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It’s that busy time of year—when church partners use their summer vacations to spread across the globe sharing Christ. I had the honor of working with such a team recently. I took them to a small park near a busy commercial area. They spread out in pairs, looking to share Jesus with someone who hadn’t heard.
From where I stood, I saw a despondent 20-something Asian young man sitting on a distant park bench; he was staring at the ground in front of him, his thoughts no doubt a million miles away. This guy was clearly having some kind of very bad day. I am not privy to his thoughts, but I can only imagine what personal tragedy may have bruised his heart that day. Maybe his girlfriend broke up with him, maybe he couldn’t find a job, maybe he was cruelly insulted, maybe he was penniless, or maybe his parents kicked him out of the house.
I then saw two of the church partners, Jim* and Alex*, walk towards him. They extended their arms to shake hands with him, boldly introduced themselves (knowing as they did so that the park bench guy might not even know a word of English–but he did) and started to ask the young man questions about himself.
Can you imagine what was going through the mind of the guy on the park bench? There he was feeling lost and lonely in the world, and somehow someone noticed him, acknowledged his existence and broke through his wall of isolation. They even asked questions of him, as if they cared who he was and what he thought.
I prayed for them as they spent the next hour with the young man. I knew that the tract they were using with the young man clearly spelled out God’s plan for eternal life, and it was written in the heart language of the man. I knew at the end it showed a person how to respond to God’s invitation and pray to become a Christian.
Within the hour, the despondent young man on the park bench was a child of God.
Can you IMAGINE?! For this young man, what may have started as the worst day of his life turned out to be the best. His eternity changed. Hope and heaven—it was now all his. He thought he went to the park to get away from it all, but God knew exactly where he was and found him. God loved that guy so much that He sent believers from the other side of the world to seek him out and tell him the news that saved him.
The depth of God’s love is absolutely unfathomable. There is nothing He won’t do to make it known.
*names changed
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