Most of us know far more about our national heritage or our family roots than we do about our spiritual birthright. Dates like 1492 or 1776 or December 7, 1941, mean far more to us than October 31, 1517. We are even more familiar with the Battle at Gettysburg or the Normandy Invasion than the Council of Constance or the Diet of Worms. Strangely, we can name the little ships that carried men across the Atlantic—the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria—but if our lives depended on it, we’d be hard pressed to declare the contributions of men like John Wycliffe, John Calvin, or John Huss.
To illustrate how God uses ordinary people, let’s travel back in time to a period of history called the Reformation. The Reformation’s heroes and battlefields may not be as recognizable as the American Revolution’s George Washington and Valley Forge. Yet the soldiers who led a religious revolution from the 1300s to the 1500s made a tremendous difference in what matters most to us—our understanding of God, the Bible, and salvation.