Consider the Power of One. You receive a call on your phone from a friend asking you how you are doing. Your brother/sister has been sick in the hospital but is now getting well. You walk through the house flipping on a switch that bathes the room in light. Those actions are no big deal to us. After all, we have known the use of a phone, penicillin and electricity all our lives. But for Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Fleming and Thomas Edison they were big deals. {Side note: do you think AGB had any idea about cell phones when he invented his version?) 🙂 There is no way we can possibly calculate the contribution of one person in our day and age. George Washington. Eli Whitney. Abraham Lincoln. Benjamin Franklin. Henry Ford. Martin Luther King, Jr. Susan B. Anthony. And more. Granted none of these really worked alone since they, for the most part, had a support team but they show us the power of one.
John Wycliffe. John Hus. Martin Luther (not King). Zwingli. Calvin. Knox. John & Charles Wesley. Thomas & Alexander Campbell. Individuals who made a difference in the religious world.
God used very human people to carry out His work. He used ordinary people who believed in an extraordinary God to get His message spread. One very flawed, but very used individual mentioned in Hebrews 11 is Samson. Chuck Swindoll calls him “the He-man with the She-weakness.” It is true that if he had been able to control his lusts he would have had a greater impact (we assume so). But God was still able to take him and use him to make havoc on the Philistines. I am going to be directing my message to the young people this Sunday in Youth: The Power of One. Also going to have a young man who used to part of OVCF and just recently spent 2 months in India give his testimony and what he learned while there. I look forward to hearing what Sam has to say. Again, I am asking for your prayers this week as I conclude my series on Endangered Species. Thanks ahead of time. You have no idea how much they mean.
Again, thanks to Dan Drewes for the banner.
I have prayed pastor….and as a side note…God’s will…”will” be done with us or w/o us!! What a privilege to be a part in it!!
Praying
Hi Cycleguy,
Then there’s this one.
Isaiah and Jesus talking about the person and ministry of John the Baptist.
‘the voice of ONE crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight’
Ike & Tom: thanks for praying.
Linda: there are so many they could fill a page. Thanks for the reminder of John.
looking forward to hearing the sermon (albeit online). that’s something i have struggled with a lot recently.
regarding the post: i can’t help but wonder…
did Paul ever think that people would read his letters to his friends 2,000 years after he wrote it? that makes me re-think the e-mails i send every day. maybe the e-mails aren’t as impacting as actual written letters but they still carry a message…
did Peter, the feisty fisherman who always was a leader and who even tried to tell Jesus what to do… did he know that the “e-mails” that he wrote to his friends would also be read?
amazing. and all because of WHO they spoke about.
Zee: hope you aren’t disappointed. 🙂 It sure does make us rethink why we write and what we write doesn’t it? And that is also a reminder of WHO to lift up.
Very cool way to conclude your series. And I will have to look up your online sermon as I would enjoy hearing the young man’s perspective having returned from India.
Great things can be accomplished through the power of one when the power of One is behind it.
Your last sentence is spot on Tony.
God an use 100% flawed human beings if He wants to. It’s amazing how He does it. And in the process of using that person He eventually corrects his/her flaws.
Amen jaycee! i can certainly attest to that!!