24 Hours

I had planned a day and a half to clean the house for weekend company. My sovereign Lord had other plans for me!

Yesterday afternoon, Guillermo, an electrician, came by to work on our A/C. I could not identify his rich accent.

“I am Colombian… Colombian coffee,” he replied to my question.

We talked more and I gave him a tract on the Spirit-filled life in Spanish.

This morning, Marco came to do an annual pest treatment on our home. We have talked many times over the years about spiritual things. Today, he opened up about the physical abuse he suffered as a child and how he would like to help others who are suffering.

After he left, I had shopping errands and had good conversations with Ana, Walter, Beth, and Amy. I had tracts for each of them which they were very glad to receive.

When I got home I wanted to have my daily devotional with the Lord and get going on my housework.

The doorbell rang. Our neighbor, Sharon, dropped by and I invited her in. We have talked about the Lord several times. Today was one of our best conversations. I gave her Josh McDowell’s More Than a Carpenter.

After she left, I knew I really had to get going with dusting and such, so I turned worship music on and worshiped the Lord for the incredible privilege of talking to seven people in twenty-four hours about the hope and forgiveness they can find in Jesus Christ! I am grateful that he kept my heart open and available to these sweet souls on a very busy day when I normally would want to rush from one thing to the next, trying to check things off my to-do list!

A Small Act of Kindness

Mark had just helped Bill pick up the books, sweaters, and other items he had just dropped. They were walking home from school and Mark continued to walk with Bill and they ended up spending the afternoon getting to know each other. Mark continued on home.

They saw each other around school after that and went on to attend the same high school, where they saw each other occasionally.

Just before graduation, Bill reminded Mark of the day they met.

“Did you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?” he asked. “I cleaned out my locker because I didn’t want to leave a mess for anyone else. . . I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent time together talking and laughing, it turned things around for me. You see, Mark, when you picked up those books that day, you did a lot more; you saved my life.”

This true story comes from Randy Alcorn’s In Light of Eternity, pages 121 and 122. Randy goes on to encourage his readers that God is watching and will reward us in Heaven for being faithful to Him. (To me, it would be reward enough to know that I had helped prevent a suicide!) We will probably be amazed in Heaven when we find out that some of the small things we did for others ended up helping them in a significant way.

I also highly recommend this book to clear up misconceptions people may have about what the Bible teaches about eternal life. If you aren’t excited about going to Heaven, this little book is for you! You may even find you will be more eager to share your faith with others so they can enjoy eternity with God, too!

Too Busy With Things

“We have too much stuff!” I fumed as I stumbled past a pile of stuff in the garage.

This wasn’t the first time I had hit my limit on the things we had accumulated. I had been trying to “purge” the house for several years now. I felt like Eustace in C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Eustace was unsuccessful in removing his dragon skin. Only Aslan could do it. For Eustace, the skin symbolized his sin that only Christ could remove. For me, the clinging dragon skin represents all the trivial possessions and projects that consume my time and energy. I have been pruning things out of my life and home with a goal to simplify my life, but it is now time to let Jesus dig deeper than I had been able to do on my own.

It was a revelation to me to learn recently that my struggles to downsize my possessions affect my availability to share Christ. The top four hindrances, in order, that keep Christian workers from sharing their faith are exactly in reverse order from Christians in general (The Top Four – Part One). They are:

1. Busyness
2. Not knowing nonbelievers
3. Lack of know-how
4. Fear

Busyness is definitely an issue for me. I am often too busy with possessions and projects to give people a little droplet of my time that can mean an ocean of eternity for them! I remember experiencing real freedom in this area during Hurricane Frances in 2004. We had evacuated to my son’s apartment, taking only the bare essentials with us. I finally had time that weekend! Without all the things to distract me, I had lots of time available for my family. Unfortunately, we returned home to an unwanted skylight and a puddle of brown water, with blobs of soggy pink insulation in the kitchen, so we were more-than-our-usual busy for a long time after that.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus explains that the seed sown among thorns symbolized “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.” What was the result of sowing seed among thorns? The thorns choked the plant, “making it unfruitful.”

Some very good questions to ponder from this parable are:
• Am I caught up in the concerns of this life? And in desires for more things?
• Am I deceived by what I own? Is something taking the place of God in my life?
• Am I unfruitful because of what I own? Or because of how much I own?
• Am I willing to let Jesus help me “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” so I can more easily run the race God has given me? (See Hebrews 12: 1 – 3)

As Eustace explained after his experience with Aslan: “Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt . . .”

I want to be free to serve, not entangled by so many things. To go deeper may be painful in some respects, but I am ready. It’s not worth holding on to things if they are hindering me in my availability and usefulness.

P. S. If you would like encouragement in sharing your faith, you might be interested in my blog on Way-of-Life witnessing, The Sower.

The Eternal Value of Seven Dollars

The early morning air was still cool, just right for a walk… before the scorching Florida sun would discourage me from venturing out later. No one else was out when I spotted three folded green bills lying near the sidewalk.

Picking up a soggy seven dollars, I wondered if someone had lost them the night before. I noticed I was exactly halfway between two houses. Did one of these people lose the money or was it someone last night or that morning out for a jog or a walk? It was too early to knock on their doors, so I wrote a letter to both houses asking if they were missing any money.

Five days later, I went to our bank’s ATM. I was thinking about the seven dollars and decided God must mean for me to give it to a Faith Promise at church. Right at that moment, I found five dollars lying on the ground there, too! The tellers inside the bank told me to keep the money. I thought this must be additional money for our Faith Promise, not knowing God was about to show me the eternal value of this money I was finding.

Just ten minutes later, I just stepped in the house when the phone rang from the person missing the seven dollars. I drove straight over to her house. Rosanna was waiting for me outside. Her Roman nose and straight black hair said “Peruvian” long before she told me were she was from originally. She was amazed that I would make a point of getting the money back to her, which of course, allowed me to share about the Lord. We talked further and she told me about her problems with her adult children.

I learned she was moving in three days, so it became obvious to me I needed to share the Gospel with her right then. She invited me into her house where I went through “Would You Like to Know God Personally.” As I started to explain about sin and our separation from God, Rosanna began crying quietly. She was very eager to have Christ in her heart, so she prayed silently to herself to ask Him in.

The next day, I checked around with friends and then gave Rosanna’s phone number to a woman who lives near Rosanna’s new apartment. Susanna sounded like a “perfect match” so I prayed that Rosanna would grow in her new faith and would be willing to go to church with Susanna.

I am so glad I did not view the seven dollars as a windfall or even as something to give to the church. I always make an effort to return lost money to its owner. Of course, it was an even greater thrill to see God use this little event to make an eternal difference and bring a lost soul to Himself.

What Price For Salvation?

Rhonda gave me several bags of groceries. I knew a lot of the produce would spoil, so I offered most of the groceries to my neighbor across the street.

“I’ll make soup!” Cathy beamed as she examined the large bag. “My boys will love snacking on the carrots, too.”

A few weeks later, as I was spring cleaning, I brought her a box overflowing with toys that my boys had enjoyed when they were younger. Cathy’s boys, on tiptoe, tried to peer into the box as I handed it over to her.

Then in February, a friend and I sat around Cathy’s dining room table to take a worldview survey with her. Suddenly tears filled Cathy’s eyes.

“Last night was very hard,” she explained.

We listened and we prayed and we hugged her. Then, we shared how she could know God personally. Cathy prayed to receive Christ with us! Her tear-stained face was radiant when we left her.

The groceries would have spoiled in my fridge. The toys might have put a few dollars in my wallet in a yard sale or rusted in the garage. How much better to use what Jesus gives to me as a tool to unlock a heart for God!

An Eternal Investment

A young man waited at our door with a container of items at his feet. We have made it a policy not to support things we don’t know about, so I said “no” and then gave him a tract.

I really wasn’t surprised later that day to see the tract tossed aside on my neighbor’s sidewalk. I did not “invest” in this young salesman to “gain a hearing” for the Gospel. Just spending time talking to him would have shown I really was interested in him. Would spending a few minutes or a few dollars have brought an eternal return?

Fast forward several years to last month when I was given a bag of more groceries than I could use. I knew what to do and gave most of them to my neighbor across the street.

“I’ll make soup!” Cathy beamed as she examined the large bag. “My boys will love snacking on the carrots, too.”

A few weeks later, as I was spring cleaning, I brought her a box overflowing with toys that my boys had enjoyed when they were younger. Cathy’s boys, on tiptoe, tried to peer into the box as I handed it over to her.

Last week, a friend and I sat around Cathy’s dining room table to take a worldview survey with her. Suddenly tears filled Cathy’s eyes.

“Last night was very hard,” she explained.

We listened and we prayed and we hugged her. Then, we shared how she could know God personally. Cathy prayed to receive Christ with us! Her tear-stained face was radiant when we left her.

The groceries would have spoiled in my fridge. The toys would have put a few dollars in my wallet or rusted in the garage. How much better to use what Jesus gives to me as a tool to unlock a heart for God!

SIDE NOTE: Many years ago I gave up on the small return of yard sales and switched to the eternal investment of blessing someone. I could write volumes on what I’ve learned about giving things away.