#Season of obscurity how to#
Kimball said, "Turn to the Gospel of John, the country boy didn't know how to find the Gospel of John. When the teen first came to his class, Edward Kimball handed him a Bible. But he came to Kimball's Sunday school class. He didn't know the ways of the city or of the church. He was a Sunday school teacher in Boston, where a young teenager became part of his class. It made a difference in Gordon Johnson.Įdward Kimball is probably not known to you. I was just that young preacher with 140 members in a little spot that you could hardly find, but it gave me a big feeling. I would look out there and say, Gordon, 10 percent of the population of the United States is right there in your view. And I could look south to Trenton, New Jersey.
On a clear day, I could look east across the Hudson into Manhattan. On the top of Eagle Rock, one of the Orange Mountains, there was a lookout. I was pastor of a little church of 140 members in New Jersey at the foot of the Orange Mountains in Montclair. All three were doing the same thing, but what a difference perspective makes! This mason answered, "I am building a cathedral. The man walked over to a third mason and said, "What are you doing? The man walked over to another mason and said, "What are you doing? The stonemason said, "You can see, I'm chipping a stone. The man said to one, "What are you doing? We focus on that little thing instead of getting the big picture.Ī man came to a construction site, where stonemasons were working. It's always good to let the whole vision be in front of you. When you drive down the highway, it's never good to focus your attention on the dirty spot on the windshield. We focus on the little problems of life instead of getting that bigger picture of life. So often, in our feeling of obscurity, we get so little in our thinking. And God said, "My thought is higher than your thought, and let my thought have something to do with your thought, so your vision is big. When God said, "Go to that house and see Saul of Tarsus, Ananias said, "Oh my, how could I do that? That man is after the Christians. Nothing significant in our life ever happens without a dream, a vision, a sense that something bigger could happen to an Ananias. Living with significance requires a dreamįirst, there must be a dream. Now, how can that help you and me? Let's look at the elements of Ananias's life, and maybe that will help us get a picture. Imagine an obscure person with that kind of significance.
This obscure one was chosen by God to begin the journey of the apostle Paul in his conversion, his development, and his understanding of the mission and direction for his life. That's all.Īh, but there's one other thing: This obscure person had an impact on the apostle Paul, the greatest person apart from Jesus Christ to live in all the history of the Christian church.
He was respected in his community, and he became a Christian. All we know is that Ananias was a layman, a Hebrew. Then he became a bishop of Damascus who was so zealous in his faith that the people seized him, scourged him, and stoned him to death. Some say he was the first one to preach the gospel in Damascus. Some say he is one of the 70 disciples Jesus chose. The apostle Paul gives a brief synopsis of this event in Acts 22, but that's all. I want you to look at one of them with me: Ananias. How are we going to get hold of this, so that even though I feel obscure in life, I can feel that my life is significant? Maybe one of the ways to do it is to look at the life of an obscure person. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." God is saying your misperception of yourself must be corrected by his perception of you. That's why God said through the prophet Isaiah in his 55 chapter, "For your thoughts are not my thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. It's amazing how wrong are our perceptions of ourselves. If we add to the poll, "How many want your life to be significant and important?" just about everybody would say, "Of course I want my life to be significant and important." God wants that too. It would be an interesting thing to take a poll and have you respond to me saying either "I feel very obscure" or "I think I'm very important to society." Well, we can't do that, but I expect the vast majority of us feel quite obscure. If I were gone it wouldn't make much difference in this society. I would expect 99 percent of the people in our society feel very obscure the kind of feeling that whatever I do doesn't really matter.
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