Isn't it amazing how quickly we settle for less than is promised and far less than is possible? So what have we in this promise of Jesus? greater things than I have done will you do because I go to the Father. The promise becomes even more pronounced when we remember who said it. Jesus said it. The One who loved and forgave and washed his disciples' feet; the One who took little children in his arms and blessed them; the One who healed the sick, made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear; the One who calmed a raging sea and then gave confidence and ease to his frightened disciples; the One who hung on a cross and gave his life for the salvation of the world; the One who finished everything God gave Him to do and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. This is the One who said, "Greater things than I have done will you do because I go to the Father." So, can we believe it? Can we even begin to think it's possible? I want to suggest two affirmations, which, if we will claim, even begin to claim, will make this promise something that we may be able to appropriate.

That first affirmation is this: You are more than you think you are. Now let me say that again. You are more than you think you are. Now that's not easy to appropriate. I heard a story recently about an old bachelor and an old maid who became interested in each other. They'd lived alone for many years. He was very shy and not able to express his feelings very well, not willing, most of the time, to express any emotion. But he really fell in love with this woman, and finally one day his emotions got the best of him. He was no longer in control, and without even knowing what he was doing, he said, "Why don't we get married?" She threw her arms up and said, "It's a wonderful idea, but who in the world would have us?"

How easy it is for us to begin to slink into that kind of self-understanding! When I begin to feel blue, when the sky of my life begins to be clouded with dark gloom because I'm thinking too much of my failure, I'm thinking too much of my limitation, I become too involved in how I have failed rather than what I have done. When that begins to happen to me, I try to remember the eighth psalm. Do you remember that psalm? "When I consider the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars which You have ordained, what are persons that You are mindful of them? Human kind that you take note of them? For you've made us a little lower than the angels." Another translation has it, "you've made us less than God." "You've made us a little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor." If I could put that psalm together with this promise of Jesus - GREATER things than I have done will you do because I go to the Father - If I could put those two things together, I can know that I am more than I think I am. But you keep insisting, "How can that be? How can I believe that I am more than I think I am?" You have it on the authority of God himself. That's what this Book is all about. It's on almost every page of the Book. You are important to God. That means that you are an unrepeatable miracle of God. That means that there is a place in God's heart that only you can fill. Now let me say that again. There is a place in God's heart that only you can fill. "Greater things than I have done will you do," said Jesus. "Because I go to the Father." That means at least this: you are more than you think you are.

It also suggests another affirmation, an affirmation that will help us appropriate this promise of Jesus. Listen. There is something you can be and do but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ. Did you get that? There is something you can be and do but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ. Perhaps the best way to appropriate that affirmation is to see it in a person. Two of the eight or ten most dynamic and committed Christians that I know are Abel and Frieda Hendricks in South Africa. They are transparently Christian. Abel was the president of the Methodist Church in South Africa on two different occasions. He was one of the great leaders of the Methodist Church in South Africa in that church's opposition to the apartheid system all through those years, when that oppressive system held the vast majority of the population of South Africa in its iron and cruel and really violent grip. Abel and Frieda are "colored". That's one of the racial designations in South Africa. They basically had the whites, the coloreds, and the Indians, and then the vast majority who were black.

The South African government realized that the system was crumbling, and they began to do everything they could to shore it up. The pressure of the world, really, had come to be leveled against them. So they devised this plan of bringing into special governmental responsibility members of the colored and the Indian races, giving them special places. Abel was the kind of person that could have had a place in that government. But still, he protested it because he was committed to those suffering black people who had been oppressed for so many years. The governmental authorities came to him and tried to get him to resist his opposition to their plan, but Abel courageously continued, writing pastoral letters to all the Methodists in South Africa, urging them to boycott the elections. The governmental authorities came again. This time they did not approach him in anger and with threats. They thought they might win him in a different way. They had learned that Abel was nearing retirement, that he didn't have much money, and that he didn't have a retirement home. So they offered him a home, fully paid for, if he would cease his protest against them. But Abel looked at them with the most disarming smile I'm sure they'd ever seen, because that's the way Abel smiles. And in a very soft voice, because that's the way Abel speaks, he sounded a courageous word, In my Father's house are many mansions. I dare not give up that mansion for any house you would offer me here."

Where does that kind of power come from? How do Abel and Frieda Hendricks and people like them who live under trying circumstances - whose lives are threatened daily who continue to make their witness against all sorts of impossible odds - how do people like that receive the power to go on? GREATER things than I have done will you do, because I go to the Father. There is something you can be and do but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ. And did you get that phrase, "because I go to the Father?" What did Jesus tell us he would do when he went to the Father? He said that he would send his Holy Spirit. And what would the Holy Spirit do? The Holy Spirit would stand beside us, would be our comforter, would lead us into truth, would give us power.

Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you attempted something so great, so outside your ability to perform it, that you knew you would fail without the power of the Holy Spirit? When was the last time you heard God's call and followed that call boldly? Boldly, knowing that you could not walk in the way he was calling unless you had the strength and the guidance of the Holy Spirit? GREATER things than I have done will you do because I go to the Father. Would you claim that promise? Claim it by laying hold of these two affirmations: you are more than you think you are; there is something you can be and do but will never be and do apart from Jesus Christ. If you lay hold of those affirmations, you can begin to claim the promise. God bless you on your journey of claiming that promise.

Lydia Talbot: Dr. Dunnam, that was a powerful and compelling story of resistance in South Africa against the cruelty and evil of the apartheid system. I must ask you what empowered you. You are of the South, born in Mississippi, educated at Emory, and now in Kentucky. What empowered you along the way in your own journey to claim that kind of promise and deal with the racial injustice in the South?

Maxie Dunnam: Well, you know, that story means a lot to me, as you say, because of from where I came. I grew up in severe poverty in Mississippi and knew the racial situation, and very early in my own Christian life, after becoming a pastor, was confronted by that because of the civil rights upheavals in the early sixties. And, there's no way that anybody could have done what they've done in that struggle or any other struggle without grace. I mean, if you knew the Hendricks you would know that. I mean, it's another Martin Luther King kind of story, and a lot of those kind of stories that came out of the South during those days of people who sought to be faithful, and received the strength to be faithful despite a lot of suffering and oppression.

Talbot: What inspired you to go into the ministry?

Dunnam: Two things. Number one: I was given a great gift of having a minister that took an interest in me, and coming from the type of background I came from, that really impressed me. And two, because of the limitations of my past, and a lot of the things that were going on in my life, I was looking for that which could give me meaning even in those circumstances, and found that in God's call upon my life.

Talbot: I must ask you now about your daughter. You're very proud of your daughter,

Dunnam:  Yes, yes I am.

Talbot: Because she herself is an ordained minister.

Dunnam:  Yes, she is.

Talbot: Tell about your collaboration.

Dunnam:  Well, Kim just had her first article published, but, this is the neat thing, she and I are writing a book together. So, I'm excited about that, that we'll share this ministry together. She's our oldest and is ordained, and it's been an exciting thing to work with her.

Talbot: And the connection for you, because you are known all over the world for your excellence in Christian communication. You were world editor of The Upper Room, and now serve as the head of evangelism for World Methodist Church. That connection between communication and faith, what's the task today for communicators of the faith?

Dunnam: I think it's the most crucial task that we have because I believe we're in another first century day, and the faith has to be communicated as powerfully and as freshly as it had to be communicated during that first century, because I believe that ours is really a pagan age. Especially in this country, we've just lost the way, and so, unless we learn to communicate the faith and make it relevant to our time, we're going to lose.

Talbot: Thanks for that gift of faith and communication, Dr. Dunnam.