Hey, it's Mike Henry with Follower of One. Happy 2022. I'm actually a day late in telling you that because I totally forgot to say it when I recorded the episode before this. This is our 579th episode of the Follower of One podcast. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being a part of this ministry. And thank you for listening to these podcasts.
The 579 episodes, those are our episode numbers. We have another 20, some odd that were bonus episodes. So we're very close to our 600 episode. We pray your faith makes a huge difference this year. Our goal for 2022 is to grow Follower of One, to encourage believers to live their faith in the marketplace.
Please let us know how we can help you. But one way we do that is by praying for you. The back half of James 5:16 states, "The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect." That's from the Christian Standard Bible.
My life following Jesus took a pivot on 9/11. We've been talking through these stories around Follower of One. I had spent five years or more, pretty much working on my career. And on 9/11, I was making more money than I had ever made. And I was in the technology world, which was a long way from the trucking business.
And while I watched those buildings burn and waited to go back to work after 9/11, I realized I had totally forgotten about my desire to be a minister; to go into full-time ministry. It was convicting to me because there was so much more going on in the world than I was paying attention to. And so I asked God to show me what to do next.
Would he put me into ministry this time? Or would he just remind me that I'm a minister and leave me to kind of figure it out the way he had in previous jobs? I decided to begin to look for work outside of our current business and industry. I was in the telecom business at the time and little did I know that that market was about to go through a lot of difficulties as well.
But as I was driving back to work on the Monday after 9/11, a thought crossed my mind, "I'm not going to get a new job today. Barring some miracle, I knew everyone I would see. Many were Christ-followers, but I didn't know that. I wasn't, I didn't have any idea.
I hadn't been paying attention. What can I do today, regardless? Was there something that Jesus had for me to do today? And the idea came to me that I could pray.
To me praying is like putting, if you are familiar with golf. With enough practice, there's no physical limitation that can keep me from being a good prayer any more than there is from being someone who's good at putting in golf.
I could putt as well as a professional golfer, if I practiced enough and if I got the same training. So I felt like I could pray like Billy Graham, if I wanted to, if I practiced and tried. So why not pray for everyone that I work with? I mentally walked through the office and prayed for each person. Our company had about a hundred employees at the time, so I could mentally touch base with God for each person.
I used my commute and I started asking God to use me in their lives. I remembered the idea that I had before about helping others move one notch closer to Jesus. And so I prayed for opportunities and I watched. And I began to have more faith-related conversations with coworkers.
My interactions seemed to have more purpose and I felt less futile in everything I did. Our company fell on some hard times after 9/11, but Jesus gave me challenges in ways to interact with people almost every day.
One day, a couple of coworkers came by my office to ask if I wanted to join the gym.
Now I'm no gym rat by any means, but it turns out that even though I didn't know these co-workers all that well, they needed another person so they could get the corporate discount. So I told them I needed to discuss it with my wife, but when they left the office, all I could do with smile. I knew Jesus was in this.
He was giving me an opportunity to get to know these coworkers better. If they'd asked me to go to a happy hour somewhere, I would have gone. But they're asking me to go to a gym. Jesus was solving two problems with one request.
Do you pray for the people that you interact with every day? Are you sincere in asking Jesus to use you in the lives of the people that you work with?
Everyone needs a prayer and James promises us that your prayers matter, ask Jesus to put you to work today and then pray for every person you see. The Holy Spirit will surprise you when he brings the people that he wants you to interact with across your path.
Would you like to join this effort called Follower of One and make your faith central to your daily life? We do an exercise called the Marketplace Mission Trip. We want to help each other be more intentional with our faith every day. Head over to our online community, https://community.followerofone.org and create a profile there.
It's no charge and we'll invite you to go on the next marketplace mission trip. It begins in just a couple of weeks, and it will give you two weeks of practice on how you can live your faith on a daily basis. I challenge you to make this the year that your faith moves up a notch, or Jesus puts you to work in the lives of the people that you interact with every day. And you'll experience joy and purpose in everything you do.
And you have nothing to lose. Check it out at https://community.followerofone.org. Thank you for being a marketplace minister.. And thank you for asking God to use you, to make a difference with your faith. He will honor that prayer and I'm excited to hear what happens. Thanks very much.
