A Christian’s Enduring Influence

Even if their paths cross only for a season, Christians can leave a lifelong impact on one another’s spiritual lives. Today, Sinclair Ferguson remembers Dennis, whom God used in his life as a first-year university student.

Welcome to Things Unseen. All this week on the podcast, I’ve been reflecting with you on some of the people who helped me in the early days of my Christian life. And my hope has been that it will stimulate you to think about the special people the Lord has given to you as well, to help you. And all the people I’m thinking about belong to my early days, and they’re all hidden people. It’s quite possible that nobody who ever listens to this podcast will ever have known them, apart from me. Yes, like you, I appreciate well-known preachers who minister to us, but it’s the hidden people who usually mean the most to us, isn’t it? They’re the Lord’s special gifts to us.

So, I went off to university when I was 17. I belonged to a Bible reading society that had a great influence among young Christians in Great Britain and in the old British Commonwealth countries—it’s called the Scripture Union. Those were the days of badges, a sign you belong to something bigger than yourself, and the Scripture Union badge was a lamp on a green background, reminding us that God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And I wore it on my lapel. In my very first week on campus, I was going up the stairs in the residence I lived in when an older student passed me on the way down. I later discovered his name was Dennis. As he passed me by, he paused, pointed to the badge on my lapel and said, “You’ll find another badge like that in room”—and he mentioned a room number and kept on walking down the stairs.

We all had our own separate study bedrooms in the residence, and so later on, I climbed the stairs, knocked a little nervously on the door of the room he had mentioned, and it was opened by a tall, older student wearing a black graduate’s gown. We undergraduates wore red togas, believe it or not, although it was a kind of code that dictated that you showed your seniority by wearing it further back on your shoulders. And I can still see him coming to the door, as I said, somewhat nervously, “One of the other students told me I’d find a badge like this”—pointing to my badge—“in your room.” “Come in,” he said warmly.

I know it sounds like the beginning of a spy movie, or something out of the days of the early church when Christians are said to have drawn fish on the ground as a sign to others that they were Christians—all very cloak and dagger. But it was my introduction in a university of about three thousand students with just a few dozen students in the intervarsity group. It was my introduction to some of the longest standing Christian friends I’ve had.

Dennis graduated at the end of that year. He went back to the northeast of England where he lived, and I never saw him again or heard about him again, and I’ve no idea if he ever heard any news of me either. We were like ships passing in the night in one sense, but we weren’t passing in the night. For a few months we were passengers on the same ship, on the same journey, until he needed to sail on to his next port of call. And so, I was never able to tell him how I looked back later on those early months at university with tremendous appreciation for his investment in my life.

There’s something else I’m grateful to Dennis for. We were talking about prayer one day, and I said to him, “You know, Dennis, I’ve never found prayer easier than I’m finding it just now.” And he said to me in his enthusiastic Northeast England accent, “Well,” he said, “enjoy it while it lasts.” That might not have been the encouragement I was looking for, but it was actually full of wisdom. Because the Christian life, of which prayer is a kind of miniature of the whole, has seasons when the road seems level and smooth and brightly lit and full of joy. But Dennis was simply reminding me that there are other times it can be mountainous and dark.

So, it’s interesting, isn’t it, after all these years, I can still remember the big lessons that Dennis taught me. The first is this, that when you meet a young person about whose faith you know very little, be sensitive, take things step-by-step. It’s easy to do harm by being a spiritual bull in a china shop—I know I’ve met a few of them. And the second lesson: when life is full of blessing and relative ease, then do enjoy it—just don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s always going to be like that, because you’re not home yet.

As I think about these amazing hidden people who have helped me, I also realize that some fellow believers who listen to Things Unseen may never have had friends like that. But if so, there’s still a real lesson to learn from them, isn’t there? Even if you’ve never had such a friend, you can be such a friend to somebody else. I hope you’ll pray about that and that it will bear fruit in your life.