THEO-logy - A Special Breed

(In these posts, I will bold whatever I pull directly from my great grandpa's sermons to avoid having to utilize a million quotation marks. Also: Theo was known as TA to many of his friends and family, so I will use that moniker from time to time, as well.)

My great grandpa Theo starts this sermon off with the question asked by the disciples in John 6:28:

"What must we do that we might work the works of God?"

The solution to the world's suffering will be found in the person who can find the answer to the question here in John's Gospel.

For TA, the person who discovers the answer to this question will become a Special Breed of person; a breed that the world desperately needs. He delivered this sermon on April 8, 1973, and in it he posits a rather disturbing prophecy of sorts:

If the population explosion continues, Christianity will become by the year 2000 almost an insignificant force; unrecognizable...We cannot allow ourselves to be swallowed up.

When I read that prediction, I got chills. Here's why:

Its now a decade past TA's predicted time frame; ample enough time to review it for accuracy. According to the CIA website's statistics (follow the link then click on "PEOPLE :: WORLD" and scroll down to see the source material), Christianity is the largest religion in the world making up a full third of the world's population - a number surpassing 2 billion strong. But numbers are not what TA posits will change the world. No, he says it will take a super natural power which only comes by total commitment.

In his notes, he shared with his congregation the two prayers he prayed most:

1) "Oh, God, empty me of every doubt." I want to be so empty of doubt that I might be filled with the fullness of God; that when I stand before people and minister here and any other place I might be a channel of blessing. Doubt is an awful thing. I had just as soon be a bed-ridden patient unable to wait upon myself than to be filled with doubt.

What a powerful metaphor! If we allow doubt to consume us, then we are bed-ridden; unable to help. Doubt hinders, it doesnt help. Doubt in what? Doubt in the ability of our Father to move and change in ways that we cannot even fathom. Doubt that faith even as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. Why limit the limitless?

2) "Oh, God, empty me of self. Let TA Williams die." If this would happen, then we could become just a channel through which the divine power of the living God would flow unhindered.

Too often we place ourselves before our increasingly needy neighbors. We allow our wants to outstrip, outweigh, and out-prioritize the world's needs.

Theo believed these two obstacles, doubt and self, to be the difference between a person of the world and a person of the Special Breed the world needs. We may be 2 billion+ strong in number, but how many of us praise God with our mouths but doubt Him with our minds? How often do we allow our personal comfort to supercede the physical comfort of others? The world doesnt need Christian claims, it needs Christian action, and for TA (and I whole-heartedly agree with him), those actions become possible when and only when we cast doubt aside and sacrifice self. Only then, when we lose our identities, will God be able to work through us unhindered.

- Adkins