What’s the best thing that ever happened to you?  I mean, the very best thing.  If you’re like me, that may be hard to say.  So many good things have come my way, it’s not easy to narrow down the list to the one best thing.  But, this morning, this is just for the sake of discussion.  No one but you will know what you choose.  If you had to pick one thing that was the best thing, which would it be? 

Maybe it was that moment when you felt like, as we say, you’d won the lottery.  Which is not something I can actually say.  For what should be obvious and very good reasons, I don’t play the lottery.  Besides, if I won, I’d have to find some way of telling Weston Ware.  Or, better yet, maybe I would just leave town and let Bud tell him.  A friend of mine’s father was a pastor in a rural East Texas community.  One year at Christmas he let it slip to his grown children that he had bought a lottery ticket.  They were appalled.  “Dad!  How could you do that?  What would happen if you won?  What would you say to your church?”  “If I actually won the lottery, what would I say to my church?” he asked.  “I’d say, ‘Goodbye!’” 

Assuming we’ve all narrowed it down to the one thing we’d call the best thing that ever happened to us, I will also assume that, despite the variety of experiences, we all have at least two things in common as a result.  First, when the best thing happened, it changed our lives.  It was a B.C. to A.D. marker.  Things afterward would never be the same as they were before.  Second, when it happened, we told someone.  We could have no sooner kept it to ourselves than we could have forced ourselves to stop breathing.  We couldn’t help ourselves.  Our lives were changed and we had to tell someone.

Like the day we got Griffin, our first son.  We’d been trying to adopt for months.  One evening, at the end of what would have been an otherwise normal day, the phone rang and our case worker at Buckner told us, “You have a son.  You can pick him up tomorrow in Dallas.”  Talk about your life changing!  From that instant, my life has never been the same.  The next day I had to fill up the car for our drive to Dallas.  I was so excited I just had to tell someone else what had happened the night before.  I told the gas station attendant, “I have a son!” 

Or, like the night Nancy and I got engaged.  Talk about your life changing!  I can still recall every single moment of that evening in explicit detail.  After I gave her the ring and asked her to marry me, she said “Yes!”  Ten minutes or so later, after we’d sealed the deal with a few handshakes, we picked up the phone and started calling anyone who would answer.  At least Nancy did.  I was already busy planning the wedding, of course.

That’s the way it works.  When the best thing that ever happens to you actually happens, it changes your life forever and you just have to tell someone.

Now, may I ask you a personal question?  When I asked you to think of the very best thing that ever happened to you, did you by any chance think of something that had to do with Jesus?  Is Jesus the best thing that ever happened to you?  Is he even on the list of the top five or ten best things?  When you met Jesus, did it change your life forever and did you to tell anyone about it?

The Jews had been looking for a Messiah for centuries.  I don’t think it is possible for us to appreciate that kind of anticipation.  Americans have never known anything but freedom for some two and one quarter centuries.  In the day the gospels have recorded for us, Jews had never known anything but some form of domination or oppression.  All of their hopes for national sovereignty and independence hung on the coming of a Messiah.  Suddenly, on what would have probably been an otherwise normal day, someone announces, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).  I can’t imagine what that announcement must have meant.  Except that, for Andrew, the best thing he could have ever imagined had just happened to him, his lived had changed and he had to tell someone. 

In the two gospel accounts we have read this morning, we seem to have two versions of the same event.  In Matthew’s account, Jesus is walking along the seashore, sees Andrew and his brother Peter and calls them to follow him at the same time.  In John’s account, Andrew met Jesus first then went and found Peter and brought him along.  It might appear to be a conflict but it doesn’t have to be.  It’s the same thing, just told from the perspective of two people who recalled the event a little differently.

Somewhat like what would happen if there were a car wreck out here at the corner of 10^th and Zang this morning.  When the police came to investigate and found three witnesses to the accident, how many versions of the same event do you think they’d hear?  Everyone would almost certainly agree that there had been a wreck.  Beyond that, there would almost certainly be three different perspectives on how it happened.  Unless all three witnesses were Baptists.  In that case, there would probably be at least five different versions of the story.

That is somewhat the way of scripture.  The same significant events are often recorded from different perspectives, especially in the gospels.  If someone ever tells you the scripture contradicts itself, you can say, “That’s an interesting perspective.” 

Which means that, if I ask you to tell me what Jesus means to you, all you can tell me is about your perspective.  That’s it.  If I asked someone else, they’d see things differently.  From your perspective, is Jesus or anything about him the best thing that ever happened to you? 

This was Andrew’s perspective.  “One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah.’” (John 1:40-41).

Do you see it?  His encounter with Jesus was so overpowering that he started following him.  Then, he had to tell someone so he told his brother, first. 

This past few weeks we have been thinking about faith verbs.  The first three weeks of this little series we talked about unloading (as in confessing), walking (as in following Jesus) and outsourcing (as in dependence on God instead of ourselves for life’s resources).  This week, our faith verb is bringing. 

Have you ever been responsible for bringing anyone to Jesus, like Andrew did Peter?  Whether or not you have has everything to do with your perspective of Jesus, of what encountering him meant to you when you did.

When Andrew and Peter met Jesus, it so impacted their lives that they abruptly abandoned their careers and their father to follow him, without even knowing where that might lead.  Have you ever had that kind of experience?  I haven’t.  I’ve never been so touched by an experience that I immediately dropped two of my most valuable life experiences in order to have that one.  That must have been some life changing experience!  It must all be a matter of perspective, as to what Jesus means to us when we meet him.

Just this week I heard a song I haven’t heard in a long time that took me way back in time, to my freshman year in college.  I was in some store and over the intercom came “Jesus is Just Alright With Me” by The Doobie Brothers.  It was the tail end of the Jesus movement then.  Following Jesus had kind of become cool to do, no matter what else you were doing.  I was so naïve back then that it never occurred to me that the name, The Doobie Brothers, was of dubious distinction.  A doobie is a marijuana cigarette.  But, that makes sense looking back on it.  The Jesus movement had kind of crept across all sorts of lines and become ingrained in the hippie culture.  Hippies who followed Jesus were known as Jesus freaks.  You could smoke your pot and still sing that Jesus was alright, too.  A little pot.  A little Jesus.  That’s alright!  Right? 

It can be a dangerous thing when our following of Jesus becomes so ingrained in the culture that you can’t tell the difference between the two.  We’re having that problem even now.  It’s getting to the place where following Jesus has become such a family-values-American kind of thing that you can’t tell the difference between being an American in some quarters and a follower of Jesus.  That’s very, very frightening!  And, though you’ve heard me rail on about it before, as long as untruth is spoken, I’ll speak truth as I know it. 

One of the reasons for that cultural ingraining of Christianity lies at the feet of those who preach what has become known as the prosperity gospel which basically proclaims that if you just follow Jesus, he’ll make you rich.  One recent television evangelist recently testified that he never would have believed he’d ever own one private jet.  Now, after following Jesus, he’s had three!  Praise the Lord and pass the plate!  He was selling this as a bill of goods to any and all who both wanted Jesus and the material wealth the world offers, too. 

If that’s all our gospel offers, what are we offering them that Wall Street doesn’t?  In fact, if getting wealthy is your primary goal in life, I can certainly recommend some cheaper and more hassle free ways of achieving that goal without following Jesus.  At least you wouldn’t have to listen to or pay some TV preacher brag about his three Lear Jet garage.  But, if Jesus will make you wealthy, well, that Jesus is just alright, right?

Like, “Where do you want to eat tonight, Burger King or McDonald’s?”  “Oh, it doesn’t matter, either one is alright with me.”  Or, “Do you think we should tithe or go ahead and get that nicer car?”  “Oh, it doesn’t matter.  Either way is alright by me.”  “Should we go to church today or just take in a movie?”  “It doesn’t matter.  Either way is alright by me.” 

If it doesn’t matter either way and there’s at least a little room for Jesus as long as things don’t get too crowded, one might be left to wonder whether a meeting with Jesus has ever actually occurred.  If meeting Jesus has not so radically transformed our lives that it has at least begun to reshape our most basic values in terms of how we treat people, use our time and invest the resources of our lives, have we actually met the living Christ? 

Back when I would let people guilt me into what we call witnessing, I’d often get desperate enough to repeat the stories others told about their encounters with Jesus.  I just didn’t know at the time that, when we do that, we’re only repeating hearsay, not bearing witness of our true faith experience.  I also did this not realizing that hearsay rings hollow when we are trying to share our faith.  It lacks the authority of authenticity. 

I was once called as a witness in a trial.  One of the members of my church was on trial for a criminal offense.  I was asked by the defense to serve as a character witness.  I’d heard of this man’s behavior.  But, I’d never witnessed it myself.  When I went to court, though the prosecutor tried hard to get me to shame this man’s character in court, I refused to do so.  I wasn’t taking up for him.  I just wasn’t going to bear witness to what was, to me, only hearsay.  Hearsay doesn’t cut it in court anyway.  Hearsay doesn’t cut it with those we are trying to bring to Christ, either.

How often I’ve quoted the apostle Paul!  “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10, NIV).  That’s a wonderful testimony.  And, while I’m growing to share that sentiment and passion more and more with each passing day, that isn’t really my testimony.  It’s Paul’s. 

I love to read about and tell the story of Deitrich Bonhoeffer.  Here was a German pastor who, less than one month from the end of World War II, was hanged because he would not recant his faith in Christ for the Nazis.  I love to tell his story.  But, it’s not mine.  I’ve never known the Christ you only meet at the gallows, when the noose is around your neck.  Bonhoeffer knew that Christ; I can’t say I do.

If you want me to tell you that following Christ will make you wealthy, the only way I could tell you that is to repeat hearsay.  I’ve heard others say that.  But, that’s not been my experience.  To be sure, by any standard, I’m wealthy beyond belief compared to the average person in this world.  But, I don’t have a three-Lear Jet garage as my reward for following Jesus.  So, I won’t tell you that following Christ will make you wealthy.

This is the story I can tell you, the story that is mine.  It’s portrayed best in a memory of mine from my earliest childhood.  I couldn’t have been more than about four or five.  It was an age when you envy the older people in your life who have any authority and you want to mimic them, to “play” teacher or preacher or whatever.  At four or five, “older people” includes anyone who is six or older.  I envied the paper boy. 

He rode up and down the street every day throwing the neighborhood papers.  When he did what he did, it made adults sit up and pay attention.  I envied the paper boy.  Another boy in the neighborhood and I decided to play paper boy.  We took the paper after the paper boy threw it into our yard one afternoon and rode up and down the street on his bicycle throwing the paper into neighbors’ yards.  We’d pick it up and ride to the next house and do it again, over and over.  Until one time, a man came out of his house and picked up the paper, thinking it was his.  Except it wasn’t.  It was my dad’s paper. 

I was devastated.  I ran home as fast as I could, crying because of what I’d done with dad’s paper.  I didn’t mean to.  But, I had thrown my father’s paper away, wasted it, lost it.  I didn’t know what to do but run home to dad.  And, this is what I remember about what happened when I got there and found my dad waiting.  Dad didn’t scold or lecture me.  Instead, I remember him picking me up and holding me close and assuring me that the loss of one paper wasn’t as important as I was to him. 

I cannot tell you that following Christ will make you wealthy and I cannot tell you that Paul’s testimony is mine or that Bonhoeffer’s testimony is mine.  But, if you want me to tell you what meeting Jesus has meant to me, this is what I will say.

It is like being taken up in God’s arms, swallowed up in love.  It’s like swimming in a sea of grace as free as a dolphin or flying free like an eagle in a sky of mercy with no limit to the horizon.  It’s like climbing the hill of mercy, leaping like a mountain goat from one ledge to another, fearless and never weary and only feeling stronger with each step and climbing so high that, now and then, I can reach out and touch the clouds of heaven’s glory!  I can tell you that story.  That’s my story.  That’s the Jesus I know.

If you want me to tell you that I no longer fear what death can do to me, I can tell you that story.  I’ve seen it take those I love most and know, as much as I know my own name, that death only blew its frosty breath on their brow before being shoved out of the way by the Spirit as he winged their souls to heaven.  I no longer fear what death can do to me.  I no longer fear what death can do to me if it chooses to send its cowardly cousins of disease and fear to threaten the peace of the night.  I no longer fear death because I have heard the still small voice of the one who died and rose again whisper his peace in my ear. 

I can’t tell you that trusting Jesus will never mean being afraid again, or depressed or worried sick.  I can tell you that, when I have been most alone, most frightened, most worried, in ways that I can barely describe in human words, I have felt the presence of the living Christ, physically felt him, closer to me than any human could ever be.  It’s not so much that he says something audible to human ears.  He just shows up when no one else can.  He just shows up and sits with me for a while.  I can tell you that story.  That’s my story.  That’s the story of the Jesus I know.

I can’t repeat hearsay.  But, I can tell you that story.  That’s my story.  That’s the story of the Jesus I know.  I can’t tell you that trusting Jesus will never mean being afraid again, or depressed or worried sick I can tell you that, when I have been most alone, most frightened most worried, in ways that I can It’s not what he says – just his presence.  I can tell you that story.  That’s my story.  That’s the story of the Jesus I know.  If you will let me, I can bring you to that Jesus.

What if we did that this year?  What if we just asked God for the privilege of bringing one person, just one, to meet the Jesus we’ve met?  Don’t you think that would change our lives, no matter what it meant to them?  Don’t you think that, once we brought just one person to Jesus, we wouldn’t be able to stop talking about it?