On the Anvil - Max Lucado [27]
48: The Makings of a Movement
Each of us should lead a life stirring enough to start a movement. We should yearn to change the world. We should love unquenchably, dream unfalteringly, and work unceasingly.
We should close our ears to the manifold voices of compromise and perch ourselves on the branch of truth. We should champion the value of people, proclaim the forgiveness of God, and claim the promise of heaven.
And we should lead a life stirring enough to cause a movement.
Will we see a movement occur? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Movements never run their course in one generation. The great revivals and reformations that dot the history of humanity were never the work of just one person. Every movement is the sum of visionaries who have gone before, generations of uncompromised lives and nonnegotiated truths. Faithful men who have led forceful lives.
Undoubtedly there have been many with Luther’s wisdom or Paul’s oratory of whom we’ve heard nothing. Maybe an unknown butcher in Greece, a cobbler in France, a mechanic in Idaho. Men with godly lives that form a part of the foundation of a movement.
A movement comes of age when one life harvests the seeds planted by countless lives in previous generations. A movement occurs when one person, no greater or lesser than those who have gone before, lives a forceful life in the fullness of time. Never think that the great movements of Luther, Calvin, or Campbell were entirely of their own doing. They were simply forceful lives placed by God in a receptive crevice of history.
Let’s live lives stirring and forceful enough to cause a movement. A true mark of the visionary is his willingness to lay down his life for those whom he’ll never see.
Will that movement come in our generation? I hope so. But even if it doesn’t, even if we never see it, it will occur. And we’ll be a part of it.
What does the idea of a movement mean to you?
Is your life “stirring enough to cause a movement”? What kind of movement would that be?
How does God want you to live? What kind of choices must you make today in order to live as a follower of the ultimate Mover?
Conclusion: Emerging from the Anvil
49: Off the Anvil
As I type the conclusion of this book, my thoughts are freshly stirred. My wife and I have just returned from an emergency trip to the United States to be with my father. He is very ill. He suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, a muscle crippler for which there is no known cause or cure. We were called home, not knowing if he would be alive when we arrived. He was and still is. Yet, even though he has made significant improvement, we know, and he knows, that his time is nearing.
Dad is a man of extreme faith. An able teacher and a strong leader, he never left any doubt as to where he stood on the question of God. His first words to us as we saw him in the intensive care unit were “I’m ready to go to heaven. I think it’s my time.”
When the disease was first diagnosed, my wife and I were in the final stages of preparing to do mission work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When I learned that Daddy had a terminal disease, I wrote him, volunteering to change my plans and stay near him. He immediately wrote back, saying, “Don’t be concerned about me. I have no fear of death or eternity; just go . . . please him.”
My father’s life is an example of a heart melted in the fire of God, formed on his anvil, and used in his vineyard. He knew, and knows, what his life was for. In a society of question and confusion, his was one life that had a definition.
Time on God’s anvil should do that for us: It should clarify our mission and define our purpose. When a tool emerges from a blacksmith’s anvil, there is no question as to what it is for. There is no question as to why it was made. One look at the tool and you instantly know its function. You pick up a hammer and you know that it was made to hit nails. You pick up a saw and you know that it was made to cut wood. You see a screwdriver and you know that it is for tightening screws.
As a human being emerges from the anvil