WRITING
HIM OFF

Topics: Conversion; Evangelism; Great Commission

References: Matthew 9:12–13; 28:18–20; Mark 2:13–22; Luke 19:10

I was at a banquet in a secular setting. A group of us were sitting at a table when a guy sat down in the one empty seat. He was smooth. He said to the very attractive woman on one side, “Well, what have you been doing here except turning the heads of everybody in the room?”

I said, “Well, just eating lunch.”

Later the discussion turned toward spiritual things, and at one point I talked about being at a church for people who don’t like church. He told me about his background. He grew up Jewish and had no involvement in that faith beyond age twelve. He had been to a Unitarian church a couple of times and had been divorced three times.

If I had to assess someone on the basis of one conversation who was as far away from faith in Christ as could be, it would have been this guy, Steve. I invited him to come to our church, but I never thought I’d see him again.

The next Sunday, he came to our worship service and sat in the front row. He talked with me afterward and asked where we got our material. I told him about the Bible, and he got a New Testament. He had never read a New Testament before. He started getting up early to read twenty or thirty pages of the Bible every day. He came back to church the next week and the next. We kept talking, and he started thinking about making a decision to believe in Christ. It would be a costly thing for him because of his heritage—his family told him if he became a Christian, he would be dead to them. But he finally said yes to God.

The last time I saw him he was with a friend. He threw his arms around me and said to his friend, “I want you to meet the person who helped bring me to Jesus.”

I almost missed doing that because I almost said no for him.

—John Ortberg, in the sermon “Three Habits of Highly Contagious Christians,” Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Illinois