad Oak, Flintshire, in October 1662, into the godly home of Philip and Katharine Henry, less than two months after his father was ejected under the Act of Uniformity from ministry in the Church of England. He had one brother, John who died at the age of six, and four sisters, Sarah (the oldest), Katharine, Eleanor, and Ann (the youngest). When three years old it is said that he could read the Bible distinctly, and he early showed a strong passion for books. He was educated primarily by his father, with the assistance of tutors.…
- [Columba of Iona](https://workoutyourfaith.org/columba-of-iona/): Saint Columba (or Colum Cille, “the dove of the Church”) was of noble birth, a member of the powerful Ui Néill clan, which traced its descent to Niall of the Nine Hostages, who died around the year 450. His parents were Fedelmid mac Ferguso and Eithne. Although it is difficult to determine the date of Saint Columba’s birth with any degree of certainty, it is believed that he was born in County Donegal on December 7, 521. His parents may have been pagans, and named their son Crimthann. He was brought up by a foster-father, according to the custom of…
- [Oral Roberts](https://workoutyourfaith.org/oral-roberts/): Granville Oral Roberts was born January 24, 1918 in Pontotoc County, near Ada, in Oklahoma. His parents were deeply religious. His father was a farmer who also preached the gospel and established Pentecostal Holiness churches. His mother regularly prayed for the sick and led people to Christ. While she was still pregnant, Robert’s mother committed Oral to God’s service. Even though Oral had a very strong stutter his mother would tell him that one day God would heal his tongue and he would speak to multitudes. The Roberts family was desperately poor. When Roberts was 16 he moved away from…
- [Tony Campolo](https://workoutyourfaith.org/tony-campolo/): Born on February 25, 1935, in Philadelphia, Tony grew up in a close-knit family where his bond with his two older sisters, Rose and Ann, was the foundation of his formative years. Their steadfast nurture, faith, and laughter remained an enduring source of strength throughout his life. Tony’s professional legacy is profound. For more than six decades, as a pastor, distinguished professor, mesmerizing public speaker, and prolific author, Tony touched countless lives around the world with his hopeful message of social justice, love, and reconciliation. While he richly enjoyed teaching at the University of Pennsylvania for more than a decade,…
- [John F. MacArthur](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-f-macarthur/): “The dominant thrust of my ministry . . . is to help make God’s living Word alive to His people. It is a refreshing adventure,” Pastor John MacArthur wrote in the preface to his New Testament Commentary series. He lived out that adventure by preaching in the same California church for over 50 years and becoming one of the most influential evangelical leaders of his time. John MacArthur went to be with the Lord on Monday, July 14, 2025, at the age of 86. In a video statement filmed this past March for the Shepherd’s Conference his church hosts annually…
- [Tim Keller](https://workoutyourfaith.org/tim-keller/): Timothy Keller was the son of William B. Keller and Louise A. Clemente Keller. He was born and grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. from Bucknell University, his M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and both a Doctor of Ministry and a Doctor of Divinity from Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Keller was married to Kathy Louise Kristy of Pittsburgh in January 1975. Together they raised three sons: David Andrew (b. 1978), Michael Stephen (b. 1980), and Jonathan Daniel (b. 1983), each born in Hopewell, Virginia. As a family, the Kellers planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City in…
- [Charles Ballard](https://workoutyourfaith.org/charles-joseph-ballard-jr/): This is a non-conventional page to present Charles Ballard, since I had the privilege of sitting down with Charles and working up some films to celebrate his life and ministry. I hope these are enjoyed and provide a lens into how Charles was used by God during his 82 years here. There are nine videos below, each relatively short that go through Charles’s life and ministry as an pastor of education in the Southern Baptist Church world and as a friend to many, especially in Maryville, Tennessee, where he called home in his later years.
- [William Lloyd Garrison](https://workoutyourfaith.org/william-lloyd-garrison/): William Lloyd Garrison, born in 1805 in the seaside town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, came of age in a nation teetering between the ideals of liberty and the brutal realities of human bondage. The son of a struggling Baptist mother and an absent father, Garrison was raised in poverty and piety. His mother, Frances Maria Garrison, infused in him a deep moral seriousness and a reverence for the Christian faith that would shape the arc of his life. Though he had little formal education, he entered the world of ideas through the printing press. By age thirteen, apprenticed at the Newburyport…
- [Theodore S. Wright](https://workoutyourfaith.org/theodore-s-wright/): Theodore S. Wright was one of the founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a towering figure in American abolitionism. Born in 1797 in Providence, Rhode Island, Wright’s life was defined by his dual commitment to faith and freedom. As an African American man in the early 19th century, his very existence was a testament to his belief in liberty, rights, education, and ultimately citizenship. Wright’s most significant educational achievement was becoming the first African American graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1828. This accomplishment was groundbreaking, not only for Wright personally but for African Americans aspiring to theological…
- [Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson](https://workoutyourfaith.org/thomas-j-stonewall-jackson/): Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson stands as one of the most enigmatic figures of the American Civil War, a man whose legend looms as large as the battles he fought. A proud Virginian, Jackson’s tactical brilliance was unparalleled on the field, yet he was also a man of deep conviction, his unwavering faith as central to his identity as his martial prowess. His contemporaries knew him as a soldier who fought with the certainty of divine will behind him, a belief that shaped not only his battlefield decisions but also his view of life and death itself. Before secession, Jackson served…
- [George Williams](https://workoutyourfaith.org/george-williams/): George Williams was an English philanthropist and social reformer best known as the founder of the Young Men’s Christian Association, or YMCA. His life’s work was deeply shaped by his own experience as a young man in industrial England, and by his conviction that Christian faith should be a public force for good. His vision and persistence gave rise to a global movement that continues to this day. Williams was born in Somerset, England, in 1821, the youngest of eight children in a farming family. As a boy, he later recalled, he was careless, profane, and largely indifferent to religion.…
- [Robert E. Lee](https://workoutyourfaith.org/robert-e-lee/): Robert E. Lee was one of the most widely recognized and respected figures of the American Civil War. A proud son of Virginia, he devoted his life to the service of his home state, even at the cost of breaking ties with the United States Army, where he had served with distinction for over three decades. When war loomed, he declined an offer to command Union forces, instead choosing to lead the Army of Northern Virginia in defense of the fledgling Confederate States of America. Yet beyond his military prowess, Lee was deeply committed to his Christian faith, a defining…
- [Peter Cartwright](https://workoutyourfaith.org/peter-cartwright/): Peter Cartwright was a man forged by the frontier, a plainspoken, passionate, and fiercely convicted man. Born on September 1, 1785, in Amherst County, Virginia, Cartwright came of age in the raw borderland of Logan County, Kentucky, where his family settled amid the hard edges of early American expansion. It was here, in the rough and fervent atmosphere of the Great Revival, that Cartwright experienced a profound conversion during his teenage years. That moment was dramatic, emotional, and deeply personal, shaped the rest of his life. At just 18, he joined the ranks of Methodist circuit riders, launching a ministry…
- [Oliver Otis Howard](https://workoutyourfaith.org/oliver-otis-howard/): Oliver Otis Howard was one of the most enigmatic figures of the Civil War, yet he was also one of its most profoundly devout Christian leaders. His faith was not a private matter but an integral part of his decision-making, leadership, and postwar efforts. From the battlefields to Reconstruction, Howard’s legacy was shaped by his deep conviction that God’s providence guided his life and work. To understand the significance of his faith, it is essential to examine his life before, during, and after the war, as well as the way his beliefs informed his actions. Born in 1830 in Leeds,…
- [Lyman Beecher](https://workoutyourfaith.org/lyman-beecher/): Lyman Beecher was one of the most influential religious figures in 19th-century America, a man whose theological convictions and activism helped shape the course of American history. Rooted in the fervor of the Second Great Awakening, Beecher emerged as a powerful voice in the religious revival movement that swept across the United States in the early 1800s. His passionate preaching, which called for both personal and social reform, made him a central figure in the Evangelical wing of American Protestantism. Beecher was not merely a preacher, but a moral architect of his time, offering a vision of society that emphasized…
- [Harry Emerson Fosdick](https://workoutyourfaith.org/harry-emerson-fosdick/): Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most influential Protestant voices of 20th-century America. A pastor, writer, and public intellectual, he became the face of liberal Protestantism during the nation’s great theological divide known as the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. With clarity, conviction, and a deep belief in both faith and progress, Fosdick challenged the rigidity of his age and sought to make Christianity relevant in a world transformed by science, war, and social change. Born in 1878 in Buffalo, New York, Fosdick grew up in a Baptist home steeped in the values of faith and education. He attended Colgate University and…
- [Harriett Beecher Stowe](https://workoutyourfaith.org/harriett-beecher-stowe/): Harriet Beecher Stowe remains one of the most recognizable names in United States history. Her seminal work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is often credited as a catalyst for the Civil War and stands as a monumental contribution to abolitionist literature. However, Stowe’s convictions transcended political discourse, delving into profound moral and spiritual realms. While her historical legacy often centers on this singular novel, Stowe’s life and work encompassed far more. Born into a prominent family and emerging as a leader in antebellum society, her influence extended well beyond the pages of her most famous book. Born on June 14, 1811, in…
- [Frederick Douglass](https://workoutyourfaith.org/frederick-douglass/): Frederick Douglass was one of the most important figures of the 19th century, known for his role in the abolitionist movement and for becoming an internationally renowned spokesperson for freedom and equality. Born into slavery, Douglass escaped to the North, where he became a powerful voice for the enslaved and a fierce advocate for the abolition of slavery. His impassioned speeches captivated audiences across the United States and abroad, with his own life story serving as the most powerful testimony to the possibility of African American equality. Yet, Douglass’s relationship with Christianity was complex and deeply personal. Though his faith…
- [Clarence E. Macartney](https://workoutyourfaith.org/clarence-e-macartney/): Clarence Edward Macartney was a towering figure in early 20th-century American Presbyterianism, best remembered for his unwavering commitment to traditional Christian doctrine during a time of tremendous theological and cultural upheaval. As pastor of prominent churches in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and a key voice in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy of the 1920s, Macartney played a formative role in shaping the direction of the Presbyterian Church and American evangelicalism more broadly. Born in 1879 in Northwood, Ohio, Macartney was the son of a professor of Natural History at Geneva College.  When the college moved to Beaver Falls, PA in 1880, the family…
- [Angelina Grimké](https://workoutyourfaith.org/angelina-grimke/): Angelina Grimke was one of the famous “Grimke Sisters,” known for their staunch women’s rights and abolitionist stances in the 19th century United States. Along with her sister Sarah, Angelina became a leading voice in two of the most significant reform movements of her time, spearheading both women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. Her life was a testament to the power of faith in action, as she drew on her spiritual convictions to challenge the oppressive systems of her era. Born in 1805 in Charleston, South Carolina, to a wealthy, slaveholding family, Angelina Grimke grew up surrounded by the…
- [Abraham Lincoln](https://workoutyourfaith.org/abraham-lincoln/): Abraham Lincoln requires little introduction. Born in 1809 in Kentucky, he ascended from the obscurity of the frontier to the highest office in the land, navigating a path shaped by law, politics, and the sectional crisis of his time. As the 16th president of the United States, he bore the immense burden of leading the nation through its most intense trial, the Civil War of 1861–1865. In April of that final year, an assassin’s bullet brought his life to an abrupt and tragic end. Yet his legacy endured, venerated by many and scrutinized by others. Among the many dimensions of…
- [Annie Johnson Flint](https://workoutyourfaith.org/annie-johnson-flint/): Annie Johnson was born in Vineland, New Jersey, on Christmas Eve 1866. Her parents, Eldon and Jean rejoiced in the gift of their early Christmas present daughter. Nearly three years later, all the joy of that Christmas disappeared in a flood of sorrow, as Annie’s mom died at the age of 23, soon after giving birth to Annie’s sister. Her Father was not well and for two years the bereaved family of three lived with a widow friend of Eldon’s. She had children of her own and it became evident that Annie and her sister were not really welcome in…
- [George Taylor](https://workoutyourfaith.org/george-taylor/): Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, George Taylor quintessentially exemplifies the hopes realized of America’s founding document. The groundbreaking resolution contained existential realities beating in every heart of mankind. Those given by Providence. Recognized and protected by a nascent government.  George Taylor was born in 1716, the Irishman came to the colonies penniless as an indentured servant who had exchanged his labor at a forge for passage. Upon arriving in Pennsylvania, he worked for the man who had paid for his travel, Samuel Savage, Jr., an ironmaster at Coventry Forge near Philadelphia. He started out shoveling coal into…
- [James Wilson](https://workoutyourfaith.org/james-wilson/): James Wilson was born on September 14, 1742, into a family of tenant farmers who lived near Cupar, Scotland. His father worked tirelessly, but the Scottish soil refused to yield large harvests. Hence, after the rent was paid, there was little left over to fill the family’s coffers. As well, the Wilson’s dwellings were cramped and lacked furnishings. Despite the meager resources, the young boy persevered in his pursuit of knowledge and became the philosophical foundation of the American Revolution. Upon arriving at the University of St. Andrews, his studies focused on theology and other topics related to a life…
- [James Smith](https://workoutyourfaith.org/james-smith/): “If the British administration should determine by force to effect a submission to the late arbitrary acts of the British Parliament, in such a situation, we hold it our indispensable duty to resist such force, and at every hazard to defend the rights and liberties of America.” So uttered James Smith at the Pennsylvania state convention in 1775. This was not a taunting of the mother country, but a statement of reality that England and its colonies were on a collision course due to Parliament’s unjust actions. In 1774, Mr. Smith had recognized the relationship between the colonies and the…
- [Benjamin Rush](https://workoutyourfaith.org/benjamin-rush-2/): “There is no one outside my own family whose friendship was so essential to my happiness.” John Adams wrote these words about Dr. Benjamin Rush. He was a man beloved by people near and honored by many from afar. One example is the number of students he taught at the College (now University) of Pennsylvania. When he began teaching, there were only 20 students in his class. When he lectured for the final time, over 400 students were present. And after his bout with yellow fever, which he contracted while treating patients, he was honored for his work in the…
- [John Morton](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-morton/): It can be argued John Morton’s contributions to the young United States were significantly cut short due to his untimely death in 1777. He signed the Declaration of Independence first and, in 1777, he chaired the Committee of the Whole as they determined, wrote, and considered the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the United States first constitution.  Born the year of his father’s death, 1725, John Morton’s mother remarried shortly thereafter. His stepfather, John Sketchley, was a positive force in his life providing young Morton a quality, informal education. In addition to teaching him reading, writing, and arithmetic, he…
- [Robert Morris](https://workoutyourfaith.org/robert-morris/): Robert Morris, known as the financier of the American Revolution, was born on January 20, 1734 in Liverpool, England. He would become one of the two wealthiest signers of the Declaration of Independence. His father, a tobacco merchant, came to Maryland in 1738 representing a English mercantile firm. He possessed genius and savvy that brought him much success. Mr. Morris would join his father in the new world ten years later. Robert Morris would go on to become an even more successful merchant than his father despite only receiving one year of formal education. His Philadelphia-based business, however, along with…
- [George Clymer](https://workoutyourfaith.org/george-clymer/): In the fall of 1682, George Fitzwater and his family landed at New Castle, Delaware, after a two-month voyage across the Atlantic. They had joined William Penn and others aboard the ship Welcome, a small cargo vessel, 150 feet in length maximum. In cramped conditions, the roughly 100 future settlers of the Pennsylvania colony survived on salted meat, dried vegetables, and hardtack. Small pox claimed a third of the lives on board. (Mr. Fitzwater’s mother was among those who died.) Such a venture in the 17th century required resoluteness amid these hardships and setbacks. George Clymer, Mr. Fitzwater’s grandson, would exhibit the same…
- [Thomas McKean](https://workoutyourfaith.org/thomas-mckean/): The Irish are known to be blunt and, at times, feisty folk. And the Scottish are known as a hearty people, able to persevere through hardship. For Thomas McKean, these traits certainly rang true. The son of Irish and Scottish ancestry was surprisingly a successful lawyer during the American Revolutionary period. The wonderment was present due to his reputation of being “lofty and often tactless, [which] antagonized many people.” But the man, often considered a loner, was one of America’s chief judicial architects who worked tirelessly in multiple states for the cause of establishing the nascent republic. On March 19,…
- [Caesar Rodney](https://workoutyourfaith.org/caesar-rodney/): Despite having much to be proud of, Caesar Rodney exhibited the most admirable of traits in service to his home state, Delaware, and the new nation he assisted in birthing—humility. His forbearing and patient qualities endeared him to his friends and his overall character of person is tainted not by even one recorded instance of imagined or true impropriety.  The self-educated Anglican was only one of two bachelors to sign the Declaration of Independence and the only native Delawarean. Mr. Rodney came from impressive stock dating back to the reign of King Henry VIII. One of his ancestors, Jane Seymour,…
- [George Read](https://workoutyourfaith.org/george-read/): by Tim Scheiderer George Read is a founding father not known by many today, but during his lifetime, he was a man known by many for his integrity and generosity. He gave not only his time, but also his money to the creation of the new republic. He was also the brother-in-law of fellow signer, George Ross. Born on September 18, 1733, in Cecil County, Maryland, Mr. Read was born into a family with means and was afforded a robust education during his childhood. Upon completion of his basic studies, he read (studied) law under the supervision of John Moland,…
- [Phoebe Palmer](https://workoutyourfaith.org/phoebe-palmer/): After languishing in obscurity for many years, the work of Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874) has been rediscovered by church historians and scholars. Although virtually unknown today, Palmer was a widely-recognized religious figure in her day—a woman whose concern for the holy life enabled her to transcend the limitations of both gender and denominational affiliation. As a premier proponent of “the holiness way,” Palmer functioned as teacher, writer, social activist, theologian and evangelist for the cause of Christ. She desired nothing less than full consecration to God, and her passionate devotion compelled her into the pulpit and onto the printed page. Consumed by…
- [Elizabeth Alexandra](https://workoutyourfaith.org/elizabeth-alexandra/): Queen Elizabeth II had a strong Christian faith, evident throughout her life in her words and actions. As well as her formal role as ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England’, which came with monarchy, her personal faith was evident even before she was crowned. ‘Pray for me … that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you, all the days of my life.’ That was the prayer request made by Queen Elizabeth II in her first…
- [Rich Mullins](https://workoutyourfaith.org/rich-mullins/): Rich Mullins was a Christian music pioneer, widely regarded for his songwriting and praise music compositions. Rising to prominence during the golden era of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) in the 1990s, Mullins became one of the most distinctive voices in the genre. His songs, including “Awesome God” and “Sometimes by Step,” became defining tracks not just for CCM but for modern worship music as a whole. His music carried a poetic intensity that felt rare in a genre often known more for its polish than its depth. Born in 1955 in Indiana, Mullins was raised in the Quaker tradition. That…
- [John Chacha](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-chacha/): Born and raised in Tanzania, poverty was prevalent all around him and he yearned for something more. In 1979, Dr. Chacha received a sponsorship to go to the United States for Bible School. After completing Bible School and college, he went back to Kenya and Tanzania to seek the Lord and there he received a vision for the next phase of ministry. He returned to North America at the end of 1985 and married his college friend, Regina Horst, in March 1986. They immediately founded Teamwork Ministries International, Inc. to address the needs he saw in the church back in…
- [Rick Elias](https://workoutyourfaith.org/rick-elias/): April 7, 2019 – This past Tuesday, Rick Elias passed away from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was sixty-four. I grew up on his music, mainly through his work with one of my all-time favorite songwriters, the late Rich Mullins. Elias made numerous contributions to contemporary Christian music, or CCM, as it’s called. Elias didn’t release that many albums, as he seemed to like staying in the background, composing and singing backup vocals, sometimes with his wife, Linda. While not everyone is familiar with Christian music, most people will remember a couple of little projects Elias worked…
- [Keith Green](https://workoutyourfaith.org/keith-green/): When musician Keith Green died in a plane crash on July 28, 1982, the world lost a special man whose heart was aflame with the gospel message. Before his untimely end, Green took the world on his seven-year spiritual journey. He held back nothing and was consumed with loving Christ and the church. On October 21, 1953, Keith Green was born into musical talent. His maternal grandfather was a songwriter and his mother studied voice at Carnegie Hall. By five years old, Green played the ukulele and began formal music lessons. He was writing his own music by age 9.…
- [Larry Norman](https://workoutyourfaith.org/larry-norman/): In the wild swirl of the 1960s counterculture, amid long hair, protest songs, and psychedelic rebellion, a lanky young man named Larry Norman strummed a different kind of tune. His lyrics were as bold as the times, but his message pointed toward Christ. With his electric guitar and disarming honesty, Norman invented a new genre of music and helped launch a movement. Widely regarded as the “grandfather of Christian rock,” Norman was a bridge between the streetwise Jesus People and a church often uncomfortable with electric guitars and rebellion. Born in 1947 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Norman grew up in…
- [Jean Donovan](https://workoutyourfaith.org/jean-donovan/): Jean Donovan was born on April 10, 1953. She was the younger of two children and raised in an upper middle class family in Westport, Connecticut. Her father, Raymond, was an executive engineer, and later chief of design, at the nearby Sikorsky Aircraft Division of the United Technologies, a large defense contractor for the U.S. and manufacturer of helicopters used in the Vietnam War. Jean was very close to her brother Michael and was deeply affected when he was struck with Hodgkin’s disease, from which he made a complete recovery. The experience of the disease and his courageous battle to…
- [Jack Heaslip](https://workoutyourfaith.org/jack-heaslip/): On Wednesday, February 25, members of the band U2 gathered at St. Mary’s Church outside of Dublin in order to observe the passing of the Rev. Jack Heaslip, the band’s long time friend and “traveling pastor.” The 71-year-old Anglican priest passed away after a lengthy battle with motor neuron disease. Heaslip’s pivotal spiritual guidance and pastoral care was recognized by the band when he was referred to as “our North Star” on the liner notes of U2’s last album Songs of Innocence. Heaslip performed the marriage ceremony between Bono and his wife Ali, baptized their children, and conducted the funeral for…
- [John Wimber](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-wimber/): John Richard Wimber was born on February 25, 1934 in Peoria, Illinois and was raised in a non-Christian home. He loved music and by his early twenties, he was involved in the music industry. He was best known for helping to form the group “The Righteous Brothers” where he played keyboards. In 1963 his life took a dramatic turn after he came to Christ through a Quaker bible study group, led by Gunner Payne. He felt that God was calling him out of the music industry, so he left it behind to move into what Christ had for him. He…
- [Brennan Manning](https://workoutyourfaith.org/brennan-manning/): “Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.” Richard Francis Xavier Manning, better known to legions of faithful readers as author, speaker, and contemplative Brennan Manning, for whom grace was irresistible, completed his earthly journey on Friday, April 12 at 12:10AM.  He is now resting safely in the arms of his Abba. Brennan was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After attending St. John’s University for two years, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving overseas as…
- [Jerry Falwell](https://workoutyourfaith.org/jerry-falwell/): In June of 1956, at the age of 22, Jerry Falwell started Thomas Road Baptist Church in his hometown of Lynchburg, Va., with 35 members. Also in 1956, Falwell began the “Old Time Gospel Hour,” a nationally syndicated radio and television ministry that has led millions to Christ. In 1967, Falwell implemented his vision to build a Christian educational system for evangelical youth. He began with the establishment of Lynchburg Christian Academy, an accredited Christian day school for grades K-12. In 1971, he founded Liberty University, an accredited Christian university for evangelical believers. In 1985 Falwell announced his goal of…
- [Eugene Peterson](https://workoutyourfaith.org/eugene-peterson/): Eugene Peterson is one of the best known theologians of our time. Most famous for penning The Message, a contemporary rendering of the Bible, he is also author of many popular books such as A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. With the release of his memoir, The Pastor, Peterson has begun reflecting on life and the ways in which Jesus-followers can respond to God’s call. Here, we discuss his unlikely call to ministry, the work of a pastor and what, if anything, he wishes he could change about The Message. JM: In The Pastor, you describe your journey into ministry. How did you first sense God calling you…
- [Johnny Cash](https://workoutyourfaith.org/johnny-cash/): On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash, considered by many one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians, performed two shows inside California’s Folsom Prison. It was an appropriate choice for a performer known as a bit of an outlaw, recognized with a fondness for dark clothing that earned him the nickname “The Man in Black.” The performances and resulting album, At Folsom Prison, helped revitalize Cash’s previously lagging career. “That’s where things really started for me again,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in a 1973 article. But Cash who died in September 2003 at 71, wasn’t just seeking personal gain when he…
- [Jim Elliot](https://workoutyourfaith.org/jim-elliot/): Phillip James “Jim” Elliot (1927-1956), evangelical missionary martyr, was born in Portland, Oregon, one of four children born to a Plymouth Brethren evangelist and his wife, a chiropractor. A pious and forthright Christian from his grade school days onward, he enrolled at Wheaton College in Illinois in 1945. A leader in the school’s missionary league, he met and courted Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of missionaries to Belgium with family ties to the long-running Protestant periodical, The Sunday School Times. Putting their plans for Christian service ahead of their romance, Jim and Elizabeth separately attended Wycliffe Bible Translators’ School for Summer…
- [Ivan Illich](https://workoutyourfaith.org/ivan-illich/): Ivan Illich, who has died of cancer aged 76, was one of the world’s great thinkers, a polymath whose output covered vast terrains. He worked in 10 languages; he was a jet-age ascetic with few possessions; he explored Asia and South America on foot; and his obligations to his many collaborators led to a constant criss-crossing of the globe in the last two decades. Best known for his polemical writings against western institutions from the 1970s, which were easily caricatured by the right and were, equally, disdained by the left for their attacks on the welfare state, in the last…
- [Allan Sandage](https://workoutyourfaith.org/allan-sandage/): Q. Can the existence of God be proved? I should say not with the same type of certainty that we ascribe to statements such as “the earth is in orbit about the sun at a mean distance of 93 million miles, making a complete journey in 365.25 days,” or “genetic information is coded in long protein strings of DNA that, in cells of a particular individual, replicate during mitosis, and in reproduction unite with DNA from another individual to produce the hereditary similarity of progeny with their parents, etc.” The enormous success of modern science is undeniable in producing such…
- [Flannery O'Connor](https://workoutyourfaith.org/flannery-oconnor/): Flannery O’Connor’s biography begins on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, a colonial seaport draped with incomparable beauty. The Savannah chapter of O’Connor’s childhood, spent in a Lafayette Square house just one block over from St. John the Baptist Cathedral, provided the cornerstone of her Catholic faith. She called Savannah “a colony of the Over-Irish” and her ancestry included two of Georgia’s oldest Catholic families, the O’Connors of Savannah and the Clines of middle Georgia. When illness overtook the writer in 1950, O’Connor moved to Andalusia Farm where her gifts as a writer flourished as she – famously – raised peacocks.…
- [John Stott](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-stott/): Educated at Cambridge University, Stott was one of the most influential clergymen in the Church of England in the twentieth century. In 1950 he became rector of All Souls Church in London (the parish where he was born), and in 1975 rector emeritus. From 1952 to 1977 he led missions to university students on five continents. In 1982 he founded the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (now part of Christian Impact), serving as director up to 1986 and president from 1986. Chaplian to the queen from 1959 to 1991, he was appointed extra chaplain from 1991 onward and was awarded…
- [Truett Cathy](https://workoutyourfaith.org/truett-cathy/): Chick-fil-A, Inc., Founder S. Truett Cathy died Sept. 8, 2014, at age 93. Cathy started the business in 1946, when he and his brother, Ben, opened an Atlanta diner known as The Dwarf Grill (later renamed The Dwarf House®). Through the years, that restaurant prospered and led Cathy to further the success of his business. In 1967, Cathy founded and opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta’s Greenbriar Shopping Center. Today, Chick-fil-A has the highest same-store sales and is the largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States based on annual system-wide sales. Cathy was the author of six books…
- [P.D. James](https://workoutyourfaith.org/p-d-james/): “Murder is the unique crime. It is the taking away of something which we as humans haven’t the power to give and cannot possibly restore. Murder is also a contaminating crime. It touches the lives of every character, even the innocent.” Acclaimed British murder mystery writer P.D. James spilt a lot of ink and fictitious blood. And as patroness of the Prayer Book Society in England, her religious and moral sensibility permeates much of her own dark prose. Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park (she was so honored for her public service), died of natural causes on Nov.…
- [John Paul II](https://workoutyourfaith.org/john-paul-ii/): KAROL JÓZEF WOJTYŁA, elected Pope on 16 October 1978, was born in Wadowice, Poland, on 18 May 1920. He was the third of three children born to Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Kaczorowska, who died in 1929. His elder brother Edmund, a physician, died in 1932, and his father, Karol, a non-commissioned officer in the army, died in 1941. He was nine years old when he received his First Communion and eighteen when he received the Sacrament of Confirmation. After completing high school in Wadowice, he enrolled in the Jagellonian University of Krakow in 1938. When the occupying Nazi forces closed…
- [Ruth Graham](https://workoutyourfaith.org/ruth-graham/): Ruth Bell Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham, was born at Qingjiang, Kiangsu, China, on June 10, 1920, as Ruth McCue Bell. Her parents, Dr. and Mrs. L. Nelson Bell, were medical missionaries at the Presbyterian Hospital 300 miles north of Shanghai. As a young girl there in the small hospital compound, Ruth first sensed the great calling to abandon all for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her childhood was spent on China’s mission field with her parents and siblings Rosa, Virginia, and Clayton, surrounded by disease, despair, and the eventual disorder and chaos of civil wars.…
- [Billy Graham](https://workoutyourfaith.org/billy-graham/): Billy Graham passed away February 21st, 2018 at the age of 99. His impact reverberates everywhere. The numbers are simply astounding: 215 million people make up his total audience with more than 3 million becoming born again Christians in his seven decades of ministry. His 400 crusades were given all over the world, in more than 80 countries. Taking into account the simulcasts and other rallies, that number climbs to more than 185 countries and territories. But here’s the real punch of the story: he never tried to be anything but faithful. “I am not going to Heaven because I have preached…
- [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn](https://workoutyourfaith.org/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/): In these dark days in which the power of secular fundamentalism appears to be on the rise and in which religious freedom seems to be imperiled, it is easy for Christians to become despondent. The clouds of radical relativism seem to obscure the light of objective truth and it can be difficult to discern any silver lining to help us illumine the future with hope. In such gloomy times the example of the martyrs can be encouraging. Those who laid down their lives for Christ and His Church in worse times than ours are beacons of light, dispelling the darkness…
- [Bob Lindsey](https://workoutyourfaith.org/bob-lindsey/): Robert Lindsey was born in Norman, Oklahoma, to J.L. and Elsie Lisle Lindsey. He received his B.A. from the University of Oklahoma and journeyed to the Holy Land after graduation to travel, study and work. Lindsey met his wife Margaret Lutz on his return to the U.S. in 1940. They were married in 1941 and had six children throughout the coming years: David Lisle, Margaret Lenore, Barbara Ann, Daniel Norman, Robert Lutz and Deborah Kay. Lindsey received a Th.M. from both Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary. He travelled with his family to Jerusalem in 1945 after being…
- [Louis Zamperini](https://workoutyourfaith.org/louis-zamperini/): Many people thought Louis Zamperini would not live long beyond his formative years, and on many occasions they were almost right. As a child of immigrants, Zamperini was often in trouble with the authorities, until a police officer suggested that Louis use his fleet feet for sport instead of mischief. Olympian at Hitler’s Berlin Olympic Games By the end of high school, Louis had become a world class runner, setting a world high school record in the mile. He qualified to run on the 1936 Olympic team by tying the world record holder in the 5000 meter run. At the…
- [Walker Percy](https://workoutyourfaith.org/walker-percy/): Walker Alexander Percy, a writer who was raised in Greenville, Mississippi, was born to Leroy and Martha Percy on May 28, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama. His parents later had two other sons, Phin and Roy. Young Walker had a hard life. At the tender age of thirteen, his father, a successful lawyer in Birmingham, took his own life in the attic of their home with a shotgun. Just two years later, his mother drove her car off a country bridge. Some say it was accidental; but young Walker at the age of fifteen, suspected she, too, had taken her own life (Benfey…
- [Thomas Merton](https://workoutyourfaith.org/thomas-merton/): Thomas Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools in France, England, and the United States. At Columbia University in New York City, he came under the influence of some remarkable teachers of literature, including Mark Van Doren, Daniel C. Walsh, and Joseph Wood Krutch. Merton entered the Catholic Church in 1938 in the wake of a rather dramatic conversion experience. Shortly afterward, he completed his masters thesis, “On Nature and Art in William Blake.” Following some teaching at Columbia University Extension and at St.…
- [Robert Pierce](https://workoutyourfaith.org/robert-pierce/): Robert “Bob” Pierce (1914-1978), relief worker, para-church administrator, founder of World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse, was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa but his family moved to southern California in the mid-1920s. He attended Pasadena Nazarene College and studied for the ministry. In 1937 Pierce took the road as a traveling evangelist in California. In 1940 he was ordained into the Baptist ministry while on staff at a local “evangelistic center” in Los Angeles. Soon thereafter he became involved with the Los Angeles branch of the WWII-era “Youth for Christ” (YFC) movement. In 1947 he became a full-time traveling evangelist for…
- [Jacques Ellul](https://workoutyourfaith.org/jacques-ellul/): Jacques Ellul adhered to the maxim “think globally, act locally” throughout his life. He often said that he was born in Bordeaux by chance on January 6, 1912, but that it was by choice that he spent almost all his academic career there. After a long illness, he died on May 19, 1994, in his house in Pessac just a mile or two from the University of Bordeaux campus, surrounded by those closest to him. Not long before his death, the limitations of the treatment for this illness confirmed to him once again one of his favorite themes: the ambivalence…
- [Marshall McLuhan](https://workoutyourfaith.org/marshall-mcluhan/): McLuhan was still a twenty-year old undergraduate at the University of Manitoba, in western Canada, in the dirty thirties, when he wrote in his diary that he would never become an academic. He was learning in spite of his professors, but he would become a professor of English in spite of himself. After Manitoba, graduate work at Cambridge University planted the seed for McLuhan’s eventual move toward media analysis. Looking back on both his own Cambridge years and the longer history of the institution, he reflected that a principal aim of the faculty could be summarized as the training of perception, a…
- [Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu](https://workoutyourfaith.org/mary-teresa-bojaxhiu/): This luminous messenger of God’s love was born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje, a city situated at the crossroads of Balkan history. The youngest of the children born to Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu, she was baptised Gonxha Agnes, received her First Communion at the age of five and a half and was confirmed in November 1916. From the day of her First Holy Communion, a love for souls was within her. Her father’s sudden death when Gonxha was about eight years old left the family in financial straits. Drana raised her children firmly and lovingly, greatly influencing her daughter’s…
- [Simone Weil](https://workoutyourfaith.org/simone-weil/): Susan Sontag called her “one of the most uncompromising and troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit”, TS Eliot a “genius akin to that of the saints.” One hundred years after her birth, Simone Weil remains a conundrum: her work for the French resistance and writings on the needs of mankind sit alongside hints of antisemitism and authoritarianism in her works. The real Simone Weil remains elusive behind her guises: anarcho-syndicalist, Marxist, Catholic, contrary martyr. In her biography, Weil is an unintentionally comic figure: dressing as a monk, putting anarchist comrades at risk with her clumsiness, renouncing Sanskrit studies to…
- [Dietrich Bonhoeffer](https://workoutyourfaith.org/dietrich-bonhoeffer/): Bonhoeffer was born in 1906, son of a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Berlin. He was an outstanding student, and at the age of 25 became a lecturer in systematic theology at the same University. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer became a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church, the center of Protestant resistance to the Nazis. He organized and for a time led the underground seminary of the Confessing Church. His book Life Together describes the life of the Christian community in that seminary, and his book The Cost of Discipleship attacks what he calls “cheap grace,”…
- [Harold J. Ockenga](https://workoutyourfaith.org/harold-j-ockenga/): In the 1940s and ‘50s, American Christianity was in contention with itself. After the Scopes Trial in 1925, Christians had retreated from the public square. At the trial, the state prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan, was asked a series of questions about miracles in the Bible. He was peppered with questions about Jonah’s encounter with a great fish, Joshua and the sun standing still, the seven of days of creation, and more. His answers were less than convincing and substantive. Christianity began to viewed as unintellectual and unscientific. It was in this post-World War II moment that a young pastor from Boston had…
- [Malcolm Muggeridge](https://workoutyourfaith.org/malcolm-muggeridge/): Malcolm Muggeridge, a prolific British journalist and caustic social critic, died yesterday in a nursing home in Sussex, England. He was 87 years old. His lawyer, Vernor Miles, said Mr. Muggeridge had never fully recovered from a stroke he suffered three years ago. Possessing an impeccable prose style and an unerring sense of the absurd, Mr. Muggeridge delighted in outraging the Establishment and impaling the pompous on the lance of his lethally keen wit. A foreign correspondent for The Guardian, a top editor of The Daily Telegraph and the editor of Punch credited with rescuing that famed humor magazine from…
- [Karl Rahner](https://workoutyourfaith.org/karl-rahner/): One of the most important theologians of the 20th century, Karl Rahner was born in March 1904. He was the fourth of seven children, the son of a local college professor and a devout Christian mother. In 1922 Karl followed his older brother Hugo and entered the Jesuit community. As a Jesuit novice Rahner was formed in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. This formation had a lasting influence on his spiritual and intellectual development. But I think that the spirituality of Ignatius himself, which one learned through the practice of prayer and religious formation, was more significant to me than all…
- [Kyrillos VI](https://workoutyourfaith.org/kyrillos-vi/): On March 9, the Coptic Orthodox Church remembers the departure of the Great Pope (Papa, Ava) Kyrillos (Cyril) VI, the 116th Pope of Alexandria and successor of Saint Mark the Evangelist. He sat on the throne of Saint Mark for twelve years (1959-1971). Pope Kyrillos was a holy man of prayer who through full dedication to the life of prayer and fasting possessed many higher gifts which included performing wonders and miracles, the gift of knowledge, and an unusual ability to lead by example. He was undoubtedly a very spiritual man and brought the Coptic Church into a new era…
- [Thomas A. Dorsey](https://workoutyourfaith.org/thomas-a-dorsey/): Thomas A. Dorsey learned his religion from his Baptist minister father and piano from his music teacher mother in Villa Rica, Georgia, where he was born July 1, 1899. He came under the influence of local blues pianist when they moved to Atlanta in 1910. He and his family relocated to Chicago during World War I where they joined the Pilgrim Baptist Church, and he studied at the Chicago College of Composition and Arranging and became an agent for Paramount Records. He began his musical career known as Georgia Tom, playing barrelhouse piano in one of Al Capone’s Chicago speakeasies…
- [C.S. Lewis](https://workoutyourfaith.org/c-s-lewis/): Few authors of fantasy literature are as beloved as C.S. Lewis, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on November 29, 1898. Time magazine has listed the first of his Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as one of the top 100 English language novels written in the twentieth century. Time had earlier confirmed Lewis’s stature as a writer of international renown when it featured him on its cover in September 1947. But then, Time was merely affirming what millions of readers then and now understood: Lewis was a writer whose gifts gave his books an enduring appeal.…
- [A.W. Tozer](https://workoutyourfaith.org/a-w-tozer/): While on his way home from the Akron, Ohio tire company where he worked as a teen, young Aiden Wilson Tozer overheard a street preacher say,“If you don’t know how to be saved…just call on God.” Upon returning home, Tozer climbed into the attic and heeded the preacher’s advice. In 1919, five years after his decision to follow Christ, and without formal theological training, Tozer accepted an offer to pastor his first church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. This began forty-four fruitful years of ministry with The Alliance, thirty of which he served as pastor of the Southside Alliance Church…
- [Dorothy Day](https://workoutyourfaith.org/dorothy-day/): Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 8, 1897, the third child of Grace and John Day.  Her nominally religious family moved to the San Franciso Bay area and then to Chicago where she was baptized in the Episcopal Church.  She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana and became interested in radical social causes as a way to help workers and the poor.  In 1916, she left the university and moved to New York City where she worked as a journalist on socialist newspapers, participated in protest movements, and developed friendships with many famous artists and…
- [Dorothy L. Sayers](https://workoutyourfaith.org/dorothy-l-sayers/): Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born at Oxford on 13th June 1893, the only child of the Rev. Henry Sayers, of Anglo-Irish descent. Her father was at the time headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School, and she was born in the headmaster’s house. She was brought up at Bluntisham Rectory, Cambridgeshire, and went to the Godolphin School, Salisbury, where she won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford. In 1915 she graduated with first class honours in modern languages. Disliking the routine and seclusion of academic life she joined Blackwell’s, the Oxford publishers, worked with her Oxford friend Eric Whelpton at L’École des Roches in…
- [J.R.R. Tolkien](https://workoutyourfaith.org/j-r-r-tolkien/): Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, a brilliant philologist, and a self-described “hobbit,” J.R.R. Tolkien created two of the best-loved stories of the 20th century, “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”, recently made into a multiple award-winning movie by the director Peter Jackson for New Line Cinema. Early Life  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to English parents. At the age of three his mother brought him and his younger brother, Hilary, back to England. Tolkien’s father died soon afterwards in South Africa, so the family stayed in England and…

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- [Privacy Policy](https://workoutyourfaith.org/privacy-policy/): Privacy Policy for workoutyourfaith.org Last Updated: August 31, 2025 1. Introduction Welcome to workoutyourfaith.org (“we,” “us,” “our”). We are committed to protecting the privacy of our visitors. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect the limited information we receive when you visit our website, workoutyourfaith.org (the “Site”). Our Site is primarily informational. We publish articles about Christians and do not offer user accounts or memberships. By using our Site, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. 2. Information We Collect We collect minimal personal information from our visitors. The types…
- [Timeline 2](https://workoutyourfaith.org/timeline-2/): Loading timeline… Back to Top THE TIMELINE Since the death and resurrection of Jesus in 33 AD, his followers put together churches – places where the community of believers in Jesus came together to be encouraged and to be sent out into the world with this good news: Jesus has died, Jesus has risen, and Jesus will come again, so believe and be baptized. Basically, “Come join us!” For 2,000 years since Jesus, many have put their faith in Jesus. When these believers die, the Bible says they become part of a “great cloud of witnesses” who cheer the rest…
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- [What is it all about?](https://workoutyourfaith.org/what-is-it-all-about/): God loves you and has a plan for you!The Bible says, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, [Jesus Christ], that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”—a complete life full of purpose (John 10:10). The Problem? We are sinful and separated from God.We have all done, thought or said bad things, which the Bible calls “sin.” The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The result…
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- [Timeline](https://workoutyourfaith.org/timeline/): This is our full list of representative Christians through the centuries. It’s a list that will certainly grow, as we work through more stories and as we add contemporary Christians who go onto be part of the great cloud of witnesses that is referred to in Scripture. To read more about any of the Christians below, please click on their image. you can then move back and forth via the post links below each article or return to searching with links in the header and footer. The order has a bit of theology embedded in it. We choose with the…
- [About](https://workoutyourfaith.org/about/): VISION, BELIEFS & BOARD Our mission curabitur arcu erat, accumsan id imperdiet et, porttitor at sem. Vestibulum ac diam sit amet quam vehicula elementum sed sit amet dui. Mauris blandit aliquet elit. VISION BELIEFS BOARD VISION Inviting people to know Jesus by telling stories from the past. The Christian faith is more than 2000 years old, but often we forget the lives of those who came before us-who modeled for us the way to live as Jesus taught us to live. No one is perfect, but life is about decisions. As a Christian, the call is to “take up your…
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- [Home](https://workoutyourfaith.org/): Inviting people to know Jesus by telling stories from the past. EXPLORE THE VIDEOS Loading timeline… Follow the timeline … Since the death and resurrection of Jesus in 33 AD, his followers put together churches – places where the community of believers in Jesus came together to be encouraged and to be sent out into the world with this good news: Jesus has died, Jesus has risen, and Jesus will come again, so believe and be baptized. Basically, “Come join us!” For 2,000 years since Jesus, many have put their faith in Jesus. When these believers die, the Bible says…


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