Matt Hagee - You Are A Difference Maker
You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its saltiness, what value does it have? If the light is hidden under a basket, how will anyone see it? One of the greatest challenges that we have in the world today is not that we don't know what our problems are, but people, who can do something about the problem, won't. And I'm not talking about leaders, and legislators, and city council members. I'm talking about people to whom God said, "All things are possible to them that believe". You! The great challenge that we face in life is that the light of the world isn't shining. The salt is not fighting. We're not doing what we were created to do. And the reason, in many cases, that we're not, is because we've taken the five word excuse and applied it to our life, "What difference does it make"?
You are the light of the world. That's not a simple comment given by a common man. You need to understand that Jesus Christ had expertise in light. He was there in Genesis when God the Father looked down at the darkness and the void. And according the John 1, it says that the son, "The Word of God was with God and nothing was made without the word". So whenever God looked at the darkness, in Genesis, and he said, "Let there be light," it was actually Jesus Christ being involved in creation that brought light to form, because that's what God commanded him to do. So when Jesus looks at you, he does not see ordinary people. He does not see everyday individuals that are just living beneath the circumstances of their life.
When Jesus looks at you, he associates the power that is in you with the same power that changed everything in Genesis 1:1. When God said, "Let there be light," it changed everything. And when Jesus looks at you, he says, " you are the light of the world". The same change agent that God used to dispel darkness in Genesis is the same power that exists inside your soul. Whenever you shine, darkness flees. Whenever you give God the opportunity to use you, you can change the world. Shine and move mountains for his glory! Shine and dispel darkness in this city! Shine and let God arise and his enemies be scattered, because Jesus Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith, has looked at you and said, "You are the light of the world". Church, it's time to shine, shine, shine! Give the Lord a handclap of praise!
The other day, I went to a little league baseball game. And obviously, both coaches were struggling with young players, who are learning the fundamentals. But one team was outdoing the other by far. Why? Not because they had a team full of all stars. Very little difference between the talent levels of the two teams. But one coach, every kid that went up to the plate, he'd say, "Go get a hit". And the other coach, every kid that went up to the plate, he'd say, "Don't strike out". Same desire, but little things make a lot of difference. You never know until you try. It doesn't have to be much. Just a little bit of effort can change everything. Just a smile might change the outlook of someone's day. Just a hand shake, a word of encouragement, a hug, three little words, "I love you" might change someone's destiny.
How many lives in this room have been changed by little things, little things for the good and little things for the worse. How many of you wish there were little things that you could improve upon? You don't have to do much. Just a little bit can go a long way. Think of the lives that are tormented because someone didn't do the little things. Think of the destinies that were changed with a little invitation to church, with a little willingness to participate and help. Nobody asked you to do it all on your own. All you had to do was just be willing to get involved and let God do the rest. Little things make all the difference. You may not feel like much in your own strength. But "It's not by might, nor by power, but by his spirit," is what the Word of God says.
Little things in the hand of an Almighty God make a great difference. Give God a baby in a basket in the bulrushes, and he'll deliver a nation. Give God a shepherd boy with a sling shot and a stone, and he'll defeat a giant. Give God five loaves and two fish, and he can feed 5.000. Don't ever underestimate what you can do whenever you decide that little is much when God is in it. You know we live in a world that loves to celebrate the big things. And it's a good thing that we do. We give away huge prizes and awards, and we talk about the salesman of the year, and we talk about the hall of fame player. And we talk about the individual who did better than everybody else. But I think that if you looked at every life whoever got recognized at that level, they wouldn't have gotten the award they got if there wasn't somebody doing the little things.
I'll prove my point to you. I want to show you a fella, who's probably done more to change history than anybody you've ever met. Let's take a look at Mr. Norman Borlaug. How many of y'all know norm? Norman Borlaug, at the age of 92, was told by the Nobel scientists and he was told by a number of other individuals, who keep up with statistics and calculations: that Norman Borlaug personally was responsible for saving the lives of two billion people. Now how many of you think that's a pretty big deal? I mean two billion people? The earth has 7.7 billion people. So if you've saved, personally, two billion people, you are personally responsible for one-third of the earth's population. That's better than all the avengers, iron man, set aside.
Borlaug is a super hero. What did Norman Borlaug do? Norman Borlaug was a scientist. He was a botanist. And the thing that he did that changed the world is he hybridized wheat. And he hybridized corn that can grow in arid climates. And the full bright scholars and the Nobel scholars, they all got together and they wanted to know how much of this wheat and corn that Norman invented was being grown all over the world. And they found that more than 60% of Central and South America was growing his corn. And more than 70% of them, Africa, was growing his corn: and that his corn could be found in places like Siberia all the way down to Sudan, and all the of the places in between. And when they looked at how many acres and how much corn was being grown, and how much wheat was being distributed, and how many people were eating food instead of living in famine, they recognized that Norman Borlaug had saved two billion people, because all he did was a little thing when he changed wheat and corn that needs to be in a wet climate to wheat and corn that can grow in a dry climate.
If you've ever had a tortilla in Tiawana, it's probably Norman's corn. However, if you want to know what I believe, I believe that if Norman Borlaug is going to get the Nobel prize for saving two billion lives, he doesn't get it all by himself. I believe that the guy who really deserves the prize for saving two billion lives is not Norman Borlaug. I think they got it wrong. He changed the corn and the wheat, but the guy who saved the lives, his name is Henry Wallace. This is Henry. How many of y'all know hank? Henry Wallace was the vice president of the United States in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third term. And if you're taking notes, these credit hours will transfer to a university of your choice.
Now Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a president, who served four terms, because of the extreme situations of World War II. And for his first two terms, he had a vice president by the name of James Nance Garner, Garner State Park. James Nance Garner, the guy buried in Uvalde, Texas. James Nance Garner had this attitude about being the vice president. This is his quote in history: he said, "The office of the vice presidency is not worth a warm pitcher of spit". Now how many of you would say that's a bad attitude about your job? The last vice president that served for Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a gentleman by the name of Harry Truman. And we know that Truman was the one who ended World War II when he dropped the bomb. He also recognized Israel. Truman goes down in history. Nance Garner's buried in Uvalde. But Wallace, this guy, saved two billion people.
You say, "How did he do that"? Well you see when he became the vice president, they promoted him from the secretary of agriculture. And what he wanted to do was make a difference. And he knew that if the world was going to be at peace, the world needed food. Because when people are starving to death, they'll fight till the death before they die. So he decided that, as the vice president, it was in the interest of national security that there would be a station set up in Mexico with the cooperation of the Mexican government, and that the United States would send scientists to this station. And their job was to take corn and wheat, and see if it could be hybridized to grow in arid climates. And whenever the president told Henry Wallace, his vice president, that he could do this, vice president Henry Wallace, hired Norman Borlaug to be the 26-year-old scientists that was paid by vice president Wallace to go down there and change the wheat and the corn.
So while Norman Borlaug gets two billion people lives attributed to him all by himself, I don't think he could have done it unless Henry Wallace decided it needed to be done. I think if we're going to give part of the Nobel peace prize to Henry Wallace, who decided to send Norman Borlaug to Mexico, then we've got to also give part of the Nobel peace prize to a gentleman by the name of George Washington Carver. Now how many of you know George Washington Carver? Oh, thank God. I mean I give you a pass on the first two. They're a little obscure. But if you don't know this guy, we need to talk.
George Washington Carver is, obviously, known as the genius of his generation. Some of the things that George Washington Carver did that had an impact on the world, he himself by his own right, is a difference maker. One is obviously that he came up with 266 inventions for the peanut. Most people look at a field of peanuts, and they see snacks. He saw an industry. Not only did he come up with 266 uses for the peanut, which people will tell you saved the American farm, but he also came up with 86 purposes for the sweet potato. Now all of you sweet potato farmers out there, who don't have a picture of George Washington Carver in your house, you need to get one. People are buying your potatoes because of this guy.
George Washington Carver also printed a pamphlet in the early 30's, and it taught people how to grow what he called "Victory gardens". How many of you've ever heard of a victory garden? How many of you ever ate out of a victory garden? Victory gardens were things that were planted during World War II, when produce and food was hard to come by. And it was George Washington Carver, who thought of the idea that everyone could have a small garden in their home, in their window seal, on their front porch, in their backyard. And it spread like wild. Even to major cities, where New York put a victory garden for the public in Central Park, and it fed millions of people during the war all because George Washington Carver decided to do a little thing like teach people how to grow potatoes.
But I believe that if we're going talk about all that George Washington Carver did, we've got to give him part of the credit for saving two billion lives. And it's not just because he was a genius, and it's not just because he inspired people to do things with plants. The real reason why he gets part of the credit is because when George Washington Carver was a 19-year-old student at Iowa state university, he saw his dairy science professor, who was single. And that science professor had a six-year-old boy. And Washington carver went to his science professor, and he said, "Sir, if it would help you on the weekends, when I go out and take my nature hikes, I'd like to take your son along with me". And so doing just a little thing by involving this six year old to give the dad some rest on the weekend, he took this six year old out through the fields and he would show him how plants and flowers grew. And he would tell him how all of the things in nature were created by God, and how they had a purpose and a function and how all of these things could be used for great reasons.
And what he didn't know when he was 19 was that this six-year-old boy was being filled with the fascination about how all of this botany and horticulture and agriculture worked together. And even though George Washington Carver was a genius, and even though he came up with 266 inventions for the peanut and 86 for the sweet potato, and a victory garden pamphlet: he had no idea that one day the six-year-old named Henry Wallace that was walking with him through the fields was going to be the secretary of agriculture, who would then become the vice president, who would then put a station down in Mexico, who would hire Norman Borlaug to save two billion people.
Now I know for a fact, none of you are going to know this guy. And it's because he lived in the middle of the 1800's in a small town that probably none of you've ever been to called Diamond, Missouri. He was a farmer by the first name of Moses. And he had a wife named Susan. And at that point in time, Missouri was in some very rough territory. At that point in time, the United States hadn't gotten all the way to California, and so Missouri was one of the western states, and it was one of the regions that was still a slave state. And Moses and his wife, Susan, didn't believe in slavery. And at the time, they were called sympathizers.
Well in these western states, law enforcement wasn't as structured as it should have been, so there was a lot of vigilante groups. And one of the vigilante groups was called "Quantrill's Raiders". And Quantrill's Raiders believed in slavery. They wanted to keep people oppressed. And they also wanted to intimidate sympathizers. So one night, Quantrill's Raiders they decide that they're going to go raid Diamond, Missouri, because they hear that there's some sympathizers there. And one of the farms that they targeted belonged to Moses and his wife, Susan. While they came to the farm, they shot people. They left them for dead. And one of the things that they did is that kidnapped a woman, who lived in Moses' home, by the name of Mary, and her infant son.
Now Mary and her infant boy, although they had been taking by Quantrill's Raiders, Susan wasn't satisfied just to let them go. She wanted to make sure that Moses went and got Mary, who was her best friend, and that baby boy back. So Moses sent out word in all directions that he would give anything he could if he could get that baby back. And so a few days later, Quantrill's Raiders, they sent word to Diamond, Missouri that if Moses wanted the boy back, what Moses needed to do was meet them in the middle of the prairie at a crossroads in a state called Kansas. And so one cold January morning, Moses took two canteens, one with water, and the other with milk, and his only horse. And he rode several hours, all day and into the night, until he got into the middle of that prairie where the crossroads were at where Quantrill's Raiders told him they would meet him. And when they got there, Mary wasn't with them. He assumed the worst, that she was dead. And he couldn't see the baby, but they did have a burlap sack. And they took a burlap sack and they threw it towards Moses and it landed on the ground. And they said, "Give us your horse: you're walking out".
Moses got off of his horse and he kept his canteens, and he ran to where that burlap sack was, and he pulled the burlap back, and there was that naked, little baby. He took the milk that he had brought from home, and he began to do what he could do to nourish and take care of the baby. He opened up his shirt. He stuck the baby right up against his skin. He buttoned his shirt back over the child. He took his coat, and he wrapped that baby and started the walk from Kansas all the way back to Diamond, Missouri. And on the walk home, he told that infant child, "We're going to honor the memory of your mother, we're going to do everything we can to make sure you have a great living. We're going to make sure you get educated. We're going to teach you to read and write. We're going to give you our name".
And that's how Moses and Susan carver became the adopted parents to a young black scientist by the name of George Washington Carver, who inspired a six-year-old by the name of Henry Wallace, who became the vice president, that hired a young scientist by the name of Norman Borlaug, who is given credit that he never deserved for saving two billion people. You never know the difference you're going to make. We shine better together. Jesus looked at a multitude of people, and he said, "You are the light of the world". In one case, he was speaking to each and every individual, because that light exists in us. But in the other case, he was speaking to all of them. Why? Because we are brighter and we are better together. But in order for that to work, in order for us to decide that we're going to shine, not only does it take a difference in us, but it has to have a willingness for us to work with others. In order for us to come into agreement, we've got to have unity. But you need to understand that unity and agreement are two totally different things.
Most people believe that if you've got unity and agreement: that what agreement means is you see it my way: and unity means, we do it my way. But that's not how it works. The Bible says, "Two are better than one". Why would it say, "Two are better than one" if they're both alike? If both are alike, then one's not needed. The Bible says, "As iron sharpens iron". The only way that iron sharpens iron is when one blade cuts against the other. How many of you have friends and relationships in this life where you're working with someone who's totally different than you, but it's what they have that you lack, and it's what you have that they lack that makes you better together? You see that's called "Agreement," when two things that are different, fit together. And unity is when you have a purpose and a cause that you want to accomplish.
Two different beings can do great things when they are willing to take their differences and compliment one another, not compete with each other. And when they come into agreement, then there can be unity. I'll give you the perspective of my own family. If you've ever met pastor and if you've ever known anything about my mother, you know that they are very different creatures. Dad is turbo charged, type a, full speed ahead. If we can't climb over the wall, we're going to make a door right through the middle of it, if the wall is dumb enough to be there when we get there. That's dad. Mom, totally different. Her gift is hospitality. She's the kind of person who can make the most frigid heart melt. She warms up the room. Why? Because unlike dad, she's taking the time to consider every person in the room and what their individual needs and likes are. The way it works is that they understand that they're differences are for the purpose of complimenting, not competing. And they're unified about a purpose that's greater than them.
Dad doesn't walk into the room and say, "This is what I want". He walks into the room and says, "This is what we need". Mom doesn't listen to what dad says, and say, "Well, I don't agree with you". She listens to what he says, and says, "If that's what we need, then this is what we can do". And they do it together. I mean when they got married on April 12th, 1975 in the backyard of the house, they didn't think that there would be 25.000 members, and they certainly didn't believe in '75, with just a few boxes of fried chicken, that there was going to be a national and international television ministry with 200 nations that were watching and millions of people that were listening. And even when they started that television ministry, they had no idea that some day there would be a school, not just some school with a bunch of kids bringing apples to the teachers, but a school that makes universities blush.
They had no idea that that campus would have 1500 difference makers being trained and go into the world and make a difference in their generation. They're going to make a difference in courtrooms, in operating rooms, and classrooms, and pulpits, and platforms, and places that you can't even dream they'd go. They had no idea that there would be an organization with six million members standing up and speaking up for Israel, called CUFI. They had no idea that there would be a sanctuary of hope where nt only will a woman come and have the opportunity to give a life sentence to her baby, but her life is going to be changed as well. You see you don't know what God can do until you are willing to try. And when you're willing to try, and work with others, I assure you, you're the difference maker that God has hand picked to change the world. You are the light of the WOR. Shine for the glory of God and let him do the rest. Give the Lord a handclap of praise.
Would you stand to your feet? And I want everyone in this room to repeat this prayer with me.
Lord Jesus Christ, thank you that all things are possible to them that believe. Your word says, "Faith without works is dead". Well today, in this service, I commit myself to doing the work and letting you do the miracle. Lord, I'm going to try. I'm going to give my best. And I'm going to let you do the rest. Lord, you know the mountain that needs to move. You know the need that needs to be met. You know the miracle that I'm searching for. But I'm going to let you use me to make the difference. I believe today, that I am a difference maker, because you have made me the light of the world, in Jesus' name. Amen.