He looked slightly awkward, sipping a coffee at the back of the church. The Sunday service had just finished, people were milling around, kids were running about, and the coffee bar volunteers were working overtime. I’d wandered over to say ‘hello’ to the nervous looking young guy who, as far as I could tell, had plucked up all the courage he could muster to come along to our church for the first time.
We got chatting, and his story completely took me by surprise. Up until a few weeks beforehand, he’d been a self-assured atheist, whose only focus in life had been to make lots of money. However, through the online content of a number of social media influencers I wasn’t even aware were particularly well known for having a Christian worldview, he’d realised that he needed to get right with God and go to church.
So here he was. A man in his early twenties, coming along to church as an adult for the first time because of the influence of social media, was talking to me about wanting to become a follower of Jesus. In just a matter of weeks, he was baptised.
I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. The Holy Spirit is always at work, drawing people to Himself, often in surprising ways, often without too much effort from us. And there appears to be a fair bit of this going on at the moment.
"The Holy Spirit is always at work, drawing people to Himself, often in surprising ways..."
A couple of weeks before my, no longer ‘self-assured atheist’ friend came along, I spotted that a mum and her young children had started attending church too. They’d always sit near the front, the children would race off to Sunday school at the opportune moment of the service, and it was clear that God was moving in the life of this lady. It turned out she’d started attending the weekly parent and toddlers’ group, had recently moved to the country, and through contact with volunteers in the church had made a commitment to follow Jesus. For her, too, it was just a matter of weeks before she was baptised.
I love the way that this young family are finding their feet in God’s house, discovering the newness of life that can only be found in Jesus. I was so blessed, too, to be reminded of how effective the faithful ministry of God’s people can be. And it’s not rocket science. The sequence of events here was simply an invitation to a toddlers’ group, followed by a conversation, followed by an invitation to church. The Apostle Paul must have had something like this in mind when he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthian church, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6).
As I reflected on these two salvation stories and observed similar testimonies in lots of other church communities, I’m beginning to notice that something is stirring in the nation, and I sense it requires a response from us. When a young man walks into church off the street, seeking God because of what someone said on Instagram, and is baptised three weeks later, I reckon we need to sit up and pray, ‘More Lord, for your glory’. When a young mum brings her family to church for the first time, responding to a conversation with a church volunteer, and also gets baptised weeks later, I reckon it’s time to step up and say, ‘Use me Lord, for your glory’.
God is at work in so many ways in the hearts of so many people. It seems that there is a fresh openness to the gospel spreading across the land. And alongside this openness, a fruitfulness that will exceed our expectation. My prayer in this season is like that of the psalmist in Psalm 90 declaring, “…Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!”
"God is at work in so many ways in the hearts of so many people."
