(Or People Are Worth Everything!)
I would say people are worth everything, a whole lot of everything. People must be worth a lot or God would have never created them for His fellowship. He would never have sent us His Son to rescue us from our self destruction.
I am constantly amazed by people. People help me all the time, they give me joy, and they give me opportunities, sometimes very difficult ones–didn’t I say, “If it wasn’t for people it would be easy?” But people are an opportunity to use a talent, to provide encouragement, to fulfill a vision, to love, and even to comfort when things aren’t going so well. Sometimes we miss the mark; none of us does it like the Lord does– all the time, every time. But we should never stop trying or cease praying about it.
In my book Growing and Building there must be stories about a hundred people; people thrust into a situation where they had no experience and into a culture that at times was foreign to them since many were from a military background where raising money was counter cultural. But in spite of this, they all seemed to exercise the faith, prayer, and leadership to accomplish the tasks at hand and allow the Lord to bless Officers’ Christian Fellowship’s Growing and Building Campaign.
The fact that many of us were involved in a capital campaign to build buildings at OCF conference centers (conference centers that enable OCF to raise up great godly people and families) shouldn’t diminish the Growing and Building narrative. This could have been any project or mission where great faith, prayer, and leadership were necessary to allow the Lord to bless the endeavor to a successful end. That is the point of the Growing and Building story; building great things requires great people who are founded upon great faith; followers of Jesus.
In Growing and Building people are mentioned that you’ll recognize because they accomplished “great” things. But there are stories of people you would never know if not for my book. For example, the Girl Scout Troop that sent OCF $68.69, the “greatest” of all the donations we received. We all need to remember that “greatness” does not really equal the number of people, the amount of money, or the enormity of the building one builds. Does $68.69 equal one million dollars? Yes it does, in God’s economy. “Greatness” might be about being a great dad, great mom, great brother, great sister or great friend. “Greatness” is being a great servant and successfully completing the task at hand. But more important, it is the impact that ones “greatness” has upon people along the way.
For the next few Blogs I’ll be focusing on some interesting stories concerning people’s faith, prayer, and leadership from my book; narratives that exemplify great truths that became part of the great vision the Lord had lain upon our hearts. Stay tuned for some very interesting stories of faith, prayer, and leadership in the weeks ahead.
