Despite humanity being more connected than ever before (at least superficially), there are currently a lot of lonely people out there. For those folks, Thanksgiving is the start of a very hard season.
I’ve been blessed to spend almost every Thanksgiving with family and/or friends, but the odd occasion where that didn’t work out gave me a little taste of the loneliness that can be a hidden difficulty of the holiday season. You add to that all the commercials about people spending time with loved ones, and it starts to feel like you don’t fit in. Even Black Friday commercials and advertisements sting a little bit. After all, what’s the point of all those sales if you already have the stuff you want and you don’t really have anyone to buy for?
Now imagine not just a week, or even a month, of this, but living like this all the time.
Thanksgiving is this week. Do you have a little extra room at your table for someone who’d otherwise be alone? Someone who’s single (young or otherwise), someone whose loved one(s) is/are far away because of business, or someone for whom it just wouldn’t be practical to get home and back for a long weekend (college students, etc.). There are also couples in the same boat who I’m sure would love to be invited to a “Friendsgiving.”
Someday, those who call Christ their Savior will enjoy sweet fellowship all the time. Until we get there though, we do the best we can, and I’m grateful to those that include others who’d ordinarily be alone.
Have you ever come across someone who was already very talented at something, but needed a little extra guidance to make them unstoppable?
In the book of Acts (chapter 18, verses 24-28) we encounter a Jewish fellow with an odd combination of knowledge. He had extensively studied the Old Testament and was very familiar with what it prophesied about the coming Messiah, but he was also a follower of John the Baptist’s teachings. That might not seem so strange, but the teachings of John the Baptist were the limit of this guy’s New Testament experience. He lacked a complete understanding of the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the Church as God’s new witness people.
His name was Apollos.
Apollos was unusually skilled in debate and public speaking. He arrived in the city of Ephesus and started accurately teaching in the synagogue what he knew about the Messiah. He eventually attracted the attention of two well-known followers of Christ, Aquila and Priscilla. This pair recognized that Apollos’ understanding of the situation was incomplete, so they pulled him aside and brought him up to speed, giving him a more full understanding of Jesus and His role in God’s plan.
Armed with a more robust understanding of “The Way,” Apollos then went on to “vigorously refute the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 18:28). Apollos went on to become a very prominent teacher in the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:12), and his knowledge and skills were so great, Paul wanted him to use him in different cities (1 Corinthians 16:12).
Apollos was a man that became a powerful tool of God’s Church, but before all that, when he first arrived on the scene, he wasn’t yet ready to be the full version of what he would later become. It took the husband/wife team of Aquila and Priscilla, a faithful Christian couple, to mentor and disciple him. This was an ordinary, faithful couple who saw a need and filled it. As a result of their faithful behavior, they helped enable Apollos’ ministry for years to come.
Faithful service to the Lord doesn’t always involve flashy events. More often than not, it’s quiet, unseen efforts with lasting effects. In what ways can you use your gifts to enable someone else for greater success in the Kingdom of God? Is there someone you know who could benefit from your Christian mentorship?
Lord, people have been following Your teachings for just about two thousand years now. So much of that has come from the passing of knowledge and teachings from one Christian generation to another. Please help me/us as we look to be taught by, as well as mentor, other Christians. Praise You for helping Your followers thrive even in the unlikeliest places. Amen.
I’m going to build a little on last week’s post. In that post I talked about how sometimes it feels like spreading the Gospel can seem like it’s having no effect or is falling on deaf ears. The post also highlighted the encouragement found in the parable of the sower, which teaches that all sowers (people spreading the Gospel) are fruitful to some degree.
I’ve been writing articles for this blog for some time now. Last month was the blog’s seven-year anniversary. I’ve written on some of the inspiring things I’ve seen, some of the weird things I’ve done, and some of the mundane things I’ve been a part of (and a whole lot of other stuff, too). If every person has a story to tell, this blog is the most centralized record of my story.
In the months leading up to starting this site, it was something I had to wrestle with. I felt led to start blindly sending these little anecdotes from my life out into cyberspace. “But why, God? I mean sure, I know You can use it, but…me? What do I have to say that others haven’t already said?”
I’m an introvert who gets drained by interaction with lots of people, but I still have a lot to say. It turns out the practice of putting these posts online is almost like God saying to me “Look, I know you. I know what’s too much for you, and I know what will break you. There’s a reason you’ve done the things you’ve done and lived the life you’ve lived, and this is Me asking you to turn those experiences into illustrations for people I want to hear something you’ve learned. At the same time, I’m allowing you to do it in a way that suits who you are. You’re not doing speaking engagements. You’re not on the road away from your family, doing events where you’re shaking lots of hands and pretending like you’re going to remember everybody’s name. You’re writing these posts from the comfort of your own home. I’ll tell you what…you just keep going until I let you know it’s time to stop. In the meantime, I’ll bring the people I want to the specific post I want them to see.”
And so here we are. This is post number 400 for DareGreatlyNow.com. That’s a big, round number, and a milestone worthy of reflection. I’m completely oblivious to what kind of impact all those posts (or sometimes individual posts) are having. I’ll only find out the full story after I’ve taken my last breath. I know the site has hosted visitors from almost every country in the world at some point or another, but don’t know the extent to which those readers agree with whatever they’re reading, or if it even has an effect on their thinking at all. It can be a little maddening in that sense. Sometimes I have to remind myself of the attitude I should be having. I picture God saying “Hey…eyes on Me. You don’t work for them, you work for Me, you understand? You just keep going until I let you know it’s time to stop, and I’ll take care of everything else. You’ve been very faithful with this so far, don’t think I haven’t seen it. I’m using your stuff in something I’m working on, so don’t give up now. Keep going. We’ll talk more about it later.”
Sometimes I take a look at what posts have been read in the last month, and it can be surprising. Something I thought would have been a great post gets minimal hits, while some unexpected little ditty from years ago is in the top 10. I guess that’s God bringing the people He wants to the post He wants them to see.
I heard a leadership speaker recently say something you don’t often hear: “Great leadership is boring. You don’t have to be the best to be a great leader, you just have to be consistent.” Then he threw this math equation out there, and it’s one that resonated with me. He said (Consistency + Faithfulness) x Time = Lasting Impact. That was an encouragement as well, because that’s the model I try to bring to DareGreatlyNow.com. Someday I’ll find out the whole story.
So with this milestone, thank you so much to those who have shown support over the years. I appreciate you reading some of my posts!
Lord I thank You and praise You for knowing me better than I know myself, and for a calling that is custom-designed to be one I can embrace. The consistent work on this effort, using what You’ve given me, is what I consider my version of “a living sacrifice,” and I offer it to You as an act of worship and dedication. Thank you that I don’t have to worry about finding the person who’s supposed to read something, knowing You’ll take care of that need. Thank You for providing such a wide variety of experiences to draw from, and for safety (mostly) during them all. I ask that these efforts will be a blessing to someone, and that You’d use at least one of them to grow or otherwise benefit Your Kingdom. With sincere gratitude, Amen.
Very few people know this about me (or remember it), but I had an odd way of trying to make extra money once upon a time. After college I moved back in with Mom and Dad and my main job was working in construction while I paid back student loans. The money was good, but the job usually only went until about 3 pm and I had some extra time and energy as a young 20-something, so I went looking for a side hustle. Oddly enough, there was a brief chapter in my life where I was a telemarketer.
Now you have to understand, I hate when telemarketers call me, so it was an interesting development. This was more than 20 years ago; back then it wasn’t robo-calls, it was actual pick-up-the-phone-and-call-someone stuff. I got a huge list of phone numbers, broken down by Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones. I didn’t have names, just phone numbers. To provide privacy to our home phone number, the system was set up so I’d call and log into it, and then I’d be able to dial other phone numbers from there.
I had a script to use for pitching the product. Truth be told, I don’t even remember what I was trying to sell, or who I worked for. I called so many phone numbers. Hardly anybody answered. It would be some ridiculous ratio like, call 10 numbers to get someone who picks up, but only one in 10 people you talk to would even listen to your whole pitch, so you’d have to make like, a hundred calls before you even get a glimmer of hope. (And that’s probably being generous.) Between all those calls and tying up Mom and Dad’s phone line, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this wasn’t worth the effort for me. I quit without ever making a sale.
Not to discourage anybody, but it can kinda feel like that sometimes with spreading the Gospel. You can have tons of conversations, you can scatter that seed far and wide, and you can live your life in a way that people know there’s something different about you, but sometimes you wonder if you’re making a difference for the Kingdom of Christ.
For those of you who may feel this way, I’d like to point you to the parable of the sower, found in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As Jesus explained the parable to them, He explained that some people who heard the Gospel received it with gladness but then rejected it at the first sign of trouble, or how others had the Good News choked out by worry or wealth. Finally though, He talked about the good soil. Matthew 13:23 says “But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
This is very heartening news! Although there will be varying degrees of fruitfulness, this verse is saying that all Christians will be fruitful to some degree. Nobody’s wasting their time. Don’t quit spreading the Good News. You might not be there when someone “crosses the threshold,” but your efforts can be part of the collective body of work that it takes to get them to that threshold. Think of a tree branch that snaps under the weight of snow in a snowstorm. On their own, each individual snowflake doesn’t do much, but at the direction of the Holy Spirit, the collective weight of all of them brings them to the point where something big happens.
So keep spreading the news with gladness wherever you are and in whatever role you find yourself. You’ll only find out the full story of your impact in Heaven.
