BEING ONE PERSON IN A BIG WORLD

By the time I was born my parents were Christians and growing in their new faith.  I am blessed beyond belief to have been raised in a Christian home.  It was a simple home, and my parents were simple people.  They were ordinary folks, unpretentious, middle class, and hard workers.  With God at the center of their story, He became the Center of who we were as a family, making our way in the world.

Early on in my Christian journey I began to realize that, like my parents before me, I would most likely live a simple, yet faithful, life.  I had no insatiable desire to master the world and live as a mover and shaker for God.  My insatiable desire was to be obedient and faithful to God, leaving anything and everything to God.  Like my parents before me, and probably because of them I came to realize that if God were really in my life He would lead and guide and direct.  Where He took me was His business, not mine.  Faithfulness to Him was my business.

Somewhere in the formative years of my faith journey Jesus convinced me that His role for me was to be the "salt of the earth" and "light of the world.  I know this sounds pretty arrogant and self exalting but before you write me off as a narcissistic lunatic may I gently share with you that, if you are a follower of Jesus, He has called you to be the "salt of the earth and the "light of the world," too (See Matthew 5:13-16).  It sounds like you and I are stuck with the same job description -- to be salt-and-light followers of Jesus.

            There is not a day that goes by when I don't wonder about how to impact my world for Christ.  My influence is so narrow, and the world is so wide, I often wonder what difference in the world it all makes, after all.  I give it my best-shot everyday and the world is still falling apart.  Christian advertising inundates the Church every minute of every hour of every day, telling us of the incredible impact we are making around the world.  Yet, the world is still falling apart, and I wonder about what it means to make an "incredible impact." Are we just singing our own praises or is the Church really getting down into the muck and mire of the world's realities, and raising the banner of the cross there, so that the influence of Jesus isn't just scattered here and there but really powerful for the making of disciples around the world?

I was praying about these things one day; probably fretting about them more than praying (praying just sounds more spiritual, though), and it occurred to me that results and impact and outcomes are not on God's agenda for any one of us who believe in Him.  His agenda for us is to live in Christ, to be faithful to what a relationship with Jesus looks like, and to abide in Him (See John 15:1-11).  When we abide in Christ it is as though we are connected to His DNA.  He is the Vine and we are the branches.  When we abide in Him, whatever it means for Him to be who He is flows into and through our lives.  We bear the fruit of the Vine, Jesus.  We bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

The apostle Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control" (Galatians 5:22-23).  He doesn't call us to change the world.  He calls us to live in Christ knowing that if there is any changing of the world to be done, God will work in redemptive and healing and compassionate and merciful ways.  As Jesus lives in us, He will then live through us and touch the world as we live and move and have our being in God.

I think the adversary would have us to be overwhelmed by the bigness of things.  It's a big, big, world and we're only one person in a sea of some seven billion persons.  What difference could we possibly make? 

The famous British pastor-preacher, John Henry Jowett, (1864-1923), gives us these helpful comments:

We are deceived by mass, and we are forgetful of spirit. Mere size affrights us. We are dismayed by numbers. We forget the quiet, pervasive, all-powerful ministry of the Spirit of God.

We are overwhelmed by the phenomena of tempest and earthquake and fire, and we forget that almightiness hides in the “still, small voice,” in “the sound of a gentle stillness.”

God’s breath is more than the fierce threatenings of embattled hosts.

“If God be for us, who can be against us” (Romans 8:31).

I will hide myself in His holy fellowship, and “none shall make me afraid.”

(My Daily Meditation, November 17)

            That's helpful, isn't it?  "If God before us, who can be against us?"  Don't be deceived by the bigness of things.  Just live your life in Jesus.  Be vitally connected to His life, and then go out and live your life of faith.  Be faithful.  Leave results to God.  Trust the Holy Spirit to do what you in the wildest stretches of your imagination couldn't see yourself doing.  Be faithful in this moment, in that act, with this person, in that undertaking.  God has countless numbers of braches all throughout the world, and in the end, God will get what God wants. 

            The old Gospel song written by John H. Sammis in 1887 says it best for those of us who really do want to live our lives for Jesus.

When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,

What a glory He sheds on our way!

While we do His good will, He abides with us still,

And with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

A TRIBUTE TO GRANDMA MARY

Between 1979 and 1993 I pastored a church in Vista, California.  In that congregation there was an older woman that my family came to love.  Her name was Mary and to everyone in the congregation she was Grandma Mary.  She loved the children and became surrogate grandmother for many of them, including my children, Alison and Scott.  They loved her, and she loved them.

One day while visiting in her home I asked, “Grandma Mary, what is your story?  How did you come to know Christ?”  She said, “Pastor, do you really want to know?”  I said yes, and then sat back and soaked in the awe and wonder of grace.

She told me that she was a runner for bootleggers in the 1920s in West Virginia.  She was responsible for getting information from location to location, so she had a lot of knowledge of the illegal activity.

She was pretty wild and tough.  One night she angered some woman over something and the woman started chasing her down to kill her.  In a desperate act to escape the woman, Mary ran into a church that happened to have an evangelistic service under way, and the woman chased her in but backed off when she lost her in the crowd.  Mary said that before she could collect herself some usher seated her near the front where she felt trapped.

She told me that as the service progressed she began to feel a peace she had never known before.  The evangelist gave an altar call and Mary went forward.  The young pastor of the church prayed with her and told her that she needed to give everything in her life to God.  So, she put her purse on the altar, opened it up and took out a switchblade knife and laid it on the altar.  She then took out a pistol and put it on the altar.  She put some cigarettes and chewing tobacco on the altar, along with the other items, and told the pastor that was all she had.

They prayed and Mary said that’s the moment she came to Jesus.  I’m not sure all that happen in her life that night but I know Jesus showed up, changed her life, and captivated her imagination.

When the bootleggers found out about her conversion, they challenged her on it.  She told them she would have to give up the bootleg business because Jesus had changed her life.  When they found out about her decision they put a contract out on her life.  Somehow she found out about the contract and left West Virginia immediately, telling no one where she was going, and headed for as far away from there as she could get – California. 

Whatever happened that night in that little church took hold of Grandma Mary’s life, and she never turned back.  For the rest of her life she would say, “I want to stay near the spout where God’s glory pours out.”  She did, and once in a while I got pretty wet just hanging out with her.