So I guess everybody knows Peter. I mean, he's the first in every list, he's famous, he's popular, and in fact, the Catholic Church will call him the first pope. He was always recognized, he would've been somebody you wouldn't have missed. He was a salesman, a fisherman. He was out there. Andrew, on the other hand, is listed in one of the lists as Peter, Andrew, James, and John, but one of the lists puts it Peter, James and John, and Andrew.  So, Andrew doesn't get all the attention the others do. 

     So let me ask you about a couple of names, see if you know any of these:

MORDECAI HAM

Would you say that's a famous name? Probably not. But he was a religious man, he was a preacher, and he was instrumental in a little boy coming to know Jesus named Billy Graham. I would say most people all over the world probably have heard that name, especially in the last few decades.

JOHANN VON STAUPITZ

Anybody write a paper on that in school? Probably not .And yet, do you know he was the minister that influenced Martin Luther and his faith, so that Martin Luther sold out for Jesus and ended up writing the 95-point thesis that he nailed to the Wittenberg door, launching the Protestant Reformation. Everybody's heard of Martin Luther. In fact, a whole denomination of Lutherans name themselves after him. A man of faith.

PETER BOEHLER

He was a minister who influenced a man named John Wesley and would cause a whole movement of missionary effort because of the Wesleys, ultimately resulting in not only the Methodist Church, but incredible salvations all the way across the land. 

     So, when we begin to look at the lives of people, there are many who were influenced by their mom and dad. Augustine claims that much of his faith was due to a mother that prayed for him without ceasing. Charles Haddon Spurgeon talked about the influence of his parents upon his life, and so much so that he actually was seeking God.  

     And at a desperate time in his life, in 1850, he went to a Methodist service, he wasn't too impressed with the service.He said, "The people were way too loud in their singing." But while he sat there, there was a shoemaker who was asked to come to the pulpit. And when that shoemaker came to the pulpit, Spurgeon writes in his testimony, "I thought the man was rather stupid." For he couldn't even pronounce the words and had very little to say other than he read the scripture. And when  that man at the podium read from Isaiah where it said, "Look unto Jim," he heard him say it over and over, and then the man looked as though he was looking right in the eyes of Spurgeon himself, and said, "Young man, you look miserable. Look to Him!" And on that day, Spurgeon did, and became one of the greatest preachers in England, and perhaps throughout history, seeing thousands and thousands of people in London come to know Jesus as Savior. 

     Sometimes we don't even know the name of the people that influenced others. Hudson Taylor was influenced by a mother. John Newton claimed later in his testimony that he had been influenced by his mother, and he still lived an ungodly life until God rescued him, and when he returned home in 1772, he sat down and wrote perhaps the most famous hymn of all time, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. 

Unknown moms and dads, unknown individuals, kind of like Andrew, made a difference in the world because they brought people to Jesus.