Walking By Faith

Walking by faith is hard.  Every week our technical teams send out our worship services into the unknown.  We have people all over the world who watch our stream, but we really don't know who most of them are.  We broadcast live to 2000 TVs at six campuses of Florida Hospital with no way of knowing who watches and who doesn't.  We have visitors every week in our Worship Center and Worship Cafes.  We have members whose world is falling apart, and we have no idea.  But we walk by faith that the message of hope will reach a needing heart and have an impact.

At least that's what we try to do.  It’s easy to get caught up week to week and wonder if there is anyone even out there, if it even makes a difference.  That's why it was so refreshing last week when I got a series of testimonies from the people at our Winter Park Memorial Hospital Worship Cafes.  Stories of families in crisis who received the hope they needed.  Families united in a time of worship, even though one of them was in the hospital and another was at church.  People who have come to believe in Jesus through our services.

John 4:37 says that "one sows and another reaps."  In evangelism, it is incredibly rare that the same person who sows the seed will also see the harvest.  We each play our own roles, big and small, seen and unseen.  We live by faith that for every story we hear, for every harvest we see, there are others that we will never see.

The same is true in my own life.  I’ve had people who knew I was a Christian even though I never said anything about God, but something about the way I lived my life told them.  We never know when a smile or a simple word of encouragement will make a difference in someone's day.  We may never know the impact of the things we do, but by faith we can know that it makes a difference.  And every now and then, we may even get to hear a story that reminds us that this is true.

Chad Hess