Ripple Effect

 December 6, 2023

Christianity, if it is lived out faithfully, has a ripple effect. My mother and father came to Christ in San Antonio when he was stationed there during WWII. They drifted away for awhile when I was little, but when I was about 11, mom decided we were going to church. We tried a couple and landed at Westside Baptist where soon after, my brother who is three years older than me, accepted Christ as his Savior and Lord. I saw such a change in him that I thought, “If this will do that for him, maybe it can help me, too. 

I prayed to receive Christ after a pre-teen meeting in the basement of the church. The lesson that night was given by an elderly gentleman who a few years later, married my widowed grandmother. When the invitation was given, I raised my hand and the pastor’s wife prayed with me outside the door of that room. It remains to me, holy ground.

After my first year in college, I counseled at Miracle Mountain Ranch in Spring Creek, PA. Each night at bedtime, we counselors would go from bunk to bunk praying with the campers and talking to them about Jesus. Thirty years later, I was introduced to a gentleman at a graduation party. This man repeats my name and asked if I liked peanut butter on my pancakes. I responded affirmatively, whereupon he gave me a big bear hug and said, “You are my spiritual father. I’ve been looking for you for thirty years! You led me to Christ in a bunkhouse at Miracle Mountain Ranch.” I never knew. Following in his steps, his children are serving the Lord in various capacities.

God has been gracious to Linda and me. All our children are following Christ. They are teaching their children how to live for Christ. They have led others to Christ. It’s not big and splashy; it will never make the evening news, but that seed of faith that was planted in my parents (and in Linda’s parents, too, but that’s another story), has grown and multiplied in ways they never would have imagined. And not just in me; my brother and his children, my sister and her children—the Good News that Jesus died for our sins and rose again to give us life—that Good News my parents believed eighty years ago has impacted people they never met, and often people I do not know. 

Live as a Christian. Speak as a Christian. You never know the ripple effect your testimony will have.