A minister wore a carnation on his lapel every Sunday morning. He never gave it much thought until one day after church, a visiting boy about ten years old asked if he could have it. The minister handed it to him and asked him why he wanted it.
The boy said that his parents were divorced the year before, and he went to live with his mother, but when she remarried, her new husband didn’t want him around so they sent him to live with his dad. Within a month, his dad said he was too busy to raise him and sent him to his grandmother to live.
He said his grandmother takes care of him and feeds him and buys him clothes. The boy said that is why he wanted the flower, to give to his grandmother for loving him.
The minister could barely keep the tears back, but told the boy that he didn’t want the carnation. He said that for a reason that special, he needed a bouquet. He told the boy to go up front and get the big bunch of flowers in front of his pulpit and give them to his grandmother.
As the boy smiled and turned to go get them, the minister heard him say, “What a wonderful day – I asked for one flower and got a whole bouquet.”
How often do we brighten up the lives of others with special acts like this? More to the point, how often do we look for these opportunities? I want to tell each one of you tonight that you can make a tremendous difference in other people’s lives. You don’t have to be rich or especially talented. All you have to be is loving. No matter what your circumstances, you can make a positive difference in other people’s lives.
1. WHY TRY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
There are several reasons we should try to make a difference in other people’s lives. I would say one of those reasons is that the world actually depends on it. Can you imagine a world where nobody cared about anybody else? Can you imagine a world where nobody tried to ever help anybody else?
The world we live in depends on people helping people. We depend on the world giving food and aid when there is a Tsunami or a gigantic earthquake. We depend on the world to help when one nation unfairly attacks another, such as when Iraq invaded Kuwait. We would never survive if people didn’t try to help each other. Without compassionate people, this world would collapse into absolute satanic chaos.
We should also try to make a difference in other people’s lives because it makes such a wonderful difference in ours when we do. We are never told how the Good Samaritan felt after helping the man alongside the road, or how Paul felt when he helped deliver the money to a church in Jerusalem, but I would think that both felt very good.
There was a teacher who, at Thanksgiving, had asked her third grade class to draw a picture of something they were thankful for. She was sure that many of the underprivileged kids in her class wouldn’t really have anything to be thankful for. When the drawing were turned in, there were the turkeys and drawings of family, but one in particular got her attention. It was a picture of a hand.
She wondered if the child was drawing a parent’s hand or maybe even God’s hand. When she asked the little boy whose hand it was, he said, “It’s your hand, Teacher, because you are good to me and you care for me."
Just like this little boy, we can always find something to be thankful fore, and there is always somebody in your life that you can help, if you care enough to look for the many opportunities that exist.
As much as people need others to lend them a helping hand, there is one thing needed even more. People need somebody to reach out to them with a hand full of the love of Christ. There is no better way to strengthen your heart than to lift someone else up in the love of Jesus.
We are talking about helping people. Think for a moment about all the neighbors you have had over the years and what kind of people they were. We knew some of our neighbors and didn’t know others, right?
When you think about all the chances you had to help your neighbors throughout the year, how many can you really remember helping? Some say you shouldn’t get involved in other people’s lives, but I think that isn’t right. Certainly we cannot be nosey, but we can, and should, offer our help.
Another reason we need to reach out to help in Jesus’ name is because we are expected to by God.
In MATTHEW 28:19, it tells us to “Go, therefore, and make disciples …”
To me, that means that we are expected to reach out to others and make a difference in their lives; a difference for God, because if we will but introduce others to Christ, He will make a difference in their lives.
Jesus didn’t say to go and be happy. He didn’t say go and make money. He didn’t even say go to church and then go home. He said go and make disciples. The word disciples means one who embraces and assists in the spreading of a teaching. Certainly we embrace the teaching of Jesus, don’t we? And if we do, we are called and expected to assist in the spreading of that teaching. And that is the best way of all in which to help someone else.
So, to sum what I have just said up, we should try to make a difference to others because – the world depends on it, it makes us feel very good, and God expects it.
2. WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Look through the Bible. The people who made a difference were not people of great talent or knowledge or anything else. They were just average people like you and me who were honest and sincere.
I have heard it said that to work for God, you have to be F.A.T. That stands for FAITHFUL, AVAILABLE, and TEACHABLE.
Certainly, many Christians are faithful in their belief that Jesus is the Son of God and our only Savior. Not all of those Christians are always available to help others, though. And many Christians do not let themselves become teachable, because to do that, they would have to be open to new ideas, and to be able to change some of their ideas, and they won’t do it.
But for every one of them, I believe there are many more who will do all that is necessary to reach out to help others. If you ever wanted to have a true to life role model, somebody you could personally identify with, to show you how to live a life that helps others, look at Joye. She has done so much to help others. She lives the life of Godly love. That is what all of us are supposed to do.
You will find that many people actually resist trying to help others because that means they would have to get up and go, or get up and do. That is okay, because many of the people in the Bible who helped resisted at first, too.
Look at Moses. He tried his best to keep from going to Pharaoh. But when he finally did what God told him to do, look at the tremendous impact he made for for the Lord.
God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. What did he do? He got on a ship and tried to go the other way! He finally did what God wanted, too, and because of that, an entire city was saved.
Peter was chosen to be Jesus’ disciple, yet out of fear, he even denied that he knew Jesus. But Peter was given another chance and became a very strong doer of the word.
You say you aren’t all that qualified. Paul, who has probably brought more people to the feet of Jesus than anyone else was not an eloquent speaker.
We see how feeble Paul’s qualifications were in 1 CORINTHIANS 2:3-4.
‘And I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power …’
Billy Graham almost quit early on because he lacked confidence in his abilities. Now we can look back and see how many people he has introduced to Jesus as Christ.
We must realize that God does not call the qualified, but he does qualify the called. He wants you to work for Him. If you refuse, you will pay a price for your decision. And it doesn’t matter how big a laundry list of excuses you come up with, none are valid. But if you do His work, you will reap a reward better than our minds are able to understand.
King David was a man after God’s own heart, and he was one of the greatest difference makers in the Bible, but he started off a lowly shepherd; so unimportant that his own father forgot to mention him when Samuel came looking for the King of Israel.
And look at Mary. A simple and young peasant girl. Absolutely nothing outstanding about her, yet God chose her to carry the Christ child. Look at the difference she made.
In fact, look at the differences all these people made. None were qualified. None were overly smart, rich, talented, or anything else. But they did have one thing in common. What was it? They all had a heart the loved God and wanted to serve Him.
Too often, we aren’t available to work for God because we are very comfortable people, and in our comfort, we expect God to come down and let us work for him in the way we find, well – the way we find most comfortable to us. This is not how God works, however. God expects each one of us to sacrifice. He wants us to sacrifice our comfort zones so that we will have to depend on Him.
In 1 CORINTHIANS 1:27-28, we see why God wants to use all of us.
‘God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are.’
God is love and the most important lesson he wants you to learn on earth is how to love. It is in loving that we are most like him, so love is the foundation of every command he has given us; ‘the whole Law can be summed up in this one command; ‘Love others as you love yourself.’
God uses people like us. Has God used you to touch others? Would you want God to use you as His special envoy to help others? If you want Him to, He will, but you have to be willing to let God use you.
INVITATION
