John 13:18-30
Good morning. When I was in high school, we had a bit of a mini revival among the students. I grew up in a small town with 800 students in the school from grade 8-12. When I graduated, there were about 120 in my Grad class and about 30 of them were professing Christians. About a quarter of our grad class said that they believed in Jesus. It was amazing to have that many Christians in your grad class alone. However the truth is that many of them no longer follow their faith. There are a bunch of them that do not walk in their faith and who have decided to leave it all behind. There are a bunch who still are faithful and even others who have come to faith since then, but the unfortunate reality is that a bunch have fallen away from what they once professed.
Let me tell you about a gentleman I met back in 2001. His name was Jack. He was in his mid 60’s when I met him. Jack shared that he grew up going to church, and became very involved in the church and was a treasurer in his church for a number of years. He was married and had kids and they all went to church. The problem was that Jack didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. When his wife became ill and was in her last days, an evangelical pastor who was a friend of theirs came to visit her. He shared the gospel with her and she accepted Christ as her saviour. When Jack and her next spoke, she told him what this pastor had said and told Jack that there was more to Jesus than what they had known. Well Jack was furious. Furious that this pastor would tell his wife something untrue, just to give her peace on her deathbed. After she passed, Jack apparently went to the pastor to confront him and ended up hearing the Gospel and beginning a relationship with Jesus – at 60 something years old. For the first time ever, this man who had grown up in the church realized that he needed a relationship with Jesus in order to go to heaven. That he needed to trust in Jesus’s death on the cross and follow Jesus with everything. How do you go to church for so many years and not know that Jesus is the way to heaven? How does that happen?! But that’s Jack’s story. When I met Jack, he had given his entire life to follow Jesus and he had decided to do missions in his retirement.
