I find E. Stanley Jones life story most challenging and inspiring. Jones was an early lifelong American Missionary to India. During his inspired lifetime, Jones became a close friend of Prime Minister Gandhi, a best selling author, and a successful Missionary-Statesman. 

Typical of Jones' life was the occasion that he was chosen "The Methodist of the Year." Jones later recalled that event in his classic autobiography as a time in which  he was so busily engaged in evangelistic meetings, "I couldn't stop to go to the function to receive the honor, so my daughter graciously received it on my behalf."

He was twice nominated in the Norwegian Parliament for the Nobel Peace Prize, but he felt deeply gratified that the honor eventually went to Dr. Martin Luther King, for as Jones remarked, "he had earned it much more than I," and Jones had already received "The Gandhi Peace Prize; several of his books had sold over a million copies each--The Christ of the Indian Road and Abundant Living; and he had met emperors, kings, presidents, and prime ministers.

And yet, as I look back, recalled Jones, "all these combined do not weigh in appreciation as much as the one single fact of the honor bestowed upon me when I was set apart as the bearer of good news, an evangelist (Italics added). Something was washed from my soul when I went through the twenty-four hours of being immersed in the honors of being a bishop. I came through  it all with no regrets, no conflicts, and no divided loyalties. My sins and mistakes he has forgiven and buried in his love; my vision he has clarified--I now have the single eye.

"A woman seeing me pushed from engagement to engagement said to me recently: 'Don't you ever do what you want to do?' I laughed and said, 'But this is what I want to do.' So I can make Paul's words my own: 'For myself, I set no store by life; I only want to finish the race, and complete the task which the Lord Jesus assigned to me, of bearing my testimony ... of God's grace'" (Acts 20:24).

So Jesus is Lord, concluded Jones. Jesus is Lord of the past, the present and the future. Jesus is Lord of everything. Jesus is Lord, "unqualified." We can only examine Jones inspired life and add, what a conclusion! A conclusion which is a beginning!

From Warner's World, it is my single focus more and more: to fulfill the conclusion--the long life God has given me, with that conclusion which is the beginning of the rest of my life--life with the Lord of Life. walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com