7/30/16
John
about 30
Three people, three stories. A
quick outreach to other drivers while fueling up at the gas station covered a
pretty wide spectrum of believe and unbelief.
I used “million dollar” gospel tracts as conversation starters, asking
the million dollar question – “Will you go to heaven when you die?” The first man wanted nothing to do with me,
saying he had no belief in God and didn’t want to talk about it. I said “I hope you don’t mind if I say ‘God
bless you’”, to which he grudgingly agreed, and I moved along. The second responded with faith in Jesus and
told how he had come to repentance and faith at a young age and is now actively
passing the gospel on to his children.
The third man – John – a truck driver who had just arrived to
deliver gas, had not really given the question much thought but responded with
interest. He had assumed his good deeds
in life would save him, that they would outweigh his sins on a sort of heavenly
balance scale. But he also agreed that
God is right to expect us to do good, that we can’t use the good we ought to do
to pay for the sins we ought not to do. We
couldn’t talk long but I encouraged him to put his faith in Jesus rather than
in himself and his good works. He
appreciated my simple explanation thanked me for talking with him.
Three quick conversations, and I believe each
can be used by God. The first man could
benefit simply from the question “Will you go to heaven?” May it ring in his ears and in his memory
until he is driven to seek an answer. My "God bless you" was really a prayer that I trust God will answer. The second man, the believer who shares his faith with his children,
may he begin to see the many opportunities to share the gospel all around him as well. I challenged him to share his faith, and the
fact that our conversation had begun through my outreach efforts had backed up
my words with action. Then he watched as
I reached out to the gas truck driver, who responded positively.
These were three different people with three
very different responses. They are
typical, but which of the three do you think would be by far the most common,
the atheist rejecting a conversation, the Christian who welcomed it, or John,
who was just going about his business in life, content in his belief that he is
a “good enough” person and therefore indifferent to the things of God? In my experience by far the most common has
been the third person, John. He is the
kind of person who is open enough to the things of God that he will respond to
our outreach efforts, but indifferent enough that he won’t find his way to God
on his own. Maybe that’s why Jesus told
us to go into all the world, rather than to wait until the world comes to us.
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