And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Philippians 1:6
A friend recently wrecked me as a only a friend can.
To paint the picture as honestly as possible you need a little backstory. I am a called and gifted communicator. God put that calling in me as a young boy. While most kids were playing house, we played church. Even then I knew two things: how to communicate and how to take an offering.
At the age of 20 God began to deal with me during my second year of college. By the next fall I had transferred to a small private Christian university to pursue this calling to communicate. My lack of humility lead to believe I would be the next Billy Graham, filling churches and stadiums. Yet God through his unique sense of humor, connected me with a distant cousin I had only met one other time in life.
Shannon, my cousin, did not open the gateway to a worldwide speaking career but opened my life to my first platform. Shannon had been the student leader for a university sponsored tutoring ministry to impoverished families on the other side of the tracks. “The Backyard” was a getting your hands dirty, face to face with little kids that needed love, Jesus and to learn to read and write. Oftentimes, I would leave with heartbreak and one less clothing item than I came with.
That dirty little 900 square foot house with a fenced Backyard in a small East Tennessee church town became my first platform. After a time of attempted tutoring came what we called “circle time”. It was where we gathered the kids shared a quick message of love and grace and prayed for God to raise more dead cats and dogs than I ever imagined. I was never paid for my snippets of scripture of loving caring God but it was the first stage that God placed me on. And in truth was better than any stage I could have been on.
God has since put many on many other stages from churches to camps to streets of foreign countries. But in recent years, life and all it’s transition has left me without a platform. And that friend knew it.
Through the course of three right hand turns and one left I found myself in front of that little house. The once white house had been repainted a vomit yellow. The once fenced in yard where I dropped nuggets of truth on little lives was over grown and in need of being cleaned up. And that friend with great love dropped daggers of truth on me with these words “this is where that platform started and but it is not where it ends.”
Choking back tears that wanted to run like the TVA dam breaking free were the words of the Apostle Paul bouncing in my soul: And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”
As I pulled away from that little house I was reminded that God is not done with me or done with you. Circumstances change, life shifts and unexpected turns come, but God’s drawing and calling remain. While today there is no stage or even 300 square feet of grass with 30 rowdy kids that I speak from, God in his faithfulness will restore the stage and give opportunities. Simply because he is faithful to complete what he starts.
