Significance

We all have our definitions about what significance means. I've found that mine has mostly been influenced by media.  

I used to think only fame meant that you were significant. I've since come to the conclusion that while fame makes you significant in the sense that you become fodder for the gossip magazines, it doesn't necessarily mean that the legacy you leave counts for anything in heaven.

I remember a story of a simple, uneducated guy on the street who was on all accounts a bum. He managed to work out what an evangelistic gospel leaflet meant, and he decided to believe in God. He didn't have much and still slept on the street, but he made the most of it. He used to always be cruel to animals, but after that simple encounter with a leaflet, he would refrain from kicking them. 

He didn't accomplish a lot in life, but he died trying to keep a drunk guy warm by letting the drunk guy sleep in his crude cardboard shelter, while using his own body to shield the inebriated stranger from the rain and the cold. In heaven, he was given a higher honor than someone whose death had made headlines around the world. One line that really challenged me was the statement 'He used all the love he had'.

How many of us have so much more than this guy would have had? What have we done with what we've been given?

For the past few years, I've wrestled with 'what can I do? How can I be significant?' I've been through cycles of denial, giving up, being frustrated, being consumed by busy-ness of life. But the desire remained and refused to go away. 

Although I eventually gave up any thought of doing anything about it, it  niggled like a toothache in the night. Like the feeling that you've forgotten something but can't figure out what. The answer was both unlikely and yet complete: 

"You are most significant when you are obedient to Me."

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams."

1 Samuel 15:22

"For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

 Colossians 3:3

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.

2 Cor 5:14-15

When we are obedient:

• we don't need to worry about what we should do (because we've been told!)
• we are walking in the centre of God's will, which is always where His provision and blessings are
• we will be given the ability to complete it; we're in no danger of being left out on a limb 
• we can be sure that it's God's responsibility to make things happen -- we just need to do what we're instructed to do. The rest will follow.

I think of everyone's lives being entwined together like the threads on a tapestry. You never know whose life you'll touch when you step out in faith. God knows. That's why He asks us to be obedient.

Significance is obedience. Who'd have known?