Just do it

Yesterday, after feeling sorry for myself for being so useless, I asked God, “What can I do?” How can one person make a difference in a world that is so indifferent, filled with people like me who think of themselves far more than necessary? Our selfishness is destroying our society and our world.
 

Today’s devotional reading asked the same question, “What can I do?” To answer it, the author pointed to two verses in Acts. The first is Jesus speaking to His disciples. The second is Paul using the words of Jesus to defend his work of evangelism to those who were “jealous” and contradicting him.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” (Acts 13:47)

God’s answer to what I can do is always the same, “Obey Me.” His command and determination for my life (and the lives of all His people) is that I tell others about Jesus, and that He offers forgiveness and eternal life. 

In my egotism, no matter what I do toward this, I still feel like I am not doing enough and that changing the world will not happen because of me. Some days I wonder if I make any difference at all.

At that, God reminds me of another answer to this “what can I do” question. It is the story of a man who walked a beach where thousands of starfish had washed in with the tide. Seeing them stranded when the water receded, he began picking up one starfish at a time and throwing it far out into deep water.

Another man saw him and said, “What are you doing? There are so many. How can what you are doing make a difference?”

The first man reached down, picked another starfish, and as he threw it into the water he said, “It makes a difference to this one.”

Phillips Brooks answers my question with this, “You can furnish one Christian life. You can furnish a life so faithful to every duty, so ready for every service, so determined not to commit sin, that the great Christian church shall be the stronger for your living in it, and the problem of the world be answered, and a certain great peace come into this poor, perplexed phase of our humanity as it sees that new revelation of what Christianity is.”

Lofty thoughts. My heart protests that I am unworthy, but no sooner do the words form in my mind that the Holy Spirit whispers, “This is not about you.” He also reminds me that God can use and multiply five loaves and two fishes to feed a multitude. My part is offering what I have; size and significance are not an issue.

Our son was in elementary school when he began thinking of how the world could be affected by whether or not he stepped on a single bug on the sidewalk. He knew that a few insects begat more insects and that one less or one more would make a tremendous difference. We chuckled at this, but I now realize that I need to think more like that child. Besides, one person, doing what God asks, is a rare thing these days. Even if I make a difference to only one other person, then my efforts could have far-reaching, even eternal consequences.

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Jesus, first help me keep my mind on You, not on my inadequacies. Also, do not let what I see around me become so overwhelming that I crawl into a distraction. May Your commands continually pop to the front so I clearly know what You want me to do — each day, hour, minute — and then just do it. Amen.

Making a Difference

A sandy beach was covered with starfish that had washed ashore with the tide and were stranded. A young man walked along the shore, picking starfish up at random and tossing them back into the ocean. Someone approached him and laughed. “What good is that?” he said. “There are so many of them. What you are doing makes no difference at all.”

The young man picked up another starfish and threw it out to sea, saying, “It makes a difference to this one.”

This familiar story came to mind when I read a few verses from Isaiah 26 this morning. It says:

Yes, in the way of Your judgments, O Lord, we have waited for You; the desire of our soul is for Your name and for the remembrance of You. With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early; for when Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

The author describes how the people of God long for God, and how he also desires God and seeks Him. I noticed how the pronouns shifted from “we” to “me” in two sentences. Then in the next sentence he shifts to the people of the world and they become the benefactors of his desire for God.

Sometimes I think that my life doesn’t matter very much. There is more need in the world, even in my small part of the world than I can do anything about, and the little that I am able to do often seems insignificant. Yet the prophet Isaiah knew that if the people of God held up and maintained the judgements of God, the people of the world would learn righteousness.

Sometimes I long for a revival, a giant-sized moving of God’s Spirit whereby all of humanity is affected. In the history of revivals, some large and world-changing, individual beginnings are not always known. What is known is that some of them did begin with one person praying, one person desiring renewal, one person on their face before God saying, “Lord, change me.”

Isaiah gives the pattern. Wait for God, don’t move ahead of Him. Desire God and seek Him early; desire Him to the point that when I wake up at night all I think about is the will of God. Uphold truth. Uphold the gospel and the judgments of God.

No person can make a revival happen; this belongs to God alone. Yet these verses tell me what my role is, and I must do what I can with the small tasks God gives me. Even if what I do has no effect on the multitudes washed up by the tide of sin and their spiritual lostness, it will make a difference in my life, and maybe to one or two others.