Simple Math, Simply Love

Imagine a young woman who falls in love with Jesus. She knows him to be kind, gentle, and loving. She leads a normal life with one exception: she loves to talk about Jesus when someone asks about Him. She becomes friends with a young man who doesn’t know Jesus. It isn’t long before he too falls in love with Jesus and accepts Him as his savior.

Eventually the young couple gets married. Their lives are normal while at the same time others are noticing how kind and giving this couple is. They seem to have a gift of generosity and bless many people in practical ways and yet they don’t seem to lack for anything because of their giving. They have many friends and some of them want to know more about this Jesus that seems to be very important to this couple.

Some of their friends give their lives to Jesus and at the end of 8 years there are 4 people who know Jesus as their savior. At that rate of growth (25%) how many people will know Jesus 52 years after the young woman first fell in love with Jesus. Answer = 8,192.

Is it possible to imagine that this story is true for the first 12 years? ie. 8 people loving Jesus after twelve years. Why is it difficult to imagine this story being true for the next 40 years? It is simply believing that one person can introduce another person to Jesus every four years.

1 = 1
4 = 2
8 = 4
12 = 8
16 = 16
20 = 32
24 = 64
28 = 128
32 = 256
36 = 512
40 = 1024
44 = 2048
48 = 4096
52 = 8192