Our personal lives are the basis of our ministry.  In order for us to have a healthy ministry, our personal lives must also be healthy.  We can’t teach a lost and hurting world about balance if we ourselves are not living a balanced life.  We must continually strive to do the right thing and to do things right.  When we don’t, it is so easy to take our relationship with God for granted, but He alone is the key to living a life that is holy, righteous, and pure.  We are living in a time where the darker it gets the more opportunity the church has to let its light shine.  Our light is the good news of Jesus Christ and it is our love, mercy, and gentleness that will attract people to our God and it is through relationships that people will get connected and grow in the Lord.  People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care and that can’t happen until we get involved and help people.

In one of my recent classes, Mark Jakelski told us this story: In Germany, there was a beautiful statute of the Lord Jesus Christ with His hands extended. During World War II a bomb fell close to the statue decapitating it and blowing its arms off.  After the war was over the village began to sift through the rubble of their war torn village looking for the arms and the head of that had been blown off.  The people soon found the head and arms as well as some other small pieces that had been blown off, but they could not find the hands. With great discouragement someone argued, “You can’t have a statute of Jesus without hands.”

A young lady standing nearby and hearing the discussions had a sudden inspiration to put a plaque in the place of the hands.  If you were to read that plaque today, you would read these words: I have no hands but your hands to do my work today.  I have no feet but your feet to lead men on the way.  I have no tongue but your tongue to tell men how I died. I have no help but your help to lead them to my side. We as believers in Christ are His hands, feet and tongue to a lost and hurting world. It is time that we ask ourselves what we are doing to show people the love of Jesus.