You just never know.

Twelve years ago this month, God used a one-minute-long exchange with a complete stranger on a sidewalk to begin shifting my heart towards Him.

Twelve years ago, I thought my life was no longer worth living. I thought I was beyond hope, a lost cause. I wholeheartedly believed that I had made too many mistakes to ever be worthy of anything good. I felt trapped in the life that I had and I felt forgotten by almost everyone who I thought had once cared about me.

I could never have envisioned a future with a loving husband and two beautiful, incredible children. Marriage and kids were so far off my radar, they weren’t even a distant goal.

I could never have envisioned a day, period, where I truly felt peace and contentment.

Twelve years ago, I would have told you, loudly and without hesitation, that I didn’t believe God was real and if God WAS real, I wanted nothing to do with him. Twelve years ago, I openly mocked anything to do with Christianity. I would have laughed in your face if you told me that a day would ever come when I’d be on my knees at the altar, on a platform leading worship, or teaching a Sunday school class.

But twelve years ago, a kind stranger invited me to her church, and I responded by dropping her flier at her feet and essentially telling her to eff off. I don’t even remember her face and I definitely never visited her church. But that seemingly insignificant interaction between us set off a chain of events that would lead to me surrendering my heart and my life to Christ later that year. That moment in time was the precise moment that God made me undeniably aware of my utter brokenness and my desperate need for a Savior. That was the moment that finally broke me.

I write this to say: you truly never know. You never know how God will use you to be part of someone else’s story. You never know what a person is really going through or what they’ve experienced. You never know how God can change someone’s heart or completely turn their life around.

Don’t give up. Don’t feel like you can’t make a difference or do significant work for the kingdom in your daily life. Don’t just go to church on Sundays – BE THE CHURCH EVERY DAY.

Show kindness to strangers. Love people, unconditionally and extravagantly. Give without expecting anything in return.

Pray for people – not by commenting “thoughts and prayers” or making a public spectacle out of it – but really pray for people, consistently, privately and specifically. Follow up those prayers with actions – words of encouragement, acts of service, and the gift of your time.

Be faithful in small things, because the small things matter most.

Be the church, outside of your church, because the people who are most in need of Jesus may never set foot inside your church. The people who are most in need of your love – and most in need of God’s love – will show it in the most unloving ways. Love them, anyway.

It’s not for any of us to choose who is worthy of God’s love.

It’s not up to any one of us to label someone a lost cause.

Be faithful, in everything that you do, for everything that you do represents Christ to the people all around you.

Be faithful, for you never know what seeds are being planted in someone’s life or how those seeds are taking root.

Be faithful, for you never know just how or when God will radically change a heart that everyone else has already given up on.