Evidence

Evidence, confirmation, commendation; we want it, we desire it, and often we base so much on it. The response of another toward our work, toward our service, and ultimately toward ourselves is used as a measurement for our impact on this world, on others.

I find myself so often wanting and waiting for that approval, for that acknowledgement that I have made an impact. The response of another tells me that my actions or words didn’t fall lifeless into the chasm of non-influence.

And I find this is a popular need in the world of ministry. We want to know that we impact people’s lives, that the work we do in the name of God is actually making a difference. Be it a pastor who puts his heart into a sermon only to watch his church body shuffle out in silence, or the worship leader who lets his heart go desiring to bring others to a place of real worship only to be met with a silent crowd who sings nothing above a whisper, or maybe even a mentor who seeks to lovingly call another in accountability only to be met with an arrogant response of placing blame, or a friend who shares the story of the gift of salvation with a buddy only to be rebuffed for believing such nonsense, or even a blogger who pours his heart out and lets down the walls in a moment of vulnerability only to receive tepid comments.

So often there are no award ceremonies, no letters of commendation, no pats on the back, and no encouragement or stories of impact. Oh they happen; we’ve all received a note of thanks at one time or another, a short story of how what we did or said changed a person’s way of thinking. But are those what we seek. Can a life be built upon memories of comments and tattered notes? Should they?

I am a big proponent of sharing with others the role they have in your life, the impact they make, the way they change who you are by who they are. And yet, my words, my notes can’t speak to the impact they’ve had on my heart. For all the people I’ve told, there are many more names that have inscribed into my heart their presence in my life. Be it the pastor who I never told moved me to tears with his words of truth, the worship leader who never knew the depth of worship I offered up to God by his leading and example, the friend who I so callously responded to but just by her boldness to call me on something I recognized and changed that part of me, the friends who shared a story of what God has taught them that He used to teach me, or the blog post that I read and yet could not find the words to tell the writer how much they taught me in their openness. So many names, so many people, all who have not received verbal or written commendations from me, but who have written upon my heart, leaving a mark that will last forever.

And so maybe we too are written upon the hearts of others. Maybe we do not have letters of commendation on paper or stone but we have left a mark on something that will not burn to ashes or turn to dust. Maybe when we look out at those we interact with in this world we can’t see our signature, our mark upon them, but hidden within their hearts is a mark left by us at some time.

Maybe what we look for, what is seen, is really only temporary. The commendations, the awards, the words, they are but for a moment, tossed by wind and time. But the people, the hearts, the things that are hidden are the eternal marks we leave.

Maybe the evidence of who we are, of what we do for God, is on those hearts.



Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
2 Corinthians 3: 1-3

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 16-18