Perhaps you are like me, praying for 20+ years for your sons and daughters to give their lives to Jesus. There is no outward change that you can see. Do not be discouraged. The change will begin in their heart where the Holy Spirit is dealing with them.
Remember the parable that Jesus gave about the lost sheep?
“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?
“And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’
“I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.” Luke 15:4-7
“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Luke 19:10
I was delighted to find the blog, “My road, as I travel it” yesterday, and was blessed by the Nov. 18th post. This article is right in line with the message the Holy Spirit has been teaching me this week.
I want to share part of it with you, and encourage you to go to her site to read the entire article.
"The Atheist Theology Student Who Was Found by God"
John Powell a professor at Loyola University in Chicago writes about a student, in his Theology of Faith class, named Tommy.
Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father-God…
When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone, "Do you think I’ll ever find God?"I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically.
"Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."
I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, "Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!"
He shrugged a little and left my class and my life…Later I heard that Tommy had graduated and I was duly grateful…
Then a sad report, I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me…
“…What I really came to see you about," Tom said, “is something you said to me on the last day of class. I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But He will find you.’
“I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven.
“But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit.
“Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn’t really care ... about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that.”…
(He goes on to tell the story of making reconciliation with his family and the joy it brought.)
“I was only sorry about one thing, that I had waited so long. Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.
"Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop,
‘C’mon, jump through. C’mon, I’ll give you three days, three weeks.’
“Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour. But the important thing is that He was there. He found me.
“You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him."
Blessing to all of you and may you have
a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Carolyn
