Called to Faithfulness, Not to Fame
Last but not least, most evangelists will never be famous here on earth. A few will, but most remain largely unheralded and unknown in this life. Nevertheless, may God give us grace to be faithful in every aspect of our calling here, and thereby to have our names known in Heaven! I will close with a marvelous response to a question that I heard Dr. Billy Graham give many years ago. A reporter asked him what he thought would be the headline in Heaven’s newspaper when he, Billy Graham, died and went home to be with the Lord. Dr. Graham thought for a moment, and then responded that the headline and lead article that day would be about some little old lady whom no one had ever heard of, yet who had laid down her life as a faithful intercessor and prayer warrior for the land where the Lord had placed her. As for himself, Dr. Graham said that there would be a small notice on p. 35, “Billy Graham? He made it.”
One final thought, Thomas E. Lowe, the missionary and evangelist who laid down his life as a martyr for Colombia in 1941, used to declare that the most important quality that God is looking for in the lives of His servants is faithfulness. God is not looking for how we have done, but whether we have been faithful to Him:
“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.” (Jude 24-25)
Copyright ©2008 Christopher N. White.
(Adapted from a message given on Friday, March 17, 2006 to the First National Congress of Evangelists in Bogotá, Colombia.)
All Bible references are from The New King James Version, Thomas Nelson, Inc.: Miami, Florida, 1982.
Header engraving from the Second Great Awakening: Camp Meeting. Color lithography Kennedy and Lucas, after a painting by A. Rider, ca. 1835, negative number 26275. Collection of the New York Historical Society, New York City.
Bibliography:
1. William Booth, A Vision of the Lost. Available at http://www.cephas-library.com/salvation_army/salvation_army_founder_booth.html (visited March 7, 2008).
2. William R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody. Fleming H. Revell Company: New York, 1900.
3. James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Abingdon: Nashville, Tennessee, 1890.