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).
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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