05 28 08 Lean On Me


“Some people did accept him. They believed in his name.
He gave them the right to become children of God.”
(John 1:12 NIrV)

From his early boyhood, John Paton wanted to be a missionary. Before studying theology and medicine, Paton served for ten years as a Glasgow City Missionary. After graduation, he was ordained and set sail for the New Hebrides as a Presbyterian missionary. Three months after arriving on the island of Tanna (located between the South Pacific and Coral Sea), Paton’s young wife died, followed by their five-week-old son. For three more years, Paton labored alone among the hostile islanders, ignoring their threats, seeking to make Christ known to them, before escaping with his life. Later, he returned and spent fifteen years on another island.
Paton was working one day in his home on the translation of John’s Gospel—puzzling over John’s favorite expression pisteuo eis, to believe in or to trust in Jesus Christ, a phrase which occurs first in John 1:12. “How can I translate it?” Paton wondered. The islanders were cannibals; nobody trusted anybody else. There was no word for trust in their language. His native servant came in. “What am I doing?” Paton asked him. “Sitting at your desk,” the man replied. Paton then raised both feet off the floor and sat back on his chair. “What am I doing now?” In reply, Paton’s servant used a verb which means to lean your whole weight upon. That’s the phrase Paton used throughout John’s Gospel to translate to believe in”1

In believing in His name and His work upon the cross, do we lean our whole weight upon Him? Are we born-again believers of the 21st century putting our entire trust in the Savior? With the Bible written in nearly every known language and many various translations, do we get the meaning of what we commonly call faith? Is He our source, our strength, our life? Is He our Alpha, Omega, and everything in between?

As a full time missionary, I am learning year-by-year what faith really is! The more of my weight I lean upon Him, the more I experience His grace, mercy, and providence. The more I try to stand on my own two feet, the more unstable I become. The more I experience His presence, the more I am encouraged to trust Him and continue in that faith! Remember the Footprints poem: it is surely His set of footprints carrying me through those trying times! As I look back, it encourages me to focus ahead on what He has in store!

“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.”
(1 John 5:13 NKJV)

1 Morning Glory, Sept. /Oct. , 1997, p. 50, copyright © 2005-2008 bible.org