Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. –Matthew 28:19-20
I wanted to relay something I recently read which is a wonderful story of the impact we have on other people:
In 1858, Edward Kimbell, a Sunday school teacher, prayed with one of his students, a shoe salesman. The salesman, Dwight L. Moody, accepted Christ as his Savior and went on to become a great evangelist. In 1879, Moody was sharing the good news of Jesus and a young man, F. B. Meyer, met Christ. This young man became zealous for preaching the good news. While preaching on an American college campus, F. B. Meyer brought a student, J. Wilbur Chapman, to Christ. Chapman later employed an ex-baseball player, Billy Sunday, to do evangelistic work.
Billy Sunday was one of the greatest Christian preachers and evangelists in the early 1900s. After an event where Billy Sunday preached in Charlotte, North Carolina, a group of local business-men were so enthusiastic and fired up about the gospel, they decided to bring another man, Mordecai Ham, to preach. During Ham’s revival meeting a young man, Billy Graham, yielded his life to Christ. Billy Graham has since preached to more people in person than any human being in history. Only God can count how many people have been reached by people who were saved at Graham’s meetings.
Wow! This story line started with a faithful Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimbell. Very few people will ever know his name, and yet, because of his faithfulness, we don’t even know how many thousands of people this one man’s witness affected! What we do know, is that he was faithful to what God called him to do.
Just think of how many similar stories there are of what people can do for Christ when they are completely yielded to Him. (We just don’t know the end of the story yet for many of them.)
Will we be people like Edward Kimbell? Faithful in sharing the good news of Jesus to …whoever God has put in our path? Sunday School students? Family? Neighbors?
What Might God do with your faithfulness in future generations?
You never know!
That is incredible! I heard this morning on the radio that most Christians in the U.S. don’t think it’s their responsibility to share the Gospel. Sad, isn’t it?
Mind. Blown. Great example of how we are capable of doing more than we realize! I was just telling someone yesterday that it’s not our job to save every single person we ever meet. Sometimes God just wants us to plant seeds and then He can send someone else along who will water those seeds. We may never know what grows or blossoms from what we planted in faith. Thanks for sharing this!