My father was a minister for over fifty years, serving mostly in small, rural
churches. He was a simple preacher, but he was a man with a mission. His
favorite activity was taking teams of volunteers overseas to build church
buildings for small congregations. In his lifetime, Dad built over 150 churches
around the world.
In 1999, my father died of cancer. In the final week of his life he disease kept
him awake in a semi-conscious state nearly twenty-four hours a day. As he
dreamed, he'd talk out loud about what he was dreaming. Sitting by his bedside,
I learned a lot about my dad by just listening to his dreams. He relived one
church building project after another. One night near the end, while my wife, my
niece, and I were by his side, Dad suddenly became very active and tried to get
out of bed. Of course, he was too weak, and my wife insisted he lay back down.
But he persisted in trying to get out of bed, so my wife finally asked, "Jimmy,
what are you trying to do?" He replied, "Got to save one more for Jesus! Got to
save one more for Jesus!
Got to save one more for Jesus!" He began to repeat that phrase over and over.
During the next hour, he said the phrase probably a hundred times. "Got to save
one more for Jesus!" As I sat by his bed with tears flowing down my cheeks, I
bowed my head to thank God for my dad's faith. At that moment Dad reached out
and placed his frail hand on my head and said, as if commissioning me, "Save one
more for Jesus! Save one more for Jesus!"
I intend for that to be the theme of the rest of my life. I invite you to
consider it as a focus for your life, too, because nothing will make a greater
difference for eternity. If you want to be used by God, you must care about what
God cares about; what he cares about most is the redemption of the people he
made. He wants his lost children found! Nothing matters more to God; the Cross
proves that. I pray that you will always be on the lookout to reach "one more
for Jesus" so that when you stand before God one day, you can say, "Mission
accomplished!"
Warren, Rick, The Purpose Driven Life. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002, p.
287-288.
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