Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Subject: Updates to the book titled Trust God for Your Finances
Judy Hartman: Good morning, Jack.
Jack Hartman: Good morning.
Judy Hartman: You wrote Trust God For Your Finances in 1983?
Jack Hartman: 1983
Judy Hartman: 1983. Well, it’s 2017 now. What we’d like to do is add another chapter because we’re doing a grand reissuing of Trust GodfFor Your Finances in 2017. We’d like to add a final chapter that will bring people up to date on what has happened in your life between 1983 and 2017.
So let’s start out with the most important message that you would have for people from your heart regarding what God has done in your life in relation to your understanding of finances since 1983.
Jack Hartman: Well, God has led me to write 32 additional books; one led to another, led to another, led to another. I developed a procedure when I was in the Word of God all the time. I learned how to study the Bible by topic. So we did a book on this topic and that topic and another topic. I developed a system where we just kept putting out books up to a total of 33.
Originally, our books were published through Lamplight Publications but we did not market the books. We then started a nonprofit corporation named Lamplight Ministries, giving books away to needy people in Third World countries and in prisons and jails. To date we have received comments from people in 62 countries.
The result was that when we started giving books away as opposed to trying to sell our books, we were able to reach large numbers of people all over the world. I look at the list of 62 countries. We’ve had comments from people we have never heard of or had contact with before.
Judy Hartman: How would you tell people about God’s faithfulness to you in the area of finances between 1983 and now.
Jack Hartman: Well. I learned you can’t reap the harvest until you have sown the seeds. I have sewn seeds in two areas; one is giving and the other is meditating. Ever since then, we have developed regular givers and tithers who have enabled us to give our books away. The Bible says “Give and it will be given unto you.” So, between us, we both have a giving heart anyway. We have just given and given and given.
The other is Joshua 1:8. I meditate night and day on the Word of God. I look back on all these years the number of hours that I have spent. I’ll find one Scripture and it leads me to another. I use the topical reference Bible and it led me to another verse and to another to another.
All of sudden, I look at all these books and I can’t even believe I wrote them all.
Judy Hartman: I remember how much fun we used to have, because when there would be an opportunity to give, we played this game. We each decided how much we would give and then we would tell the other. Then we would choose the higher number. Often it was high and it was the same number.
Jack Hartman: We’ve always done that. It’s our nature to be givers, whether it’s finances or to help people or whatever. I’m here to serve God and to help people. You have a similar mentality, so we just devoted our lives to helping people, even today. Right now, I’ll be 86 in two months. You are taking on a lot of what I did in the past.
Judy Hartman: You planted yourself into so many people through Faith Christian Center and through Northeast Planning Associates. You planted a seed of yourself by mentoring people in the church and in Northeast Planning. So, today, when you came for skin surgery, Mike was able to call and contact many of the people into whose lives you planted seeds and you are receiving calls from them saying, “Jack, we will be praying for you.” So, the fruit of giving is not always financial. It’s much greater than that. We couldn’t even imagine the price of those phone calls that you received, how much they mean to us. It’s beyond measure. It’s measureless. We cannot count how thankful we are for the calls that you received and it’s from planting yourself in others.
Jack Hartman: When I go to heaven, you’re going to receive all these comments from many, many even more people who just started giving that led to more giving and that led to more giving. I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about helping people. I just can’t get over looking at all of those books and I just say, “I wrote all those?” I got a big stack of them. I look back at the fact that we used to do six or seven drafts of each books, plus a detailed study guide. I look back now at 86 in two months and I look at all of the years and all of the seeds that we have sown with so many people and I am just in awe.
Judy Hartman: And Lamplight Ministries has been debt free since Day 1. We’ve never ever not had enough money to take care of whatever we were responsible for each month. God has been so faithful to us.
Jack Hartman: I remember all the times we have been unable to pay ourselves. We’ve had to wait. In terms of giving to others, our money has always been there.
Judy Hartman: That’s right. We’ve been so thankful because the economy has changed between 1983 and now. So many ministries have had great, great difficulty and ours has been smooth sailing all along because we always pay. Actually, we pay early. We have a policy of paying things early and it gives you such peace in your heart when you have enough money to pay for whatever you owe. We’ve also kept our expenses at a minimum because we’ve each had an office in our home. At one end of the house is my office and at the other end of the house is your office. So our overhead is so minimal. We’ve been so thankful for that. Besides that, we’ve had the comfort of being at our office already, getting up and already being there. The only problem with that is that you never go home because you’re always on and you can always do something. In the ministry, you’re never finished. There’s always something more that you can do.
Jack Hartman: I remember the days when I did all of the things that I don’t do now, so I always have a break coming. I only have two speeds; fast and slow. When I worked hard, I was able to take off and do things. My life has totally changed now. I’ve only got one speed, slow. But back then, I look back on it and I can’t even believe everything that happened.
Judy Hartman: Well it’s true. When I used to sometimes be in the room when you were on a telephone business appointment, you were actually ministering, but you were doing your appointments with agents at Northeast Planning. You were there to mentor them to how to be successful in the insurance industry or in the financial planning industry, but you were really there to mentor them to how to become a man of God, or help a woman of God. Before you would take the phone, you would pray; “Father, I have no idea what to say.” You said that all the time. You always said, “Father, I have no idea. I don’t know a thing about the products that they’re selling anymore, but Father you just tell me what to say.” And then the person would get on the phone and might know Jesus or might not know Jesus, but it didn’t matter. You still would say, “May I say a prayer with you?” and then the person would often say more than things that would have to do with business. The person would tell you of an issue in his or her life and you would help with that. You mentored these people. You poured yourself into them like oil.
Jack Hartman: God gave me a gift of exhortation and I didn’t even know what that was back originally, but I’ve always been an encourager and I have encouraged people. Way back in the beginning, it was back before I was saved. I was reaching out and encouraging people, helping people. As a matter of fact, I wrote two books on The Simplicity of Agency Management and Unique Concepts in Agency Management. I didn’t do it to make money. I mean, I made very little. I just did it to help people and so it has gone on ever since then, as I just planted seeds in the lives of others. I was saved in 1974. I started doing the management in the insurance business in 1959 to 1960. So for about 13 years I was encouraging people even back then all over the world. I couldn’t believe it. We would get all these letters back then, from Singapore and all of these countries.
Judy Hartman: Thailand.
Jack Hartman: Thailand. Yea. And, so, it’s just interesting to watch the evolution that has taken place.
Judy Hartman: What would you say to a person who is in business for himself in today’s economy? What kind of advice would you give somebody who has his own business?
Jack Hartman: Help other people. So, the whole thing is that I just have always wanted to help people and to take the gifts and the talents that God gave me and use them to help other people and that’s what you know I did. We’re not here to make money. We’re not here to accumulate. We’re not here to live in big luxurious houses. We’re here to serve God and to help people. And, so, from the very beginning, I will never forget when the Bible study started there. Bob Ford was the pastor. He came here from California and he used to teach every week. Then he had to go back to California for a week or two, so he asked me to take his place teaching. Here I was, only a two-year-old Christian. So, I started the teaching back then.
When Bob came back, I was still in the middle of a teaching. He said, “I’ll let you finish up and I’ll take over next week”. So I finished the teaching. He came up to me and said, “You continue doing that. You have gifts that I don’t have. I have the gift as a pastor and a preacher. You have the gift as a teacher.”
So I started teaching and we grew from eight people to 300 people coming every Tuesday night in two years. We moved from one place to another to another from 300 people coming. We couldn’t even find a place to sit them all. Here we are today, all these years later, still hear from a lot of people who were in the Bible study classes back then.
So, what happened was that I studied the Bible to solve my own problems. As I learned how that happened, I took the principles that I learned and have been helping other people ever since.
Judy Hartman: When I visit New Hampshire, people will come up to me and say, “I still have those mimeographed sheets. Remember the first mimeographed sheets?
Jack Hartman: Oh yeah.
Judy Hartman: The people say, “I still have those sheets and I still use them,” because you gave out notes to them so they could study. You gave them homework, so to speak, of how to take the Word of God and hide it in their hearts. The premise of Lamplight Ministries is that every single book, all we have to do is say, every one of our books says this, “Get into the Word of God and get the Word of God into you.” That’s what every single one of our books says.
Another book that you have, I’m teaching the ladies of our church, Calvary Chapel of Palm Harbor. I’m teaching out of Effective Prayer. The gift that you have to pull out the questions and make a Study Guide for every book is nothing short of genius. It’s nothing short of anointed genius, because the questions that you ask make people think in their spirit, not in their mind, in their spirit. So, as we go over these questions, the ladies are responding. You can see them responding. You can sense them. They are responding in their spirit and the Word of God is changing them, because of the questions that you ask in the Study Guide.
Jack Hartman: The thing that interested me when we started, they were letters. Back then there wasn’t email. There were letters. We kept getting these letters from people in this country and that country and that country. They’d ask questions and tell me how this helped them and I just watched what took place over a long period of time and I’m still in awe.
Judy Hartman: We have a precious man who gives out our Scripture cards and we’ve had this happen more than once. But another one happened this week where a lady said: “I am in desperate straits. I have a son with a brain aneurism and I found a set of Scripture cards. Then I was going over them and they made such a difference in my life and then I lost them and then lo and behold I found another set of Scripture cards. Now what are the odds of that she would find another set?
This wonderful man takes our cards and he just puts them in different places. He leaves a whole set somewhere. This lady found two of them and called to tell us thank you because you were ministering to me and I’d like some more of your publications, so we’re actually sending her some. She said, “I have to tell you, I’m very poor because of the medical condition of my son and I’m also just such a difficult situation because it’s such a hard thing to bear” So God brings people like that even from our nation as well as people from other nations who contact us.
Jack Hartman: As this age and this stage of my life, I never cease to be amazed at the seeds that we planted many, many years ago developing and continuing to harvest. I’m almost 86 years old and see something that I did 30 years ago and 40 years ago and 20 years ago helping people today. I see it all the time.
Judy Hartman: God has blessed us with leaders of countries that are major planters of churches or leaders of pastors such as Ebenezer Moses in India. He is a pastor of thousands of pastors in India and he has a mission to reach all of the upper class of India.
Jack Hartman: I’m running out of gas here.
Judy Hartman: Then we can just finish up with this. We have Pastor Koshita and Gideon. We have leaders of nations that are reaching many, many people and then your dear friend in Thailand, the lady in Thailand.
Jack Hartman: Well, I think often about how many churches on a Sunday morning, pastors preach their sermons from one of our books. I think that something I did years ago is helping large numbers of people in countries all over the world all of these years later, too.
Judy Hartman: Well, let’s close with a prayer. Would you pray for whoever reads this or hears this? Just close in prayer.
Jack Hartman: Dear Father, our ministry is to take your Word and to help large, large numbers of people with your Word and so we pray you will use the contents of what we are doing right here today to help more people. We live to serve God and to help people. We’ve done that all these years. Even though today, I often think I’m more than semi-retired. I’m almost retired, but the fact that you still harvest the seeds that we sowed a long time ago and they are still helping large numbers of people. Thank You, Father, in Jesus’s name. Amen.
Judy Hartman: Thank you, Father. And Father we pray that if anybody reading this or hearing this doesn’t know You, that that person will pray the prayer. Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus. I confess my sins. I surrender my life to you, Father, and I ask you to be the Lord of my life and I am born of the Spirit right this minute. I am a child of God. Holy Spirit, fill me with Yourself and give me boldness to preach and share the great gold mine that has come into my life, Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father. We love you. We bless you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.