“Just One!”

Recently Patty and I returned from hanging out with friends in the hotels on East Colfax. We celebrated a friend’s birthday complete with ice cream, party hats, and singing along with Scripture reading and prayer. The evening was special indeed, but as we drove home we both felt blessed and burdened. The addictions, poverty, and demonic strongholds imprisoning God’s precious children is so overwhelming at times!

Then the next day I received this email from Michele, a friend who has been volunteering at Oceans Retreat Center in South Africa. She said:

In my traveling around the Cape Town area, my heart cries with the segregation that still has it’s hold on peoples lives. The horrid conditions and inequality brings me to literal tears. I have spent much time praying about this and asking God what I could possibly do and where does He sees Oceans in this. It is so big and so overwhelming. I have heard repeatedly, just one. Start with just one.  Build relationship, love, encourage, be Jesus to just one. So this is what I have continued praying into.

The words God gave to Michele, “be Jesus to just one,” re-captured for me the essence of our calling as followers of Christ. The stories I love reading in the Gospels are how Jesus lived the “just one” principle. The calling of Levi, the despised tax-collector, a Samaritan woman with a sorted past He met at the well, the man filled with the legion of demons, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a woman bleeding for 12 years, a little guy called Zacchaeus, blind Bartimaeus, and how about the the thief on the cross, just to name a few.

A big part of Jesus’ ministry was loving the one the Father put before Him that day. Jesus demonstrated the importance of stopping, listening, and loving the one before Him. He revealed to us the heart of our Father-every person matters! We can be a part of changing the world around us by being “Jesus to just one!”

Thanks Michele for reminding me of heavens big strategy – “Jesus to just one!” When you get overwhelmed by the needs of the world around you-remember today He calls to be “Jesus to just one!”