What is your IQ? No, I don’t mean Intelligence Quotient. I am wondering this week about our Influence Quotient. What is our capacity to influence our circles of connection? How far can God count on us to share Jesus Christ? My study for today’s message from John 7 intersected with unexpected news this week, and led me to ponder a new take on my IQ and to provoke you to think again about your IQ also.
Here’s the unexpected news. Two men died this week. In fact, over a million people died this week across the planet. According to the Census Bureau, someone dies every 1.8 seconds. When you do the math that translates into 155,520 deaths every day. Anyway, back to my original statement.
Two men died this week. To the best of my knowledge, both men had trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord in this life. So, both men passed from the Shadowlands to a splendid reception in Heaven! Although both men had struggled with serious and debilitating health issues for the past year or so, today they are running and shouting without losing their breath. They are more vigorous and vibrant today than they ever dreamed of being here on earth. Indeed, they are more alive right now than any of us can begin to imagine.
As much as I would like to go on and on about Home, other thoughts about their lives intrigued me this week. For example, the respective impact each of these men made for King Jesus while here on earth fascinates me. It will help if you knew something about these two men.
One man I came to know personally. I cannot say I knew him well. I only met him within the last 10 months or so. In that time, however, I had several very pleasant conversations with him. I learned some admirable things about him. I liked this man. He exuded a pleasant, peaceful spirit and grinned broadly when I asked him if he had believed in Jesus Christ and received Him for all He is. He assured me He was born again.
I was troubled, however, by how easily he dismissed any notions of uniting with the Lord’s people, the body of Christ, the family of God, in worship, fellowship, or ministry. And I wondered as I attended his memorial service at the small number of people in attendance – less than 50 people, most of them family (his wife, their children, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren). I wondered how many lives he may have influenced for Christ.
The other man many of us have been familiar with over the years. Although I have yet to meet Dr. D. James Kennedy personally (I will look for him when I get Home), I have felt for years a strong bond to him. He has long been renowned as an eloquent and powerful preacher, a devoted and principled patriot, and a champion for the advance of Christ’s reign.
The scope of Dr. Kennedy’s impact in this life has been nothing less than … explosive. Indeed, his most remarkable contribution is the soul-winning resource he designed called Evangelism Explosion (EE). I read estimates that more than 5 million people have professed faith in Jesus Christ in over 211 nations through EE. I am not certain that would include hundreds of thousands of people in the
I marvel at how one man can be so mightily used of God! John Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes of Wrath: “One little man, with his mind made up, can move a lot of folks.” I imagine Steinbeck may have read Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring when Galadriel says: “One small person can change the course of the future.” I am certain Tolkien was well aware of what God can do with a band of unschooled men, hardly any more impressive than four hobbits, with whom He would spread the Gospel of grace from
Today, with John 7 as our base, allow the Holy Spirit to ask: What is your IQ? Does it need to be raised?
To the ends of the earth until the end of time!
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