WHEN JESUS REIGNS

            Living a life every day with Jesus as king is both a massive challenge and an exhilarating opportunity. One of the great blessings of working with the same group of people over a number of years is that you see numerous people live out their faith in all kinds of ways. One lady in our life stage group that I’ve seen demonstrating her walk with God is Marilyn. Her husband Roger is deaf so she has learned extremely well how to sign for the deaf and used her ability by working for the Deaf School in Little Rock. She turned her knowledge and her signing for Roger through class and worship into a ministry to both sign for others during worship and is now teaching others, including some of our teens to sign as well. She serves as a tremendous example of one taking a challenge in her life and turning it into a tremendous ministry to reach and teach many others the good news of Jesus, who might never have had that opportunity without her help and encouragement.

 

Recently when a young girl at the Deaf School was struggling to adjust to being there and away from home, She took the girl home and made her a guest in their home to show her the love and compassion that she demonstrates in all of her life. Marilyn is a person who longs to lead others to Jesus and to help others around her grow. She not only makes herself available for different kinds of work at church, but is constantly coming up with ideas on how we can better reach more people and improve our ministry to the hurting in our area. She is always looking for good ways to influence those in her family to be active and faithful in the church.

Far too often we think of kingdom living and growing God’s kingdom one person at a time as some big ministry or program that we must all be part of when it is much more likely that a person will take the challenges and even the problems in their own life and turn that into a way to serve and reach out to others. When we deal with a problem every day such as being deaf, we grasp what it is life to live in a world and not be able to communicate with others, as you would like. Taking our challenges and using them to serve others is one of the greatest ways any of us can follow Jesus as our king. Everyone has something that hurts or challenges him or her. It can be a sickness, a failure, a divorce, and a loss of our mate in death, the loss of a job or some addiction that holds us back. Whatever it may be, there are tons of others in the same situation that need someone who understands to reach out to them in love. God can use your challenge just as he uses Marilyn’s every day.

 

Leon Barnes