How many people do you know who were baptised into Christ and aren’t faithful today?
For those of us who have long sought to walk along the path of faithfulness, the question may bring back many faces and memories. It’s a sobering moment.

 

Today, as I reflect on my 50 years of association with Christians and churches in Australia, I share three reminders for those of us who are determined to ‘finish the race and keep the faith’ as we journey our way home.

 

Be faithful!  Paul describes a disciple as someone who has been ‘delivered…from the domain of darkness and transferred…to the kingdom of his beloved Son’ (Colossians 1:13). But Satan is scheming to bring every Christian back to him. He’ll reclaim some through temptation, others through trials, some through apathy, and others through discouragement.

 

In view of Satan’s onslaught and schemes (Ephesians 4:14; 6:11), each Christian has to make an ongoing commitment to be faithful regardless of what may come in this life. On this point, my wife Sheila has often said, ‘Let’s be one of the 10 found faithful!’ (from Genesis 18:32).

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Faithfulness doesn’t always mean doing big things. We shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the grand things to be done for God that we end up becoming spiritually paralysed. Faithfulness can mean being faithful in little things (Matthew 25:21).

 

The key goal is to make a lifelong commitment to faithfulness. Listen to the Psalms: ‘I will call on him as long as I live’ (116:2, emphasis added); ‘I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being’ (104:33, emphasis added); and ‘I will bless you as long as I live’ (63:4, emphasis added).

 

May each of us commit to be faithful until death, so that we’ll receive the crown of life (Revelation 2:10).

 

Be intentional!  What percentage of our focus is directed at transmitting faith to future generations? We must be more intentional in this task.

 

Remember Psalm 78:5–7, where the Lord ‘…commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know [God’s law], the children yet unborn, and arise and tell [God’s law] to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.’

 

Another great example who nurtured inter-generational faith is Paul. At the end of his life, Paul wasn’t bemoaning his fate or being nostalgic. He was thinking about the generations of Christians who would come after him. So he wrote to Timothy, ‘...what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also’ (2 Timothy 2:2). May each of us be intentional in passing the baton of faith to future generations!

 

Be prayerful! Luke mentions ‘pray’ or ‘praying’ 28 times in his Gospel. Every major event in the life of Christ is preceded by and bathed in prayer. It’s significant that the disciples didn’t ask Jesus to teach them how to teach the lost. But they did ask him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:11). May we make the same request today.

 

Paul kept a ‘circle of prayer’ between himself and his readers. He often wrote, ‘I pray for you...’ (Romans 1:9; Ephesians 1:15–16). And he also asked that others pray for him (Romans 15:9; Philippians 1:19). Why not imitate Paul’s two-way prayer circle?

 

I think it’s especially important for us to ‘pray earnestly to the Lord of harvest to send out labourers into his fields’ (Matthew 9:37–38). My favourite example of this verse becoming real is that of a 12-year-old girl in NSW who grew up to become Nana Shepherd. In 1912, this young girl, her mother, and her aunt were handed a Gospel tract on baptism. After her baptism, she began going out to the orange orchard behind her home at the foot of Sydney’s Blue Mountains, praying that ‘God will send us someone to teach us what to do now that we have been baptised.’

 

Nana Shepherd was still praying that prayer when John Allen Hudson stepped off a steamship in 1937. Hudson was a missionary from Churches of Christ in America, who arrived in Sydney and made contact with individuals and groups who were keen to restore New Testament faith and practice. Hudson’s visit opened the door to many subsequent meetings between Christians across the Pacific.

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My brother, Kent, and I were among them. We first visited Australia in 1974. In all, numerous people around Australia have been blessed by Nana Shepherd continuing her prayer as she lived into her 90s!

 

This year marks 50 years since I first visited Australia. At this juncture, it’s fitting to pause and reflect on the past. However, our primary focus should be the future. As we each continue to run the race that is set before us, may I encourage each of us to be:

- faithful in every little or big thing;
- intentional in passing the baton of faith to future generations; and
- prayerful each day.