The importance of one.





Imagine being the main speaker at a big event. You spend many hours in prayer and preparation. You have your sermons laid out well and your heart is full of excitement and anticipation to see what the Lord will do. And then the day arrives and you preach your heart out. And you feel the Spirit of God telling you to give a call for any to respond and receive Jesus as their saviour. So with a heart full of both excitement and that sense of “should I?” you go ahead and give a call. It is silent and then just one solitary person walks forward. You wait and ask probingly if anyone else would want to come. But no one moves in that big crowd in front of you.

I don’t know if you’ve been there but I have. It can feel pretty deflating. It can leave you with a sense of “did I do something wrong?” We hear of altar calls where thousands came forward but our own experience in that moment can seem so flat.

What if some time after that event you get to find out that your single fruit that evening then went on to attempt suicide. It can be so demoralizing and has the potential to make me ask myself “did I not present the power of the hope of the gospel clearly enough?”

Now imagine with me that you get a phone call asking if you would come pray with this person who attempted suicide. Maybe it’s late in the day and you are tired. There may be others who can go. With all these excuses at your disposal you get up and go anyway. You meet the person and pray with them and feel the Lord tell you to just sit with them every day and read the bible. This might not seem the most profitable thing to do in ministry. You could spend those hours preaching and teaching way more people. You could spend them equipping and training leaders elsewhere. The person in front of you is weak and obviously quite hopeless and nowhere close to anything that a leader ought to be.
But my friend, if the Lord calls and prompts you to then go ahead and give that call, go ahead and spend that time. When God stirs your heart to share the gospel go ahead and do it even in the face of little or maybe even no fruit. Our God knows His plans and He is a God who can multiply our obedience far more than we could even ask or imagine.

The preacher in this story is a man named Sam Wolgemuth. The visitor at the hospital is a man named Fred David. Now their names might not mean much to you or ring any bells. But the name of the person they impacted will. The sole responder to the altar call and the soul that survived the suicide and had scripture read to them was none other than Dr Ravi Zacharias. A teenager who would go on to powerfully impact many thousands for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Our God is a multiplier of obedience. When we walk with Him no effort of obedience goes in vain.



Pic credit: Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Comments

Unknown said…
A very compelling challenge.. hard to ignore.. well written.. thanks bro..
May 22, 2020 at 9:25 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Gamer’s Guide to Spiritual Warfare (Even If You’re Not a Gamer)

Image
  Disclaimer: Please bear with the opening two paragraphs of this blog. You can judge me for it if you like. But I will get to the point and I hope you will be blessed and encouraged.   I am not much of a gamer. I would occasionally go through a season of playing football or basketball on the PS. But I would not really call myself a gamer. I prefer board games. But, about two years ago my son introduced me to a game he was playing that he thought I would like. I thought I would give it a go as a means to maybe spend more time with him and enter a part of his world. To my surprise, he was right! I really enjoyed the game. For those who might care, its an open world survival game on the computer. What that basically means is that you have a character, and you explore an open world. You fight off wild animals and enemies that are out to kill you. You forage for food and you collect materials to build a base and armour and weapons with. As you progress through the levels of t...
Read more

Questions In A Season Of Pain

Image
There are certain things we all go through. If you are reading this, then we share the common experience of being born and being alive. Our lives after that might look very different from each other. But there are still some common experiences we share. Pain is one of them. The degrees might vary as well as the details and circumstances. But we all experience pain in some form or the other. It does not matter if you are someone who is obediently walking with God or if you are someone who has decided this whole “God thing” is not really a thing. Pain comes at us anyway. In those seasons of pain, our hearts and minds begin to ask questions. This is a human and natural reaction and there is nothing wrong with it. The Bible encourages us to come to God with our questions and be real before Him.  What I would like us to think about is the kind of questions we ask, and how helpful they are. This is not a write up pretending to be a recipe of how to ask questions and make your pain easier...
Read more

Daughters, dances, divinity and devotion.

Image
  My teenage daughter loves to dance. Ever since a very young age, she has watched videos of different kinds of dancers and then tried to imitate their steps. She was teaching herself and doing a very good job of it. Seeing her passion for dance, we enrolled her in dance classes. Enrolling her in these classes didn’t just mean she learned to dance; it also meant we were invited to watch her perform at shows that the dance school organises. Recently, we went to their Christmas performance. As I expected, it had lights, smoke machines, and a good sound system. The performances themselves were many in number. Some were tap dances, some ballet; some were street style, and others were jazz. Some were performed by children as young as seven or eight years old, while others featured older, grey-haired (I am being kind here) adults dancing as well. It was a loud, smoky, and artistic evening, divided into two sections with a 15-minute interval. My daughter’s dances were in the second half o...
Read more