Tuesday, May 25, 2010

What is your one sentence?

What is your one sentence?

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. Acts 20:24

“In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. ‘A great man,’ she told him, ‘is one sentence.’ Abraham Lincoln’s one sentence was: he preserved the union and freed the slaves. Franklin Roosevelt’s one sentence was: he lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war. Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph.”

I found this illustration from Daniel Pink's book entitled “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.” I am not trying to sell Pink’s book, but I am continually amazed how the people of the world go after the things of the world with intense drive and unfailing motivation. And I am continually concerned about the church of Jesus Christ (especially in a city like Dallas) and my own lack of vigor in going after the things of God, especially when I read the accounts of the early church and Paul's missionary journeys in the book of Acts.

This past Sunday, I said that Acts 20:24 was a good capture of Paul’s “One Sentence”. It helps us understand how he went through all he did knowing that prisons and hardships were facing him everywhere he went. It helps us understand his courage, his purpose, and his motivation. To get a quick view of the things Paul suffered read 2 Corinthians 11:23-28. What is your one sentence or what do you want it to be? Let us know by putting it on my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/NeilTomba