One Song

A good friend and elder, Bob, prayed it this way:

Father, we thank you. Just like you chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus, you have chosen each of us for something specific — a specific and important purpose in this life.

The psalmist, King David, said it this way:

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well (Psalm 139:14 NIV).

While this realization is crucial and fundamental for us as we live our lives for God, there is another that goes right along with it. God has placed us in a circle of people, a place of influence, an opportunity to uniquely mold and shape at least one other person. To use our music metaphor in our "Just One"* series, we are given at least one other person that we can help learn to sing God's song with his or her life!

The Great Commission of Jesus is more about teaching another person to sing God's tune than it is about evangelism. We are called to make disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching another to know and follow the way of Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20). More than just preaching and running, we share Jesus and walk along beside them until Christ becomes fully formed in them (Galatians 4:19;  Colossians 1:28-29).

So who is my one?

To many of us God gives children and grandchildren or nephews and nieces to raise, influence, love, and shape. For others of us it may be a friend at work or someone with whom we do recreational activities. For others, it could be a child we sponsor with Compassion International (http://bit.ly/mlejMm), someone with whom we are lunch buddies with through Big Brothers and Big Sisters, or an older person we know through Meals on Wheels. For still others of us, it may be someone God has placed on our heart through a mission trip or a "chance" meeting.

Our first responsibility to our "one" is to help that person discover God's song in her or his life. Our time with our precious one slips quickly away and we can easily forget the incredible opportunity to invest our lives in this precious life. So let's be careful that we don't wake up suddenly and our "one" is grown or gone.

I will never forget the day a friend of mine came to me and said, "Phil, our kids are now over nine years old. We have already used more than half the time God has given us to influence them while they are at home." This jolted me awake to the precious little time I had to help form Christ in my daughter. I know of another father who put 92 marbles in a jar when his daughter started her junior year of high school and he took one out each weekend to help him visually remind himself of how his time with his teenager was vanishing. With others, our opportunities are even less frequent and more urgent than our times with our children and grandchildren. We must be wise in the way we use our time!

We can be kind to everyone. We can display the love of Jesus to all we meet. We can put in a good word for Jesus in many of interactions with others. We can even look for opportunities to lead them to Christ. Yet we can't fully invest ourselves in everyone — not even everyone we meet and get to know. But in our "one", we can be God's tool to teach his song of grace and watch Jesus come alive in this precious life. Don't waste the opportunity to teach at least your "one" God's song of grace.

So ...

• I encourage you to pray for God to reveal your "one" to you.
• I urge you to do for that one what you wish you could do for everyone.
• I challenge you to use your opportunities wisely because they pass by quickly.
• Finally, I remind you that you are not alone as you do this — remember Jesus' last few words: "... I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20 NLT).