Today I want to share my friend's testimony that the LORD reminded me of a few weeks ago while we were worshiping. Names have been changed to protect the identities =)
Erin grew up in a small suburban town where everybody knew everybody. When she was 14, a preacher came to town and held a youth revival. During the altar call, though she was touched by the Spirit, she spitefully refused to go to the altar. The preacher then pointed at her and called her out, proclaiming that she had a call upon her life. She recalls that moment that changed her life like it was yesterday, right down to the denim jacket she was wearing. She received Jesus as her Lord and Savior that night, but like so many young people, had some working out of her salvation to do.
She went on to college where she continued her relationship with Jesus, but in secret. She thrived in popularity, academics, and extra-curricular activities, but no one knew she was a Christian. If someone knocked on her door while she was reading her Word, she would throw her Bible under her pillow before she let anyone in. She fell in love with the captain of the football team, and the two got engaged. Even he didn't know of her secret life with Christ.
One day, Todd, also a member of the football team and a good friend of her and her fiance's, came to her door. With a look of distress he anxiously asked her, "Erin, what's different about you? Why are you always so happy?" Knowing what he was looking for but still too cowardly to profess her faith, she played it off as nonsense and sent him on his way.
The next day she went in to work and noticed a somber mood around the office. There was an accident last night. A big rig collided with a motorcycle just off the main road. The cyclist died on the scene. He was a member of the football team. It was the quarterback, Todd. The accident was recorded at 9:27pm. He had stopped by her room just an hour and a half earlier.
That was the wake-up call Erin needed to get her life together and get straight about her faith. She called off her engagement and came clean about her secret relationship. She would have to figure out how to live the rest of her life with the guilt of death on her shoulders.
Some time later, Erin learned what had elapsed in the hour and a half between Todd's visit that night and his death. After Todd had left her dorm, he went to visit the team's coach, also a Christian, but a professing one. Todd went to his house and asked him, "Coach, what's different about you? Why are you always so happy?" The coach shared with him about Jesus. That very night, Todd got on his knees, in the living room of his coach's home, and with tears streaming down his face received Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior.
And within 15 minutes, he was Home.
"God didn't have to," Erin said at the end of her testimony. "But I'm so glad He let me hear the end of that story."
Our pastor has professed that 2012 is the year of stewardship. As I meditate on this, I think about stewarding opportunities in particular. How many moments have I had like Erin, whether as blatant or much more subtle, where I've had the opportunity to partner in His Kingdom work but didn't recognize it and so passed it up instead? How many opportunities have I had to share the life-giving love of Jesus to a crying heart but didn't? How many opportunities have I had to share the gift of salvation through the Son Jesus Christ to a dying soul, but because of one thing or another, I didn't? When our eyes and hearts are openly looking for opportunities, we will find them in places and capacities we never imagined or even asked for. I know I have been much too closed.
He is the author and perfecter of our faith, but I ask and strive to be a good steward of my opportunities, that I may be granted a role in the homecoming stories of children to their Father. This is my prayer for 2012.
[P.S. As an update from my last post...we are expecting again =) ]
