What’s Your Reputation??
18 January 2008
Nate Martin
A week ago today, I experience a tremendous personal loss and I’ve spent the week dwelling on it, and became deeply challenged by it and I’d like to share some thoughts with you and challenge you with it today….
If you were to die tonight, what would you be remembered for? What would people say about you? Would they remember that you were a “good person”, just an average rider, a great horseman, a bad friend, a reckless maniac, or perhaps, someone who loved God?
I want to tell you about two people today. The first was a peer of mine. His name is Josh. He was 23 years old. He possessed a love for God and a heart for ministry and until recently, he was engaged to a beautiful young lady, the second love of his life. Of all of life’s little pleasures, Josh thoroughly enjoyed the game of soccer, a sport he excelled at; and he got a thrill out of playing hockey, the Philadelphia Flyers was his team. As an “average, ordinary Joe” there wasn’t much about him that would cause him to stand out in a crowd. Sometimes if he styled his hair just right people remarked that he looked like Matt Damon. As a youngster, Josh grew up in a Christian home. From early on, he proved he only wanted to serve God with his life.
I met Josh five years ago when we found ourselves together in the classroom of the Word of Life Bible Institute, where our textbook was the Bible and our shared passion and desire was to learn about God so that we could better live for and minister on behalf of God. The more I got to know God, the more I was impressed by his relationship with God. I’d frequent his dorm only to find him lying on his bed, his study Bible before him; or I’d walk in on him praying with a fellow student struggling with a spiritual issue. Josh was a happy guy – I rarely saw him discouraged or depressed. As the years went on that we were together, the more evidence I gathered that Josh neglected surrendering not one area of his life to his Lord and Savior: his time, money, friends, relationships – every part of him screamed GOD!
When Josh and I parted ways, he was headed to Philadelphia Biblical University to complete his formal education in preparation to become a youth pastor. As soon as Josh got home from the Bible Institute in New York, he got plugged into his home church’s youth group and immediately began impacting lives for the Kingdom of Heaven. But God decided He had other plans for this young man’s life. On January 12, 2007, Josh was diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive strain of leukemia, one without a cure. Over the past twelve months, I have watched a very good friend of mine suffer most joyously as this horrific disease ravaged his body. The doctors treating him tried to cling to any hope they could that Josh might recover, and we prayed fervently for God to heal his body. In the fall of 2006, before cancer became his nightmare, Josh had proposed to Jenn, a young lady he’d met in school and fallen madly in love with. Due to the cancer, their wedding kept getting pushed back and postponed. During the summer of 2007, Josh began to take a turn for the worse. In desperation, the doctors tried everything they could think of as John Hopkin’s Hospital slowly became his new home. Finally, a week ago today, a year to the day he was first diagnosed with leukemia, Josh passed away.
Through his entire struggle, not once did I hear of Josh complaining or asking “Why me, God?” If anything, his faith grew and his relationship deepened. When he was strong enough, he was at church, hanging with his teens, or ministering to Jenn. When everyone around him was despairing, Josh was the one encouraging everyone else! Josh’s illness only proved to me and everyone else the truth that I had learned first hand at the B.I. – Josh was a man of God through and through. To me, he’s as almost as perfect an earthly example as I’ll find anyway. His life screamed it. He lived what he believed to the fullest.
And now the other person, almost the complete opposite. If you go up to the Subway in Great Bridge, you’re likely to meet a young lady named Jamie Comstock. She’s the epitome of what a Subway employee should be: she’s cheerful, friendly, smiling and she’s likely to make you the best sub you’ve ever eaten. At just 17, she’s the proud mother of a 7 month of little boy named Caleb. Jamie is trying to find meaning to her life. She says she believes that a Higher Power is out there, but she doesn’t believe in God, though she doesn’t know why. She simply doesn’t know what to believe is true. She is many things, but the one thing she is not is happy. Her life is a mess of stress and she has turned to cigarettes as a way to try to relieve that stress. Jamie will admit to you that she knows they are killing her and if she doesn’t quite, likely to kill her son prematurely down the road. But she can’t quit, lacks the will and motivation to quit because then she’d have nothing. She has no real hope. Jamie’s life lacks meaning!
Two completely different people, two outstanding reputations: Josh’s life boldly declared to his early grave that he was a man of God and everyone around him knew it by the way he lived. Jamie’s life sadly tells of a hopelessness.
Our Bible is filled with stories of people with strong reputations: some good, some bad. Throughout the pages of our Bible, epitaphs have been written, some by God Himself, exclaiming for all of time itself to hear of men who lived for God.
I think of Moses, of whom it is written that “no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face..for no one has ever shown the mighty power of performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.” Deuteronomy 34:10-12
More than once, God Himself described Job: “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” Job 1:8
Abraham was known as the friend of God; David carried the reputation of being a “man after God’s own heart.” Joseph was known as a man of unswerving integrity.
So, what about you? What reputation do you have? What epitaph are you writing yourself? If you were to die tonight, what would people have to say about you? I pray that people would clearly be able to see that you lived for God. It has been rightly said that the only truly important thing about you is how you think of God and consequently, what you then do with Him. Is He to you a person that is talked about, someone you try to ignore so you can live however you want, or is He your life?
Deuteronomy 30:11-20 “For the LORD is your LIFE!”
Its your choice…Choose? Reject? What will YOU do with Jesus? Oh my friends, if I could challenge you with one thing it would be this: get to the point in your life where you are unafraid to abandon EVERYTHING to follow Jesus Christ. In youth group growing up we used to sing, “Holiness, holiness is what I long for. Holiness is what I need! Holiness, holiness is what You want from me. Take my heart, and form it. Take my mind, transform it. Take my will, conform it, to Yours, to Yours, oh, Lord!” Long for it. Let God become your magnificent obsession. Surrender it all! I can guarantee looking back on your life as you lie on your deathbed, it will not be something you regret. I know as Josh laid on his bed counting his final hours, he didn’t. Oh, would you commit your life to Him now?
Hebrews 11 – I want to be a “by faith” kind of Christian, don’t you? I love the phrase in there – “people of whom the world is not worthy.” Is that you?
