Marcia Lee Laycock writes from Alberta Canada. She won the Best New Canadian Christian Author Award for her novel, One Smooth Stone. Her devotionals have been widely published and her devotional book, The Spur of the Moment has just gone to second printing. Visit her website - www.vinemarc.com
“If you have changed a life you have changed the world.”
My head jerked up when I heard that sentence. It was at Inscribe’s Fall Conference and our speaker, Kathleen Gibson, was doing a great job of speaking to the hearts of all the writers there. But that one sentence really hit me.
I’d thought about changing lives before. I’ve had emails and letters and even phone calls telling me that God has done it through the words I’ve put on paper. But changing the world? Really?
Then I thought about another speaker we’d had at one of our conferences. He told us that not very far back in his family line, someone read a book and became a believer in Christ. He told us that now there are many branches to his family, many are preachers of God’s word, there are missionaries and others serving in their churches across North America. None of it would have happened but for one book.
I began to consider all the ripple effects that one book has had – not just in the lives of his family members but in all the lives they have touched.
Then I thought about the book I was given just as God was softening my heart toward him. It was a copy of Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict. It was put into my hands at exactly the perfect time. It convinced my head that Jesus was who He claimed to be – the Son of God, a man who came to earth to change the world by changing each one of us.
And I was stunned into awe and gratitude for what the Holy Spirit did in my life through that book. Words are such small things. They can be simple or profound, plain or eloquent. But when God takes them and bends them to His purposes, He changes hearts with them and those hearts change the lives of others and those touch others and on and on.
Who knows how far our words will go. If you have changed a life, you have changed the world.
Yes. Really.
3 comments:
A great encouragement, Marcia -- especially to those of us who write!
A reminder that God still speaks, and isn't confined to the completed Canon of Scripture, although it is the "all-sufficient rule ...").
Paul more than hints at this when he encouraged the Corinthian believers in writing and saying to them "you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry." Their transformed lives were a continuation of the gospel story (as are ours).
Blessings,
Peter.
Thank you for that. It is so encouraging to think of things this way.
When we allow the Holy Spirit to write through us we are no longer creating by our own hands but from the LORDS and his words never fall to the ground or return void.
By the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.
What a privilege and what a responsibility! How we long to change lives by our writing, and it is scary to think that might actually happen. What gives me courage to write in the light of that is the knowledge that it is the Holy Spirit who will direct our writing as we write and to where it needs to go. It is also He who interprets what we write to those who read it according to their needs. God allows us to participate in what He is doing in the world today. How fortunate we are!
Thanks for your thoughts.
Blessings,
Eleanor
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