"Not Yours To Give

Col. David Crockett
US Representative from Tennessee

Originally published in "The Life of Colonel David Crockett,"
by Edward Sylvester Ellis.

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:

"Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made houseless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon as it could be done.

"The next summer, when it began to be time to think about election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.

"I began: 'Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called
candidates, and---‘


"Yes I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine, I shall not vote for you again."

"This was a sockdolager...I begged him to tell me what was the matter.

" ’Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest.
…But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.'

" 'I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional question.’

“ ‘No, Colonel, there’s no mistake. Though I live in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?’

" ‘Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.'

" ‘It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. 'No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life.' "The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.'

" 'So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.'

"I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition, and this man should go to talking, he would set others to talking, and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and the fact is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to him:

" ‘Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what you have said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.'

"He laughingly replied; 'Yes, Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around the district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that way.'

" ‘If I don't’, said I, 'I wish I may be shot; and to convince you that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for it.'

" ‘No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, and some to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you.’

" 'Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-bye. I must know your name.’

" 'My name is Bunce.'

" 'Not Horatio Bunce?'

" 'Yes.’

" 'Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad I have met you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.'

"It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him, before, I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.

"At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested before.

"Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life before.

"I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him - no, that is not the word - I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year; and I will tell you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.

"But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted - at least, they all knew me.

"In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by saying:

" ‘Fellow-citizens - I present myself before you today feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That I should make this acknowledgment is due to myself as well as to you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only.’"

"I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying:

" ‘And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error.

" ‘It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled to the
credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you so.'

"He came upon the stand and said:

" ‘Fellow-citizens - It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully perform all that he has promised you today.'

"He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.'

"I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the honors I have received and all the reputation I have ever made, or ever shall make, as a member of Congress.'

"Now, sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech yesterday.

"There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men - men who think nothing of spending a week's pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased--a debt which could not be paid by money--and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

Danger! The Church of Oprah: Precepts Without Power

One morning not long ago we headed through downtown Branson and our vehicle just stopped running. Everything was completely dead! I tried for several minutes to figure out what was wrong but nothing worked. I finally called a nearby service station and related my problem to the attendant. He went back to speak with the manager, who was under a car on the grease rack. The attendant came back with this helpful offer, "Sure, we can take care of it. Bring it on in!"
Now isn't that the trouble with a lot of religion? You get instructions, but you don't get power.
You get some good advice, but you don't get the strength to carry it out.
Kind of like the "Church of Oprah." (Here is info on Oprah's new church http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW4LLwkgmqA . Let me tell you something...
Good advice, without power is bad news!
Oprah might think that all of this new stuff or "new age" is new but it is as old as satan.
The Old Testament law was impossible to live by. That is what the sacrifices were for. The law tells you what you should do and should not do, but it doesn't give you the power to perform.
Even the Sermon on the Mount is, by itself, Bad News!
Have you read it recently? Have you tried to do what Jesus says we're supposed to do? If that were all of the religion that Jesus had to offer, it would surely be bad news. Its precepts are beautiful, Its ideals are noble , and its metaphors are magnificent. But Good News? Hardly!
Who in the world can live by it?
And that's not all the disciples heard. They saw Jesus cure people who were sick. he brought at least two dead men back to life. He restored the sight to the blind. He put lame folks back on their feet. Then He turned to his disciples and said, "Go and do even greater things than these."
Good News?
Why He might as well have told them to fly to the moon!
But Jesus knew that His disciples needed more than precepts, more than instruction. They also needed Power.
Because of that I believe Acts 1:8 is one of the greatest verses in the Bible.
"You shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be My witnesses!
Now, THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!
Precepts plus power is Good News!
The Cross is Good News about God's Love!
The Resurrection is Good News about the power of God!
The Good News is that there is Power available to . . .Love like God loves. . . .To Live like Christ lived. Has that happened in your life? Have you discovered the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in you through faith in Jesus Christ?
It was precepts plus power that made the early disciples effective in their living and in their service. Ever since I can remember people have been trying to tell how to live with no power to live it.
Oprah has NO POWER!
Open your heart to the Holy Spirit today!

Family

Grandkids

Helga and the Christian Way

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, "Give me all! I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you.... Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours." Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do.

- C.S Lewis "Mere Christianity"

Have you ever been lost? Maybe in an unfamiliar place and you can't get back on track. We recently got a GPS for our laptop that tells us where we are to turn and how far to go. Now this Lady's voice--isn't that great guys? A lady is telling us which direction to go--told us which way to turn in Louisville, Kentucky and we missed it! Well we weren't prepared. We just plugged the thing in and tried to figure out how to run it while we were driving. We missed the turn. "Off track, Off track, Recalculating!" she blared as I asked my wife, who was manning the laptop, "Which way! Were we supposed to turn right or left?" "I don't know and quit yelling, she said! I can't figure this thing out!" Needless to say after trying to find our way back through the different freeways in Louisville we drove way out of our way and put us two full hours behind our schedule. We also had several arguments......no just loud discussions about where to turn and all the time our lady in the computer was saying very forcefully, "OFF TRACK, OFF TRACK, RECALCULATING!" I found myself arguing with two women about which direction to go and that wasn't even funny. But fastrack forward a week... as we were leaving my daughters house we made a pact. Before we start a trip we will plug all the information into the laptop correctly. We did that and heading across Illinois my wife's son called with an emergency from Southeast Missouri State, where he is a freshman. He needed his mother! Jo, my wife, plugged in the new information and we headed south across Illinois on unfamiliar roads. Helga, as we named her, kept telling us where to turn and we watched our blip on the screen follow the road on the map, bumping across railroad tracks just as we saw them on the map. Taking us across rivers as we watched the blip cross a blue line. Wow, now it seemed so easy! All of a sudden we were told to turn at a dark exit with no markings and head across a state road into the night. It was almost midnight and for the next 45 minutes Helga took us through little towns in almost complete darkness and state roads that were narrower than our driveway. It was a little scary because we were traveling blindly. But Helga faithfully told us to, "turn right on county road 24!" When we received the instruction for our next turn we both turned and looked at each other with our mouths open. "Turn right at next unnamed road" "What?" "Turn right at next unnamed road." That can't be right, can it? But there in the middle of the night with no house for at least 15 miles and no lights that we could see on any horizon, was a road. Just like Helga said! "Shall we turn" Jo asked. "I don't know! Maybe we should go back." "I'm not sure I can find my way back." So we turned and in just a couple of miles the unnamed road became a dirt unnamed road. Then under an overhang of trees Helga left us. Out there in the middle of nowhere not very far from the Mississippi River we lost our guide. For two miles we kept going hoping for something and there she was again. "Turn left on state hwy 48. Approaching in 3 minutes." I never was so glad to hear her voice. We turned and in another mile we were suddenly back on a main hwy within eyesight of a beautiful bridge that took us right into Cape Girardeau, MO where we were headed. C.S. Lewis tells us that the Christian way is like that: Different, Harder, Easier! It certainly is different giving up ourselves to Him. And it is harder than anything we have ever done to give ourselves wholly to Him. But when we do it, life is so much easier. "Love Song," one of my favorite Christian rock groups from my days in college had a song that I loved. It is called

"Front Seat, Back Seat"
"I was runnin' from my Master and I tried out every new thing I could find.
And my life turned into one disaster. Without the Lord I almost lose my
mind.
I was sitting in the front seat trying really hard to be the driver.
Thinking I was making real good time but always winding up the late arriver.
Now I've been trying out the back seat
and I find it is the very place
to be.
Now I'm trying out the back seat and I'm leaving all the driving to
the Chief!"

Sometimes when we are trying too hard to live the Christian life, we can't figure out the "Word of God and we miss our turns and then can't seem to get back to the right place. Just close your eyes and listen again.

With Christ our lives are "different, harder, and when we are wholly His...Easier. -Galatians 5

"Who was that Masked Man!"

Wow another blog this week. It must be a record for me. We have three days off in a row so here I am. My wife Jocille has been reading my Daughters blog, and my son's blog to me the past few days and laughing and laughing at Pastor Pink's blog as she read his to me.
So I thought I better get serious about this. When you have a few days to sit and not much mony to spend, God is right there and speaks louder than usual. Allright, Allright, I know I am just listening better. One thing I listened to and watched when I was a kid was....(I am not wholly comfortable admitting this) Yes! I will confess that in my earlier days I was an unabashed fan of the Lone Ranger.
Every time he was on the black and white tv we had I would tune in to watch the exploits of the Lone Ranger. For "nowhere in those sterling pages of yesteryear can one find a greater champion of justice."
That's the way the program used to start. "We turn again to those thrilling days when out of the past came the thundering hoof beats of the great horse, Silver, for the Lone Ranger rides again."
Every week, the program started with those words.
But what I could never understand about every episode was that at the conclusion, 27 minutes and thirty seconds into the episode, somebody would always ask the question: "Who was that man?"
Someone else would always say, "Why didn't you know? He's the Lone Ranger!"
That is the way it used to end.
Now as a young kid it perplexed me that here was someone whose life had been saved, whose money had been restored, whose ranch and been protected ~~their whole lives had hung in the balance~~ and yet all the way to the end they didn't have the slightest idea who that man was. Why hadn't they asked at the beginning of the program instead of the end?
They would allow him to do all of this good stuff for them without ever knowing who he was.

It occurs to me that an awful lot of people in the world today react the same way to Jesus Christ and what He has done. It will be a tragic thing, the Bible says, when Christ comes again, .....for those who allowed Him to work in their lives but never really got to know Him.
At the end of the Lone Ranger when the question was asked it was too late for them. He was gone.
Don't let it be too late for you! Get to know Jesus Christ today!
-Sheldon Tucker

What? or Who? Are you listening to?

Do you ever stop to listen to what your listening to?

What do you listen to as you go about your daily life? Of course we have the radio in the car or maybe the TV in the background as you make breakfast...of course it could be the computer that you sit at for much of your day....or maybe you are really connected and you listen to your phone or PDA for email and "updates."

Whatever you listen to, has a way of shaping who you are because what you listen to is based on Who you listen to.

An old gospel song says, "Deep within you there's a voice of the darkness and voice of the light and just by listening you've made your decision because the voice you hear is going to win the fight."

I grew up in Southern Idaho where there are many Basque Sheepherders, and I remember hearing one who was interviewed on the radio. The reporter noticed, as he spent time with this sheepherder that his two dogs were always fighting. And so he asked the shepherd, "Which of your dogs usually wins?" To which the man replied, "The one I feeds the most!"
And you know it's true! It's true in every aspect of our lives and especially true in our spiritual lives!
The apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians that the spirit we listen to is the one that is going to win. Who is winning the fight in your life today? and more importantly...Who are you listening too?