Pastor’s Perspective: CHRISTIANS THAT “HAUNT” THE WORLD!
By: Ron Woodrum
Clarence Jordan, famous for building the Christian Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, to benefit poor and needy people, wrote often about Christian influence. He wrote these powerful words:
It is difficult to be indifferent to a wide-awake Christian. That is, a real, live person of God. It is even more difficult to be indifferent to a whole Church filled with Christians like that! You can hate them, you can love them, but you soon find out that you cannot ignore them! They are here to stay. It is not so much what they say; it is not so much what they do; it is WHO THEY ARE!…they are impactful because of the Jesus they know. They will haunt you by what they are. You can’t put them out of your mind anymore thatn you can put off your own shadow. They are there to confront you with a different way of life; a new way of thinking; a new set of values; a higher standard of living. In short, when they cross your path you know you have come face to face with the Kingdom of God. All you can do is crown them or crucify them, YOU CAN’T AVOID THEM!”
INFLUENCE! THAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF A SALTY CHRISTIAN! THAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF LIGHT DISPELLING DARKNESS!
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Christian leader par execellance, who went to be with the Lord in 2003, told of how his life was changed forever, to have an impact for Jesus Christ, He said that in 1947 he visited Glasgow, Scotland. He met a world renown New Testament Scholar named James Stewart. Dr. Stewart told him something that forever impacted him, and eventually all he influenced. Dr. Stewart told him, “Bill, if we could show the world that being committed to Jesus Christ is not a tame, hum-drum, sheltered monotony, but instead the most exciting, thrilling adventure that a human spirit can ever know, those standing outside the Church, looking in, wondering who Jesus is, would instead come in, crown him King, and pay allegience to Him, and we would see the greatest revival that has ever been seen this side of Pentecost!”
CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE! THE INFLUENCE OF A SALTY CHRISTIAN.
Elihu Burritt wrote this, “No human being can come into this world without INCREASING OR DIMINISHING the sum total of human happiness. Not only of the present, but of every subsequent age of humanity. No one can detach himself from this connection. There is no sequestered spot in the universe, no dark niche along the disc of nonexistence to which he can retreat from his relations to others, where he can withdraw the influence of his existence upon the moral destiny of the world. EVERYWHERE, HIS PRESENCE OR ABSENCE WILL BE FELT! Everywhere he will have companions who will be better or worse because of him. It is an old saying…of fearful and fathomless import…that we are forming characters for eternity. Forming characters? Who’s? Our own or others? Both! And in that momentous fact lies the peril of the responsibility of our existence. Who is sufficient for such a thought? Thousands of my fellow beings will yearly enter eternity with characters differing from those they would have carried there, had I never lived! The sunlight of that would reveal my finger marks in their primary formations, and in their successive strata of thought and life.”
I have chosen that vital statement he made as the title of the message today-CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE: EVERYWHERE OUR PRESENCE OR ABSENCE WILL BE FELT! That is what Jesus meant in our text today. “we are the salt of the world!” Salt was vital to the ancient world. It was precious. It was invaluable. Jesus delcared that we are too!