I am not one of God’s finest evangelists. Or an evangelist at all. I can tell people my stories and know enough of the Word to draw from when needed. Sometimes it goes wrong. We do our best and move on.
I was asked to take in a youth for the summer from Russia several years after the iron curtain fell. The idea was to bring in some kids, get them born again and send them home scrubbed and fresh, ready to evangelize their cities. It was a good idea. “Just let them see what a Christian home is like”.
First of all, the one they gave me was a boy, about 15. This was not my first rodeo with a 15 year old boy. 15 year old boys are the same throughout the earth. God must give them to us to make us patient, so we become good Grandmas later.
I did my best. Talked to him about salvation, took him with the group to all the fun things for miles around. Nothing. He just watched me with that surly look of a bored teenager.
One night we were sitting on the porch having a conversation about nothing in particular, or I was, anyway, when he demanded to know, “How did you get this house”? I said, “My Father gave it to me”. He said, “Your father must be very rich”. “Oh, yes”. Here we go- an opening. “My Father owns all the gold and silver and the cattle on a thousand hills”. His response, “Is he a rancher from Montana”? And that is how we started a real conversation about the greatness of God.
knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
… I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
For every beast of the forest is Mine, And the cattle on a thousand hills.