Lester Did it Right (It Matters How You Live Part 2)

Our actions directly affect lives around us. What you choose to do. What you choose to say. How you choose to live your life, it makes a difference—more than you think.

Last week I talked about my great-grandfather. A man who only saw the church and the people in it as white-washed tombs, people who seemed pretty on the outside, but dig deep enough and his life was cleaner than theirs. Why should he make a point to change the way he lived when they weren’t?

Those people might not have realized it, but their actions were directly affecting my grandfather’s lack of a walk with God.

Except for Lester.

My great-grandfather was a farmer, a mountain of a man, who spent the last few years of his life confined to a nursing home, separated from my grandmother because it wasn’t a facility that accommodated them living together.

Cousin Lester visited every week. Pushing my grandfather throughout the grounds of the facility, in and out amongst all the flowers and plants my farming grandfather would have loved. Lester didn’t just come because he wanted to connect and spend time with his family, Lester came because of an aching desire to make sure Grandpa didn’t die lost.

It wasn’t through words that Lester showed Grandpa his need for salvation. It was through actions. It wasn’t through preachy sermons and demands that Grandpa “change his ways”. He already thought he was righteous. It was through the simple fact that Lester lived his life with a passion for Christ.

Your life is a mirror.

You either reflect Christ.

Or you reflect the world.

It’s not a complicated choice and it does have eternal effects. You touch lives everywhere you go. 

You can’t walk through this life without leaving some kind of fingerprint on another person’s life. My question for you is: are you walking with Christ in such a way that people see you as different? If you aren’t seen as having something different, all witness is lost.

Grandpa saw something different in Lester. Someone genuine, something he didn’t have.

My dad used to tell me, “if you can spot them (those being in the world and lost), they can spot you.” To be honest, I struggled with believing this. How could my life, lived in such a way that didn’t have me preaching on a street corner, point people to Christ?

But it does. And I saw it over and over when I worked at the medical office. Patients stopped me in the halls, spoke to me at the counter or made comments just in general passing—that I was different.

You’re either ridiculed for following Jesus or you’re praised for it. Either way, people can’t get away from the love that I have for my Savior.

And Lester? He didn’t give up. He kept chasing God in front of Grandpa up until the very end. It wasn’t a sprint to make an impression on an old man, it was a marathon he was running for life. And 

Grandpa’s wasn’t the only life changed. I guarantee it.

You don’t know what seeds someone else has planted that you’re watering, weeding, harvesting. I just know a man that didn’t need to preach to spread the gospel, ended up bringing a hard-core, crusty farmer to know the Lord.