The Big Blue Bus

I accepted Christ at the age of 18 a year after graduating from high school in 1983. It’s kind of strange, but I knew from the first day that if I obeyed God with my life, I would take a lead role in reaching people who are lost and far from God. I attended a conference in Lexington, KY in the fall of 1984. It was there that God spoke directly into my life about starting a ministry to the project areas in the small community in which I lived. This was a small city but a large percentage of the families lived in lower income housing and under the poverty scale.

Behind our church sat a big blue school bus that was used once a year to take a few senior adults to camp meeting. I felt burdened to start with this bus and pick up kids for Sunday school. The burden was so intense I wept for hours that day and many hours over the next fourteen years. I had heard many people talk about these pockets of poverty in our community and how drug traffic and crime made them unsafe for anyone but law enforcement. It’s kind of odd looking back how so many people could identify and see the problem but no one could see themselves or their churches as being part of the solution. There was a huge need for Jesus among these people and God called me and the small church where I served to “be the answer.”

What started one Sunday with one bus and seven children eventually became a ministry to several hundred kids and included 4 full sized buses bringing whole families and kids to Jesus! It is possible that the reason you can so easily identify and are burdened for a need in your community, school or church is because God is calling you to become part of the answer. James writes in chapter 2 verse 17, “faith by itself if not accompanied by action, is dead.” Faith that is not active and lived out by making a difference in our world is not really faith at all.

Listen and look carefully around you today. It’s possible that there is a big blue bus with your name on it. This could be a place of usefulness where you know that God is at work in your life, where you have chosen to follow him and “be the answer” for His cause and kingdom.

Be The Answer

Have you ever prayed over a specific thing only to battle an immediate onslaught of doubt and unbelief? Did I have enough faith when I prayed? This will take a miracle and I did not pray with a miracle kind of faith. Why would God answer that prayer for me? Each one of us has certainly faced a need so great that it required divine intervention. When we do require intervention, it’s these types of prayers that are usually the most heartfelt and sincere. We go to God with a sense of, “If you don’t move God, then it’s not going to be good.”

It’s possible that when we pray for an answer, God will call us to become part of the answer. If your child is rebellious and you are praying for a change of heart and attitude, God may speak to you to give up some overtime hours at the office and spend a little time at the ballpark with your son. You may pray for more intimacy in your marriage and God may speak to you to turn off the television for a season and begin to re-connect with simple conversation and coffee. Maybe you are praying for the church you attend to experience a renewed passion for people and Jesus, and to step it up with the programming and make excellence the benchmark to aim for, because after all, this is God’s work.

Be careful what you pray for because as part of the process, God may require that you become the answer - or at least part of it.

Over the next few weeks I will share how in my own life God has called me to “be the answer.” As I reflect and walk down memory lane for a while, I trust that God will speak to you in a new and profound way. Be careful to listen, God may be calling you to a new place of accountability and responsibility for the answer you are praying and believing for.