I met this wonderful individual this past month who
interestingly worked for a Christian company, yet she herself was not a
believer. She is a young lady from the
country we serve in and she shared with me how much exposure she had received
with the Gospel before and after working for her company. When I first was speaking with her I had
assumed she was like minded because all the others in her company were and I
freely was sharing with her my heart for Father and seeing others saved. I recognized how she responded to my sharing
with an expression of feeling uncomfortable so I asked her if she was a
believer. She said she had not made a
decision to believe in God and so I then decided to ask her what kept her from
making that decision, or in other words, why she did not believe in God. Now I am going to pause here to give you some
thoughts on why I asked this specific question.
Okay, I didn’t really have thoughts before asking this question, but I did
feel prompted by the Holy Spirit to ask it.
It was later that I had to ask Him why He led me to ask this somewhat
direct question and His answer came in reminding me of this young woman’s
response. She had expressed to me that
she had never thought of the reason why she didn’t believe in God before because
she was always busy. Distraction from
the world was her stumbling block. She
also mentioned to me how at one time she decided to pray and ask God to help
her in a situation with her family, but He did not answer her prayer (at least
in the way she was expecting) so she let the idea of their being a God go. That was my lead into how I could easily help
her understand how her barrier to the Gospel was a matter of how she determined
the identity of God before knowing who He really is. I explained to her simply that we were not
created to be served by God through our prayers to Him, but that we were
created by God to serve Him. I then gave
her a brief testimony of when I, too, was also in need of God’s help in my life
and I, too, prayed to Him. I shared with
her how He answered my prayer. How He didn’t
remove me from my difficult situation, but rather promised to walk with me
through it. I continued to explain that
if we received answers to prayer the way we feel they should be answered than
we don’t understand the idea of a relationship with God in the first
place. He desires a relationship with us
and desires for our hearts to please Him.
If a difficult situation comes God will use it to help grow us and
change us into a stronger and better person, a person that learns to trust in
Him more and more. His greatest concern
will always be for our hearts. He is a
jealous God. Do we have our eyes on
Him? Are we loving Him more and
more? So many individuals rather choose
to test God rather than trust Him. They
will commit only after He has done something for them. I reminded this young lady, for I knew she
had heard the Gospel multiple times, that He had already shown commitment and
love to us through Him choosing to die in our place. Asking Him for anything more than that life
sacrifice would be insane on our half.
She looked at me for a moment and didn't say much after I spoke. I could tell from the expression on her face
that my job was done. He was speaking to
her heart. He had prompted me to ask her
why because He wanted the barrier of having a wrong perception of Him removed
and challenged. Sometimes I place people
in categories, and do so ashamedly. I
think to myself how this person has had lots of exposure to the Gospel and I don’t
need to continue to plant a verbal seed in their heart. That means my faith needs to grow.. and that I
need to continue to trust the prompting of the Spirit to lead me always into
conversations that will help bring down those walls built to keep the Truth
out. If I can get the listener of the
Gospel to help me understand what their perception of God and or Christianity
is and their reasons for not choosing a relationship with Him, then I am able
to easily find that wall built up by the enemy and can easily call out the lie
and smash it with His Truth. Everyone
has a reason, everyone has a story, we just need to listen with discernment and
sensitivity to the Spirit in how to minister to each heart and then let Him do the
rest. Pray for this young lady to make
time and think about choosing to trust in her Creator.
