It’s easy to get down on life and down on the world. It’s easy to look at the myriad of problems in our world and wonder out loud “what can one person do?”
Yesterday I preached on what one person can do. It was a study of a man in the book of Jeremiah called Ebed-Melek, a word that means “the servant of the king.” Almost single handedly Ebed-Melek rescued Jeremiah after he had been tossed into a cistern and left to die.
It’s good to ask what else one person can do.
Let me give you four suggestions that you can and ought to do.
1. You can show God’s kindness to everyone. Think of the difference you could make in your world if you sought to be kind, considerate, and compassionate to the people around you. What would that do for your workplace? Your family? Your spouse?
Our world desperately needs acts of kindness and compassion.
Showing kindness and consideration is certainly one thing one person can do.
2. You can be a neighborhood missionary. Here’s what I have in mind. Every neighborhood ought to have someone – – a follower of Christ – – who deliberately and intentionally acts as a thoughtful and caring ambassador of Christ to the neighborhood.
The neighborhood missionary would organize meals at the birth of babies and times of crisis. The neighborhood missionary would be a go to person when people need counsel and encouragement. The neighborhood missionary would certainly be a person who exhibits Christ and tells of what God has done in his or her life.
3. Pray. One thing you can do is pray. Pray for revival in America. Pray for a third great awakening. Pray for an end to the evils of our day and change for our world.
What would happen if all of us prayed for revival in our churches and then our world?
4. Be ready to give an answer for why you have hope for the future and why you believe that Christ is the way (1Peter3:15).
If you serve as the neighborhood missionary (without anyone knowing it), and live a life of kindness, and show kindness and consideration to others, I can almost guarantee that someone is going to ask you why you live the way you do.
You then have the opportunity to tell about the One who has made the biggest difference in your life.
There are many things one person can do. Let’s do them with all of our heart.
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2 Responses
This doesn’t seem to have caught on very well, but I’ll add a few:We have a msaiionsry couple, BJ & K, to a difficult country who are in an uncertain period of their ministry. They need prayer for direction.There is a local family, G & M, in another difficult country who often assists us in ministry. Their ministry has seen protection through local authorities, but they walk a delicate line. Pray for their continued protection and that their ministry will continue to be fruitful.Pray for our brothers and sisters in a sister church in Venezuela who are contending with a changing political climate. Jose’s job is in jeopardy because of his refusal to do unethical things for the local government. Adriana desires to be a msaiionsry, but is studying medicine according to her parent’s wishes although she could eventually be imprisoned to practice medicine under the government’s auspices. Pray for their ability to purchase land to build a church at a mission site where many new believers are being added.
It’s imperative that more people make this exact point.