The Christian life is a chain of blessing that begins with someone getting blessed – someone coming to faith in Jesus Christ and being converted, being transformed from the inside out – and in turn being a blessing to everyone in their orbit. It’s a chain of blessing.
When I was converted, the girl who led me to the Lord handed me a Bible and told me to start reading it and to share my discoveries with everyone in sight. Seeing that I was in the hospital at the time and she was sick in the bed next to me, I looked at her inquiringly, suspecting she actually meant for me to share with all the people in the ward and the nurses, doctors, friends, and family members who came to visit. She did.
“Look,” she said, pointing to a starched and somewhat formidable woman, “the chief nurse is coming. Tell her what you just told God when you prayed with me.
”Before I could protest, the nurse was at my bedside, and conscious of the eagle eye of my spiritual mother on my every move, I prayed my second prayer (the first had been prayed a brief time before, when I had invited Christ into my life) and wondered what on earth I was going to say. I needn’t have worried.
“What’s this?” asked the nurse, picking up the Bible that had suddenly appeared on my bedside table.
“Uh, a Bible,” I answered somewhat lamely. She shot me a look I couldn’t read – or rather didn’t want to interpret, because I knew she had heard my crude language and seen my wild friends visiting me. And she obviously was thinking, “Oh my, this is a change of personality; she needs the psychiatrist” – and she did actually send one to see me that afternoon!
Janet, my new friend, had told me about Jesus, and now I told the nurse about Him as best I could. I did an awful job of it, of course. I was less than a few hours old – a baby Christian – but something happened to me as I confessed my very new faith to her. I didn’t know then that the Bible said I was to believe in my heart and make confession with my lips about my salvation (Rom. 10:10), but spurred on by Janet, I obeyed. I remember looking at the startled nurse and seeing a rather hard woman who was worried about something, who didn’t know she needed a God to lean on, a Christ to save her, and some peace of mind. In my tiny way, I put a link on the chain. I was to be part of chains of blessing for the rest of my life.
Of course, I realized at once that I had a lot to learn. It would take a lot of expertise to lead this woman to Jesus as Janet had led me, and for that I would need to go to some sort of school, I supposed. It was Janet who told me that I was enrolled already in the school of the spiritual arts, and the Spirit Himself would show me how to minister. It was also Janet who showed me that I would have opportunities every day, 24/7 to practice ministry.
“Wake up in the morning, Jill, determined to be a blessing,” Janet had said. I should have this attitude, whether people want me to be a blessing or not. This was conversion. I, who had woken up most mornings determined to be a bane, was now to wake up determined to be a blessing? Well now, that would surely get my friend’s attention. It did.
So ministry is for all of us – those of us who have grown up in the church and those of us who, like me, have come to Christ from the outside of “Christian everything.” So don’t say, “But I don’t have any opportunity to minister. I have no training.” Ask God to show you the hundreds of opportunities that are right under your nose and live empowered for Jesus every day!
