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.
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