What can one person do?

Today is the 'King' holiday in the USA. A day set aside to commemorate the life of a man who cared passionately about all of God's children, both black and white, a man whom I greatly admire, Rev Martin Luther King Jr! He lost his life because he stood up for what he believed in, I would like to hope that I could be as brave, to stand up for truth and life whether it was popular or not, to declare God's love and grace to a world full of suffering and hatred! This man had a dream to see racial equality in his nation, and although there is still a long way to go, here we are 40 years later with a black president in America, something which would never have been possible had this man not stood up for what was right no matter what it cost him!!!!

Many are familiar with the "I have a dream" speech, but one of my favourites is a sermon on servanthood from Mark 9:33-37 about who would be the greatest in God's kingdom. Here is some of the transcript of that sermon from 1968:

"And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I'm talking about as I go down the way because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. (Jesus)"

As much as I admire King, Jesus was the ultimate servant and it is He who has claimed my heart, a servant to all who was willing to die so that I could have access to God and have my sins paid for, the magnitude of that just blows my mind sometimes!!!!!!

So what has God asked me to stand up for? For those who have no voice, for the forgotten, and He has been drawing me out of my comfort zone as I prepare a Micah Challenge event for this Febraury. On Sunday I was handing out flyers at my church and talking to people about it which was scary for me, to just open my mouth to a stranger (there's lots of people I don't know at my church cause it's big and has 2 services), but I just took a deep breath and knew that I was doing what God asked of me and by the end of the time there I realised it wasn't really that hard at all because I was reminded of the passion and purpose behind it and of God's heart for His kids! Matt 25:40 "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

It's probably too small to see properly, but here is what I'm working on at the moment, I invited our Federal member and he's coming, and that wasn't as scary as I thought it would be either, who knew that just opening your mouth wasn't terrifying, I certainly didn't know it before :-)
If you'd like to hear a small excerpt of King's sermon in his own voice click on this link
www.thekingcenter.org/

So what are you passionate about? What can you use your voice for? I'd love to hear about it :-)