Dear Friends,
In Winning God’s Way, Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM (the Christian ministry “Youth with a Mission”) shares a powerful story of how God can use forgiveness to bring a person to faith in Christ. In Paris, just prior to World War II, there lived a Frenchman of Italian extraction named Enrico. He was in the construction business. Not long after he had come to know Christ as his personal Savior, he was out late one-night walking near his lumber yard. Just then, he saw two shadowy figures jump out of a truck and make their way into his lumberyard. He paused and prayed. “Lord, what should I do?” A plan came to his mind. He walked over to the two men, who by now were already loading some of his lumber onto their truck. Quietly, he started helping them load the lumber.
After a few minutes, he asked them, “‘What are you going to use the lumber for?”
They told him, and he pointed to a different pile of lumber. “That stuff over there will be better for your purposes,” he explained.
When the truck was filled, one man said to Enrico, “You are a good thief!”
“Oh, but I am not a thief,” he replied.
“Yes, you are! You’ve been helping us out here in the middle of the night. You knew what we were doing.”
“Yes, I knew what you were doing, but I am not a thief,” he said. “You see, I’m not a thief because this is my lumberyard, and this is my lumber.”
The men became very frightened. The Christian replied, “Don’t be afraid. I saw what you were doing, and I decided not to call the police. Evidently you just don’t know how to live right yet, so I am going to teach you. You can have the lumber, but first I want you to hear what I have to say.”
He had a captive audience. The men listened to him, a relationship was formed and within three days both men were converted. One became a pastor and the other a church elder. A load of lumber was a cheap price to pay for two souls, especially when you consider that Jesus taught us that one soul is worth more than the whole world.
It wasn’t just the gift of lumber that led those two men to Christ. It was his act of forgiveness extended to them when they were caught in the act of stealing. They knew Enrico could have them arrested and they knew that instead, this man was forgiving them, even before they repented. It was like Jesus on the cross-extending forgiveness to us before we repented.
Psalm 32:1-5 reminds us that God not only forgives our sin, but He restores our soul. He takes away the guilt of our sin just as the old Gospel hymn writer expresses,
“O precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow.
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
There is not only power in the blood to forgive sin but there is power to remove it, and as the late great saint Corrie Ten Boom used to say, “to bury it in the deepest part of the ocean where God puts up His sign that says, ‘No fishing.’” And once removed a new creation is fashioned out of the one, and while the old man has passed away, the new man is born for eternity. (Paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 5:17).
Make today a great day.
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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