DEVOTION: Changing the World by Marcia Lee Laycock

“If you have changed a life you have changed the world.” 

       My head jerked up when I heard that sentence. It was at Inscribe’s Fall Conference and our speaker, Kathleen Gibson, was doing a great job of speaking to the hearts of all the writers there. But that one sentence really hit me.
       I’d thought about changing lives before. I’ve had emails and letters and even phone calls telling me that God has done it through the words I’ve put on paper.
       But changing the world? Really?
       Then I thought about another speaker we’d had at one of our conferences. He told us that not very far back in his family line, someone read a book and became a believer in Christ. He told us that now there are many branches to his family, many are preachers of God’s word, there are missionaries and others serving in their churches across North America. None of it would have happened but for one book.
       I began to consider all the ripple effects that one book has had – not just in the lives of his family members but in all the lives they have touched. I thought about the book I was given just as God was softening my heart toward him. It was a copy of Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict. It was put into my hands at exactly the perfect time. It convinced my head that Jesus was who He claimed to be – the Son of God, a man who came to earth to change the world by changing each one of us.
       And I was stunned into awe and gratitude for what the Holy Spirit did in my life through that book. Words are such small things. They can be simple or profound, plain or eloquent. But when God takes them and bends them to His purposes, He changes hearts with them and those hearts change the lives of others and those touch others and on and on.
       Who knows how far our words will go. If you have changed a life, you have changed the world.
       Yes. Really.

Marcia Lee Laycock writes from central Alberta Canada where she is a pastor's wife and mother of three adult daughters. She was the winner of The Best New Canadian Christian Author Award for her novel, One Smooth Stone and also has two devotional books in print. Her work has been endorsed by Sigmund Brouwer, Janette Oke, Phil Callaway and Mark Buchanan. The sequel to One Smooth Stone will be released in March, 2012. A collection of devotionals for writers has just been released here. Visit Marcia's website.