You Just Never Know
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On the morning of April 21, 1855, Edward Kimball walked down Court Street in Boston with a heavy heart. He had resolved to visit his 18-year-old Sunday School student, at Holton’s Shoe Store to explicitly ask him to commit his life to Christ.
As Kimball neared the shop, he began to make excuses to walk away. He later admitted he was gripped by severe self-doubt, thinking:
"I am going to make a fool of myself.""This boy doesn't understand anything I say.""I will just embarrass him in front of his coworkers."
Kimball actually walked right past the store entrance, crossed the street, and stood on the opposite sidewalk arguing with himself, on the verge of giving up and going home.
Steeling his nerves, Kimball crossed back over and entered the shop. He looked around and didn't see his student on the main sales floor. He walked to the very back of the building into the stockroom, where he found his student alone, quietly wrapping up shoes and placing them onto wooden shelves.
Kimball walked straight up to him, put his hand directly on the teenager’s shoulder, and looked him in the eye. He didn't give a complicated theological speech. Years later, Kimball recalled that he made a very weak, fumbling plea, simply telling his student how much Jesus loved him and how much Jesus wanted his life.
The simple, sincere words pierced through the student’s rough exterior. Later, the student described the moment, saying:
"I can feel the touch of his hand on my shoulder even now. I was completely blind to my spiritual condition until he came back there. I didn't know what was happening to me, but right there in the back of that shoe store, I gave my life to Christ."
The students walked out of the stockroom a completely changed person. He went home that night and looked out at the morning sun the next day, famously remarking that the birds seemed to sing sweeter, the sun shone brighter, and he felt a profound love for every living thing.
Had Edward Kimball let his fear win on the sidewalk that morning, church history would look entirely different. That single, hesitant backroom conversation set off a massive domino effect:
The young student that he led to Christ that day was none other than:
Dwight L. Moody, or DL Moody
But the story doesn’t really stop there:
Edward Kimball saved D.L. Moody, who became a global evangelist.
D.L. Moody inspired a young British preacher named F.B. Meyer.
F.B. Meyer came to America and preached a sermon that radically converted a minister named J. Wilbur Chapman.
J. Wilbur Chapman hired a former baseball player named Billy Sunday to help him.
Billy Sunday became a massive evangelist whose meetings in Charlotte, North Carolina, inspired locals to invite Mordecai Ham to town.
Mordecai Ham preached the tent revival where a 15-year-old Billy Graham walked down the aisle.
Billy Graham spent the next six decades preaching the Gospel to over 215 million people live in person across 185 countries—a global reach unparalleled in human history.
You never know the impact of what God can and will do through you!
Sometimes, we just needs a simple reminder of what Jesus did for us
1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
I want to spend time focusing specifically on verse 4
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.
Easy for us to forget
What. Jesus. Did. For. Us
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Sometimes I go back to the song O Praise the Name
O Praise the Name - Anastasis
I cast my mind to Calvary
Where Jesus bled and died for me
I see His wounds, His hands, His feet
My Saviour on that cursed tree
He shall return in robes of white
The blazing sun shall pierce the night
And I will rise among the saints
My gaze transfixed on Jesus' face
my gaze transfixed on Jesus face
Sometimes we need to come back to our first love, because we forget!
The picture of Jesus on the cross, in my place!
Sometimes we don’t see Him clearly!
Anyone ever say things like:
I just can’t hear from Him
I feel distant from Him
I am not as connected as I was
It is possible that we have forgotten our first love!
That we don’t remember what Jesus did for us!
That we just don’t see Him clearly!
I want us to picture Jesus on that cross for us!
What does He want us to know?
What happens when we have walked away from our first love?
5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
Come back to doing what we did at first
When you were first saved, what did you do?
Probably got to know Jesus!
You probably fell in love with Jesus!
I tell people that are just saved that they should read the book of John - to get to know and fall in love with Jesus
1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
To know Jesus and Him crucified!
And Paul indicates that words were simply not enough, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power!
There should be a demonstration of the work of the Spirit in our lives
12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
The HS should be working in our lives and changing us into looking like Christ
And this change should be noticed by others!
If we don’t live vastly different than when we were saved, then we are truly walking away from our first love
Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 when He was tempted in the wilderness to turn the stones into bread
Jesus hadn’t eaten in 40 days and the enemy was tempting him to eat
His response:
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Is our hunger to be filled with the word of God?
Similarly, when Jesus is meeting with the woman at the well in John 4 and sent His disciples to get food and they return, they are surprised He didn’t want the food and He says
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
What if these were the desires of our heart?
To live on the word of God as we live on food
And to do the will of the Father as our food
When we have a hunger and desire to know Christ it changes us!
That change is reflected in how we live…
And then, we just never know when God will use us to lead others to Him!
As with Edward Kimball, maybe we need the courage to step out and to walk according to the Spirit
When we walk according to the Word and empowered by the Spirit, we never know how God will use us!
We may not know the impact that we will have, the spiritual legacy that we leave behind!
Worship Team and Prayer Team
This morning, maybe we need to return to our first love!
We need to remember the work of Jesus!
