“Lord, let me make a difference for you that is utterly disproportionate to who I am.”
JOHN PIPER
I know a man (he would rather remain anonymous) who at 70 years old sat his children down and said, “Your mother and I are going to give your inheritance away.”
Their response was, “Daddy, it was never ours in the first place.”
Over the last ten years he has built hundreds of churches and orphanages in some of the most difficult places in our world. He has provided for the training of scores and scores of people indigenous to those cultures to pastor these churches. At 90 years old he travels to those locations to provide encouragement and love to the hundreds who have come to faith in Christ. Rather then fade into the sunset of retirement he has chosen to believe that the God of the universe can use a man in the
twilight of his life to make a difference disproportionate to who he is as a man.
I have read of a man they called Pastor John who was arrested in China for participating in the smuggling of Bibles some 40 years ago. Because he was known to be a leader in the house church movement he was arrested. His interrogators resorted to especially cruel means of torture. They tied his hands behind his back and made him stand on a box about four feet high and less than a foot wide. A rope was attached to a wooden beam above his head and then put around his neck. If he slipped or fell asleep he would slowly hang to death. As his two guards watched over him he began to tell them about Jesus. His guards mocked him. But day after day he continued to tell them about the love of Christ. On the thirteenth day a huge thunderstorm swept in. His resistance gave out. A sudden flash of lightening and a simultaneous clap of thunder caused him to pitch forward. The noose tightened.
He awoke to excruciating pain. His two guards were trying to revive him and at the same time asking to know his Jesus. Pastor John asked, “Why?” “Because,” they replied, “he saved you! A bolt of lightening cut the rope just above your head as you fell. Don’t tell us that’s a coincidence!” Pastor John was 71 years old… Thirteen days without food, water, or sleep. He didn’t complain, negotiate, or give up. He simply saw it as an opportunity to make a difference with a disproportionate outcome to who he was.
I was on a trip to reconnect with and speak to a group of men I had spoken to over the years. One after another came up to me with words of encouragement. Their words were consistent, “you and what you said made a difference in my life.”
Was it disproportionate to who I am? I would only hope so. What I said was from God’s Word and Isaiah 55:11 says that God’s World will never come back empty. What I did was simply engage in their lives at the point of their need. Both take faith… faith to believe God’s Word is not empty and faith to live obediently.
The “heroic” begins there. Some of us may be asked to give our children’s inheritance away while others may be required to stand for thirteen days on a four by one foot platform. But regardless of what it is we are asked to do, we are all asked to live obediently for the One we say we love and it all begins with Faith, for that is what pleases the heart of God (Hebrews 11:6). It is what causes a man to give away both his possessions and his life… It is what results in doing those things that are disproportionate to who we are.
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
HEBREWS 11:6
