Start a Revolution
My new book Revolutionaries is so much more than history.
It contains personal application sections at the end of each of the 53 lives mentioned throughout the book labeled "Start a Revolution."
The goal is to enable us to practically apply life lessons from many of the world's greatest influencers to our own life, dreams, business, ministry and especially to help us spread the Good News of Jesus with our world.
We live in the largest and most un-reached generation in American history. Many nations before us have faced bleaker odds, so we know that God can and will help us change the tide. We need help, and the Revolutionaries lives are here to do just that. They too faced dark generations. Here is an example of one of these sections.
Start a Revolution: It Only Takes a Few
Margaret Mead shares an inspirational quote asserting, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The Apostles embody this quote and give it legs. Consider these first believers in Christ, how the odds were stacked against them. The Apostles lived in a time when only several hundred people in the world had even heard the name of Jesus, let alone adhered to faith in him.
Next, consider that the Apostles had little money or resources. Nor did they have many people to help start the movement. Most church plants start with dozens more members than the Apostles had at their initiation. One of the most dramatic points about Christianity is the fact that such a miniscule number—twelve revolutionaries—spurred the movement that is now the largest religion in the world. Talk about a revolution of divine proportions!
The secret of the few is that the Apostles had decided what they would do with Jesus. One by one, each individual gave their life rather than deny the claims of Jesus. They had walked with Christ, they had experienced what it was to be near to Him, and they were forever changed. They refused to give up, let up, or change their minds.
Their Christ experience so transformed their hearts that they set out to change the world, carrying His message of grace and sacrifice. Far from being inclusive to other religions, a hot button item in our generation in the United States today, they were as exclusive as they come. If it’s hard enough to be exclusive in a generation where one in three people around the world claim adherence to the Christian faith, can you imagine what exclusivity meant in their time, where only one person in three million had ever heard the Name of Jesus?
The essential problem lies in the fact that if we believe—truly believe—the revolutionary message of Christ’s love, we will share it with others. Do we believe? In His coming, living as God in flesh, His death on the cross for our sins, His resurrection on the third day, and then rising to sit at the right hand of the Father to await the coming of his believers soon? If we believe, we will share it with others.
This is not the type of extreme exclusivity or fundamentalism that kills people who don’t convert. No, it continues to this day, this fundamentalism that sacrifices personal reputation to share with others a deep, other-worldly, revolutionary type of love, laying all on the line that other men and women may know Christ and His claims. This sacrificial fundamentalism has been and continues to be found in people who would choose to die rather than deny Christ’s power to start the most important revolution in the history of the world. It doesn’t take many revolutionaries: just a few who really get it.
