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Leslie and I burst into tears—and I mean that literally: we erupted into sobs when the grim-faced doctors broke the news to us at Leslie’s bedside. There was something terribly wrong with our newborn daughter [Alison].
The next several days were a stomach-churning blur. It was agonizing to see our firstborn child hooked up to machines and monitors, with an intravenous needle in her ankle. What’s worse, we weren’t Christians at the time—and without God, there was really nowhere to turn.
In the midst of that horror, I was walking in despair down the hospital corridor when a telephone on the wall rang. A nurse picked it up and then looked around. “It’s for you,” she said.
On the line was David, a man I had known years earlier but hadn’t seen in a long time. At first I was puzzled why he would be calling me, especially there. The truth is that in the course of interacting with David in the past, I had lied to him, misled him, made fun of him, broken promises to him, and ruthlessly criticized his church and everything it stood for. But he was a committed Christian, and that’s why he was on the phone that day.
“I heard what’s going on with your little girl,” David said, his voice laden with concern. “What can I do for you? Can I come down there and be with you for a while? Would you like to talk? Can I bring you anything? Can I run some errands for you? Lee, just give the word and I’ll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’ll be praying for your daughter, and so will my friends at church.”
I was incredulous! I couldn’t believe he had bothered to track me down and was willing to drop everything, take time off from work, and drive sixty miles just to help me. Or that he and some strangers in a church were willing to get on their knees and plead to their God for the recovery of a child they had never met—the offspring of an avowed atheist, no less. There’s no way in the world that I deserved that.
I thanked David, although I didn’t take him up on his offer. Then after ten tense days, Alison simply recovered from her mysterious illness. The doctors didn’t know what to make of it and, by God’s grace, to this day she has never exhibited any lingering effects from it.
Since then Leslie and I have tried to forget the trauma that we went through when Alison was hospitalized. Yet today, more than three decades later, I could take you back to the precise spot where I received that call from Dave. That’s how deeply it’s seared into my memory.
David’s actions illustrate the kind of impact that Christians can have when we’re willing to go beyond mere words and put the love of Christ into practical action. After all, talk is cheap. Look at Jesus: he didn’t just say he loved the world, he showed his love by becoming a servant.
When we serve others as Jesus would, when we sacrifice for others as Jesus did, and when we put our love into tangible action as Jesus modeled, then this can open the hardest of hearts that would otherwise be impervious to the message of Christ.
Words evaporate quickly. Most of what a pastor says in a sermon will be forgotten before dinner. But people remember a selfless act of servanthood forever. I can attest to that because I’ll never forget David.—Lee Strobel1
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I remember visiting a friend before surgery. He wasn’t especially close to God, and I knew he was nervous. I promised to stop by and see him before the operation, and I ended up praying with him, right in front of his wife, who was also not so close to God. It was a tiny bit awkward at first, but after I stumbled through a question, “Would it be okay if I said a prayer for you?” and received a quiet nod, it turned out fine.
In the hallway, his wife met me. “Elisa, pray with me too!” she begged through fearful and tearing eyes. I was more than surprised. Here was a woman who’d insisted she had little room for God in her life, asking me to pray for her. She was in a dark place and needed light to find her way. I prayed.
Through his light in our lives, God offers emergency lighting to those in dark moments of crisis. Whether cancer, unemployment, floods, divorce, teen rebellion, or death, crisis creates in people a need for hope and an openness to hear where they can find its source.
Those of us who’ve walked in light a long time sometimes forget this fact. Familiar with the steady beams of hope, we overlook others who are feeling their way through the darkness and are instinctively attracted to the hope we take for granted. Similarly, we who walk in light may sometimes grow indifferent to it. Stubbing a toe on life’s speed bumps, we look about and wonder what we have to offer another.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Or time-consuming. Or expensive. Simple gestures of comfort offer hope. A card to a friend after a miscarriage. A meal to a family with a hospitalized child. A visit to a neighbor whose dog was hit by a car. Go ahead and share a book or a CD or a scripture or a quotation that has meant something to you during a similarly painful time. Listen to God’s voice prompting you to express His love for another in word or action. Be amazed at what God will do through your little light!
When people are in crisis, they crave light. All around them are dark moments of unconfirmed diagnosis, unclear decisions, unthinkable circumstances. They can’t see themselves to the next minute, much less through the next step they need to take. They extend their arms blindly, wishing they’ll bump into something that will help them out of their misery.
We, who live in the light, are in the light. Remember, a little light goes a long way. I can offer help and hope to those in crisis. And even when we ourselves struggle to find our way in a moment of twilight, our twinkle is bright enough for another to find and follow.—Elisa Morgan2
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Before we can help people connect with God … we must first connect with them on some shared level of interest and understanding. Sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ begins with the search for common ground—some point of recognition and connection, some way of identifying with a person. It is what W. Oscar Thompson, in his bookConcentric Circles of Concern, called “building bridges.”
Becoming one with and identifying with people makes our witness believable and authentic. If we see ourselves as better than and superior to those “poor sinners,” a true connection will be impossible to achieve.
If, on the other hand, we consider ourselves fellow strugglers and pilgrims, common ground has already been discovered. Because Jesus identified with us in our needs and hurts, we can identify with other hurting people at the point of their need.—Woody D. Wilson3
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There’s someone sad and lonely
Who lives along the way,
You’d like to go and visit
But you’d not know what to say?
My friend, you needn’t worry;
If good-will you have to spare,
You’ll do the job that’s needed
By simply being there.
—Author unknown
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One of the best soul winners I know does not know she is a soul winner. In fact, if I mentioned it to her, she would probably laugh out loud. Lori does not know how to witness in any conventional way. She is not a part of any program of evangelism training or outreach. She is not a Bible scholar. What is her secret? She has lost friends and she wants them to be saved
Her approach? She takes it one person or one family at a time and stays with it until they gladly receive the Lord. She has discovered or rediscovered the biblical principle of investing her life into the lives of others. She does it by being a friend and doing what friends do, but with a different goal in mind. She does not view the friend as a means to her own fulfillment or to meet some need in her own life. She truly wants that friend to know the Lord.—Woody D. Wilson4
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The world has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. To be effective in reaching others with the Gospel, it’s necessary to adapt to these changes, to find out what language people are speaking today and deliver the message to them in that language.
It pays to learn to understand their culture and relate to them within their culture—meaning both their national culture and the culture of the times. What are the people where you live talking about? What are their passions, worries, and concerns? What motivates them. What makes them tick? What principles do they hold? What are their value systems? What is their personal world like?
We need to learn all we can about a people as well as become one of them—in fact, in order to become one of them—so we can truly communicate with them in a language they understand so that they get the message loud and clear.5
Seek the Lord about how you can both show and tell the story of His love for those around you in a manner they will understand. Pray about whether your current delivery methods are relevant and effective in reaching people. Ask Him to show you what actions, what symbols, what words you can use that will make it possible for them to comprehend the love God has for them.
Ask Him to help you to relate, to become enough like them that you may win them. Similar to Paul, certainly one of Christianity’s greatest witnesses, let’s be able to say, “I have become as one of the people of the country I live in, in order to win them. I have learned to understand them, to sympathize with them, to live like them to the point where I can say I am one of them, that I may win them. I have become one with the people in my workplace, my school, my neighborhood, my club, in order that they may get to know me; and in knowing me and feeling the Holy Spirit within me, they can get to know Him who gave His life so that they may have life eternal.”
Do what you can, when you can, to let God’s light shine through you, so that you may lead others to Him.—Peter Amsterdam6
Published on Anchor November 2012. Read by David Salas.
1 The Unexpected Adventure (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2009).
2 Twinkle: Sharing Your Faith One Light at a Time (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Revell, 2006).
3 The Shadow of Babel (CrossHouse Publishing, 2009).
4 The Shadow of Babel.
5 David Brandt Berg, March 1973, “Become One,” 208:14.
6 Originally published January 2012.
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