Your Life Matters

I don’t know if I’m allowed to have a favorite chapter in How to Grow. I guess it doesn’t matter, because I do. My favorite chapters is the last one, called “Pursue Growth Together: Our Call to Disciple Others.”

In this chapter I rehearse some of the people who have influenced my life most: my Sunday School teacher, Don Taylor, and my childhood pastor Denis Gibson, for instance.

I suspect that they both questioned the value of what they accomplished. They both served in a small church. There was nothing glamorous about what they did.

They both had their quirks, and as far as I know they were never recognized for their ministries. Week by week, there was little evidence that they had accomplished much. And yet the influence on my life, and the lives of some of my friends, was profound. My life is different because of them.

Their lives mattered more than they knew. Yours does too.

The Lord seems to hide the results of our ministry from us. Right now I’m sure there are countless people — including pastors, parents, and overwhelmed believers — who are discouraged because they think they’ve failed. They’ve never been written up. They serve in obscurity. They are well aware of their weaknesses. By all outward appearances, their ministries are failures. But the impact of their lives is profound.

Not only that, but their impact will stretch through generations. The people they have influenced will in turn influence others. Nobody will ever know their names, but God knows, and he keeps track even when the world has forgotten.

I write:

Here’s the other lie we tend to believe: that our lives are too ordinary to make a difference. In our information age we are immersed in extraordinary talent. We listen to gifted speakers on podcasts. We’re awed by charismatic leaders and larger-than-life giants of faith. Few of them, though, walk with us through meaningful, sustainable life change. People like Don Taylor do that when they show up in a dank church basement and teach three distracted kids. The people who change us the most aren’t the extraordinarily gifted, but those who have done little and mostly unnoticed things over a long period of time.

Never underestimate what God can do with our ordinary lives. God uses weak, ordinary people like you and me to make an eternal difference in the lives of others. God loves to use forgotten, overlooked people who are not even aware that they’re being used. If we only knew the impact that our lives had, we wouldn’t be discouraged. We would be encouraged and humbled, and we’d be more intentional with our actions too.

We don’t need you to be perfect. We just need you to allow us to follow you as you follow Jesus. It’s a strategy that’s simple and effective. The results will ripple through generations.

Do this for a long period of time and you’ll probably never be famous, but your life will matter for eternity.