PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “The little difference that makes a big difference”. 

By:  Ron Woodrum

     Howard W. Ferrin, President of Providence Bible College, used to exhort his students often with the following words:  “There is little difference between men, but that little difference makes a big difference!”  He told them that to encourage them to pay the price; to put forth the effort; to sacrifice whatever is necessary to stand out;  to make an unusual impact; to go the extra mile.  He knew that most want to be viewed that way, but most are willing, in the end to settle for mediocrity rather than magnificience!  William Law spoke to this issue as well in his classic A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.  He told the story about a businessman, who was a Christian, but gave far more of his dedication to worldly ambition and his business, than to living the Devoted life to His Lord.  When he was diagnosed with a terminal disease and told that he only had a few months to live the businessman spoke with regret and candor about his wrong choice.  Law relates  the story about how the businessman was faced with the hard fact that life was drawing to a close in this thirty-fifth year.  Shortly before his death, when the doctors had given him over, some of his neighbors came to visit him and expressed their soroow that one so young was being cut off in the prime of life.  The businessman acknowledged their concern over his condition but spoke of his approaching demise with candor.  He observed that the new experience before him made everything else in life completely trivial.  It was just here that he made a startling confession.  He said, “What a strange thing it is that a little health, or the poor business of the shop, should keep us so unaware of the great things that are coming upon us so fast!  If I now had a thousand worlds, I would give them all for one year of such devotion and good works as I never so much intended…The thing that surprises me the most is this:  That I never intented to live up to the Gospel.  This never so much as entered my head or heart.  I never once considered whether I was living as the laws of religion direct or whether my way of life was such as would procure me the mercy of God at this hour.  What is the reason that I-who have so often talked of the necessity of rules, methods, diligence, and dedication in worldly business-have all this while never thought of any rules, methods, or managements to carry me on in a life of devotion.  Had I only my frailties and imperfections to lament at this time I should lie here humbly trusting in the mercies of God.  But alas!  How can I call a general disregard and thorough neglect of all religious improvement a frailty or imperfection when it was in my power to have been as exact and careful and diligent in a course of devotion as in the business or my trade?  I could have called in as many helps, have practised the same kind of devotion, and been taught as many methods of holy living as of thriving in  my shop, HAD I BUT SO INTENDED AND DESIRED IT.  BUT ALAS I DID NOT.  ACTUALLY I NEVER INTENDED TO DO THAT!”

     Jesus did not want any of his disciples to experience that failure and face such regret.  He exhorted His disciples to be willing to do the difference that would make a big difference-make all the difference!  In Matthew 5:44-47 we hear Him say, “:Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you;  THAT YOU MAY BE CHILDREN OF YOUR FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN: for He maketh the sun to rise on the good and the evil.  For if you love them that love you back, what reward have ye?  do not even the publicans do the same?  And if you salute your brethren only, WHAT DO YE MORE THAN OTHERS?  Do not even the publicans do the same?”   What do you more than others?  Where do you excel?  What evidence do you give of any supernatural presence and power in your life that comes from your Heavenly Father?  Where have you gone the extra mile?

Several years ago I came across a poem that spoke quite expressively to this very truth.  It is called “THE SECOND MILE” by Joseph E. Harvey

THE SECOND MILE

“Come here you dog, and bear my pack a mile”

So spoke a Roman to a Jew;

“The day is hot and I would rest awhile-

Such a heavy load was made for the likes of you”

The Jew obeyed, and, stopping in the path,

He took the burden, though his back was tired:

For who would dare arouse a Roman’s wrath,

Or scorn to do what the Roman law required?

They walked a mile in silence; at its end

They paused but there was not a soul in sight;

“I’ll walk another mile with you, my friend”,

Spoke up the Jew, “This burden now seems light”.

“Have you gone mad?” The angry Roman cried,

“To mock me, when you know that but one mile

Can I compel such service?  By his side

The Jew stood silent, but with kindly smile

“I used to hate to bear a Roman’s load,

Before I met the lowly Nazarene,

And walked with Him along the dusty road,

And saw Him make the leper clean.

I heard Him preach a sermon on the mount;

He taught that we should love our enemies;

He glorified the little things that count

So much in lessening life’s miseries.

The soldier tried to speak; as he began

His head was bowed, his eykes with tears were dim;

“For many years I’ve sought for such a man,

Pray tell me more, I, too, would follow Him”. 

When you and I, being transformed by our Lord’s presence and power in our lives, we go beyond what the natural man can do.  We go beyond what we can do in the flesh.  We give evidence of doing more that most.  That little difference becomes a big difference that invites others to join us in being transformed.  The Apostle John, known originally as a Son of Thunder, was transformed into the Apostle of Love.  He exhorts us to live in this world as Jesus lived.  Loving our enemies like Jesus did.  Loving one another as He loved us.

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “A Great Like for a Dark Continent”

By: Ron Woodrum

In his book Spiritual Leadership, J.Oswald Sanders writes, “In the Scriptures, God is frequently represented as searcing for a man of a certain type.  Not men, but a man.  Not a group, but an individual.  When God does discover a man who conforms to His spiritual requirement, who is willing to pay the full price of discipleship, He uses him to the limit, desptie his patent shortcomings”. (pg. 18).  Such a man was David Livingstone.  He had heard missionary Robert Moffat talk of the need for medical missionaries for China.  He surrendered and answered the call.  But as he trained and prepared to go to China, the door was closed due to the Opium Wars.  Within six months he heard Moffat talk about the need for missionaries in Southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station, glowing in the morning sun with “the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever gone before”.  Livingstone spent ten years as a conventional missionary opening missionary stations in “regions beyond”.  He married his boss’s daughter, Mary Moffat.  He made some of the most prodigious-and mosts dangerous-explorations of the nineteenth century.  His object was to open a Missionary Road-God’s Highway into the interior of this Dark Continent to bring the light of Christianity and Civilization to unreached peoples.  The natives loved his common touch, his rough paternalism, and his driven curiosity to explore their continent.  After two years he completely disappeared, without a letter or scrap of information.  (Later he would report that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen to write.  During that time he read the Bible through four times.  But his disappearance fascinated the public as much as Amelia Earhart’s a few generations later).  It was during this time that American Journalist Henry Stanley was sent to find Dr. David Livingstone.  When Livingstone had arrived in Africa in 1841, it was as exotic as outer space, and was called the “Dark Continent”.  It was also called the “White Man’s Graveyard”.  It was unmapped territory.  Hentry Stanley went into the Dark Continent to find Dr. Livingstone.  After a long and grueling search, beginning in 1869, and ending October 28, 1871,  Henry Stanley finally found him, introducing himself with the four famous theatrical words that he had often rehearsed, “Dr. Livingstone I Presume“.  He remained with the missionary until March of 1872.  Stanley wrote later about how Dr. Livingtone had an impact on him.  He wrote, “In 1871 I went to him prejudiced as the biggest athiest in London.  To a reporter and correspondant such as I, who had only to deal with wars, mass meetings, and political gatherings, sentimental matters were entirely out of my province.  But there came for me a long time of reflection. I was out there away from the worldly world.  I saw this solitary old man there, and asked myself, ‘how on earth does he stop here-is he cracked or what?  What is it that inspires him?’ For months, after I met him, I simply found myself listening to him, wondering at the old man living out all that was said in the Bible-‘Leave all things and follow Me’.  But little by little his sympathy and love for others became contagious; my sympathy was aroused, seeing his piety and faith, his gentleness, his zeal, his earnestness, and how he went quietly about his business.  I WAS CONVERTED BY HIM, although he had not tried to do it!”

Stanley went back to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone, in the meantime Livingstone got lost again, in a swamp literally up to his neck.  Within a year and a half he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer.  But he alone, almost single-handedly fulfilled the imperative of Paul, in Philippians 2:15-16-“shine as lights in a crooked and perverse nation, holding forth the Word of Life”.  He enlightened the Dark Continent with the light of the glorious Gospel.  That light even penetrated the dark heart of a worldly athiest who had come to narrate the missionary’s mission to the world.  He became a part of the mission.  When Livingstone died the whole world wept.  They gave him a 21-gun salute, a hero’s funeral, and a burial in Westminster Abbey.  His tombstone reads, “David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist.  For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore undiscovered secrets, and to abolisth slave trade”.

     The first word God spoke in creation was, “Let there be light-and light became”.  When He recreates us through the New Birth, one of his first acts of re-creation is to “command light to shine in our hearts!” and to transform us into Lights shining into our own Dark Continents.  Lewis B. Smedes, in his book All Things Made New, says “because of Christ’s reconciling work a New Creation has come into existence, and all who are in Christ are a new creation in themselves.  The familiar text about being new creatures, (II Cor. 5:17), should not be waved too easily as a slogan for what happens in me when I am converted.  The design of Christ’s new creation is far too grand, too inclusive to be restricted to what happens in my soul.  No nook or cranny of history is too small for its purpose, no cultural potentioal too large for its embrace.  Being In Christ, we are part of a new movement by His grace, a movement rolling on toward the new heaven and earth where all things are made right and where He is all in all” (p. 127-128).  John is telling his little children that they are new creations in Christ, partakers of His Eternal Life, and therefore they can walk in the light as He is in the light, and they can light up their dark continents!  Go be a light!