We are ALL George Bailey - do we make any difference at all?

I am reminded this morning in silence of the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life". Shown every Christmas in the USA. It asks an eternal question, if you didn't exist would it make any difference. Do you have any influence in the culture you inhabit? Can you have a positive influence on the Schools that teach your children, the Business community that supplies goods and services, the government you have, the quality of families in your community, the authority and influence of the Churches around you, the kinds of entertainment you see and hear, the veracity of the media that informs or indoctrinates people?

Are those things outside of your influence? Are they off limits to a Christian?

Shockingly many believe they are. That we are to become insular and hide from a fallen world behind our closed church doors. In doing that we allow Mr Potter to control the destiny of the world our grandchildren will live in. It becomes Pottersville. I'm glad my Fathers didn't do so in World War Two.

IF your church never existed, if you never existed would the world be a better or worse place to live? YOU have influence over the things all around you, just like George Bailey did. You can pretend that you don't or shouldn't. You can become inert by intent. But for better or worse you do have an influence...even if you squander it.

I pray God will give you a vision of what things would be like if you allow them to drift. There is a nihilism that has crept into the church, not so much in the USA but in other parts of the world. It's a flawed theology that we can't change anything and it's not up to us to do so.

In that, the church of Jesus has lost it's mission and commission. IF we are to MAKE DISCIPLES as we go in all the world, it must mean we are to be intentional at changing (Making Disciples) of those who occupy all the realms of influence that we live among. Education, Media, Arts and Entertainment, Business, Government, Family and the Church.

Anything less is making the Word of God of no effect. We can teach and preach until we are blue in the face. That doesn't make the change. We must be proactive at making disciples, mentoring, training, being an example to, an example of, being apprenticed and apprenticing those in all the spheres of influence around us. Jesus defined the result of an unchanged heart in Matthew 7:20-23

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. ²¹ For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, ²² adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³ All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

If we do NOT deal with the evil in our society it will get worse and worse. We don't need another sermon, we don't need another government program. We need to see people in our lives have a heart transplant.

We are ALL George Bailey.

We can make it a wonderful life if we allow ourselves to become what we were called to be. To do less squanders why we are here in the first place.

This may not be prophetic, but it stirred in my heart today...so I pass it along.