Not A Whole Lot

Last year around March, I brought my car in to be inspected for the State of New Hampshire’s regulation books. When the mechanics looked over my vehicle, they told me that all the brakes had to be replaced. Being a campus minister, my first thought was naturally, "Well, God will provide." Oh wait-no... as I recall, my first thought was, "How the heck am I going to pay for 4 new brakes?" I prayed and I thought and I finally was blessed to find a friend who knew how to fix brakes, and so one Saturday morning, my buddy Chris came over and we began the project of replacing my brakes. "What do you have for tools?" he asked me. What did I have? An old, rusty $5 set of about 15 socket wrenches... and that’s all. I quickly found out that this was not going to work with what I had, and so off to Sears we went to spend about $80 a new set of Craftsman socket wrenches. And while the job was not easy, I can’t imagine trying to repair the car with that first set of pretty inadequate tools.

As Christians, we have a call to be salt and light to the world, to impact the places where we live and to impact the people with whom we spend time. But how? How can we actually have the preserving affect that salt has? How can we actually share who Jesus is with people, and have them respond? The answer - try really hard. Put in all your efforts. Do the best you can. Muster up all the courage you have, and maybe, just maybe, you can make a difference. I mean, hey, I’ve got a tool kit of gifts and talents - why not use them?

Unfortunately, I’m willing to believe that many of us have looked at that answer and said, "Yeah, I’ve tried that," or worse yet, "Yeah! Let’s go to it!" The reality is that whether you are "giving it your all" right now, or if you’ve tried the above method before, you will see that it is woefully inadequate. The method described above flows from the self-help mentality of the world today - just believe and achieve. But this, friends, is vastly different than what Jesus teaches to His followers about how to make an impact in the world.

In the Gospel of John Chapter 15, Jesus says these words, "I am the Vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from Me, you can do nothing." Think about that statement. We can do nothing without remaining in Jesus. And if you continue to read that passage, there is a subtle theme of prayer and answered prayer bouncing about. Just like trying to repair the car brakes without having the right tools, we are unable to make a difference unless we get some "outside help". And Jesus is, thank God, not a tool kit. He isn’t something we add on to our work as ministers of reconciliation. He is the Foundation of our work, and without Him, not a whole lot can be done. In fact, nothing can be done.

We are a doing society. We are a moving and a going society. And so here is the challenge I believe Jesus places before us. Prayer is the greatest form of "doing". We have to remain in prayer with Him constantly, asking that He do work we can’t do. And when we go without praying, when we live a life of us doing alone instead of us praying and remaining and then going, we are walking in the land of idol worship. For the Christian, a prayerless life is the greatest form of idolatry because it shows that we believe we can do our work without the help of Almighty God.

Are you seeking to see more fruit (John 15) in your life, more people coming to follow Christ and more people transformed by Him? Remain in prayer, call out to God, an then go. He will bless you more than you could imagine. How much can we do without remaining and prayer? Not a whole lot. In fact, nothing at all.

- Tim Carpenter, Campus Ministry, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at UNH