I felt horrible. I was tired, had an aching head, and kept coughing up nasty slime, not to mention that our basement at home was flooded with sewer. It was Monday morning and I was meeting with Jamie, the guy leading our campus ministry at Kalamazoo College. I felt like being in bed.

But God had other plans.

Jamie needed a pen so I asked a girl sitting at another table if we could borrow one. Her name was Michelle. Ten minutes later she started to walk by so I said, “Are you leaving. If you are you can have your pen back.”

“No, I’m just getting something to eat.” As she left I turned to Jamie and said, “Let’s pray for her soul.” Jamie prayed. On her way back I said, “Michelle, do you mind if we ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she said. “If a missile came out of nowhere and hit this mall and we all died, and you stood before God in heaven and He said, “Why should I let you into heaven?” what would you say?

“I don’t know,” she said.

“May I tell you what I would say?” She agreed so I took her through three of the Ten Commandments to show her that as a lying, blaspheming, adulterer at heart we would all be guilty before the throne of God. “And it’s not just the wrong things we’ve done, Michelle,” I continued. “It’s also what we haven’t done. The Bible says you are to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Have you ever failed to put God first in everything? For example, watching football when you should have been worshipping, or playing a video game when you should have been praying?” Michelle nodded and swallowed hard.

“Michelle, that’s why Christ died. God has to punish all sin because He’s a holy God. If you killed thirty people and right before the judge announced your death sentence you said, ‘But won’t you forgive me? Won’t you be merciful?’ what would the judge say.
“Forget it,” said Michelle.

“Exactly. And that’s just a human judge. Consider God who is the perfect Judge, a thousand times more righteous and holy than any human judge. God would be an evil God if He let us go free simply because we asked Him to. But that’s where Christ comes in. Imagine that this judge said, ‘Michelle, even though you’ve committed a horrible crime, I’m sending my son to the electric chair in your place. All you have to do is turn from you sin and believe in Him.’ You see, Michelle, God does not have to be our Judge, if we’ll let Him be our Savior. That’s what God did when He sent Christ upon the cross. Christ suffered the punishment you deserve so that you could be set free. But in order for you to be forgiven you have to turn from your sin and place all your faith in Jesus Christ. What do you think of this?”

“I used to be a Christian,” said Jamie, “and used to go to campus Bible studies in high school.” “What happened?”

“A change of lifestyle, I guess.”

“Temptation?” “Yea.” After a pause she continued, “I know I should go to church again and start praying and reading the Bible.”

“Michelle, even if you prayed all day, read the Bible like crazy, and attended church five times a week, that wouldn’t make you a Christian. Sure, those are the things that true Christians do, but that is not what saves them. It is Jesus Christ alone that saves. Is there any reason you wouldn’t trust in Christ today and turn from your sins?”

“I guess not.”

As we talked longer Jamie and I watched in amazement as God slowly opened Michelle’s heart. Michelle revealed more and more of her regret for her lifestyle and admitted that she wanted to give her life to Christ. Jamie and I sat down with her and by this time her eyes were filled with tears. When she looked up again after giving her life to Christ, tears raced down her cheeks and she said “Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.” Michelle’s life was changed.

That was Monday. Tuesday afternoon I came home early to help clean up the sewer mess in our house. Steve Harrington called me from the church, “Seth, there’s a guy here who’d like to meet with you. His name is Mick Groth.” I had no memory of Mick. “He said you visited his house and shared the gospel with him.” I still couldn’t ring a bell. “He built a dog house for you.”

“Oh! That guy!” Last summer we bought a dog, Kimberly found his ad in the paper and he built a doghouse for us. When I went to his house to pick up the dog house he invited me in and showed me pictures of his carpentry work. Slowly but surely the conversation moved from careers, to life purpose. to God, to the gospel. He listened but did not repent. Now, four months later, he was calling me back to talk.

I called Mick right away and he said he wanted to meet with me. “Why do you want to meet?”

“I want to get saved” he said. I was speechless. Mick told me that one day before a girl from our church saw him pushing his bike up the street, stopped, and shared the gospel with him. (It turned out that this girl was Devon Borchak, one of our College Life staff!).

He felt God was doing this for a reason and he couldn’t say no any longer. So we schedule a meeting for tomorrow morning, Wednesday.

But this wasn’t the end. Don was one of two plumbers working on our sewer line. The day was coming to a close and Don the plumber gave me the paperwork to sign. “So you’ve been here for only a few months?” he asked.

“Ten months to be exact. I moved here from Los Angeles to help pastor a church. Do you have a church background?”

“I used to go to church two years ago.”

“Really! If you died tonight and God asked you why He would let you into heaven, what would you say?”

“Cause I treat others like I want to be treated.”

“Would you consider yourself to be a good person?”

“Oh yea.” I took Don through three of the ten commandments and then said, “Don, not only have we sinned by doing wrong things but we’ve sinned by failing to do the right things. Jesus said that you shall love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. That means with everything you’ve got. Have you ever failed to love God with all your heart? For example, ever watched football when you knew you should have been going to church or played video games when you knew you should have been praying?”

“Yea.”

“So, Don, even if you were as good as Mother Theresa, God must punish your sin because you’ve broken God’s law and just judges don’t let people off the hook because they’ve done some nice things.” I then explained how Christ paid for the punishment that Don deserved.

Don was close to trusting Christ but one thing kept him back, “I’m afraid if I do this that I might not be able to follow through.”

“Don, you remind me of the man in Scripture who doubted Christ’s ability to cast a demon out of his son. Jesus told him, ‘All things are possible to him who believes,’ and the man cried out, ‘I do believe, help my unbelief.’” Don got the point and prayed to receive Christ.

That night I was scheduled to speak for College Life, our campus ministry at Western Michigan University. An hour before the meeting I met with Eddie. Eddie bumped into the college life meeting three weeks before by accident. He was looking for the Democratic meeting but Andrew, a Christian from our meeting, ended up witnessing to him and Eddie attended the meeting. Eddie and I started emailing back and forth and we met the next Tuesday to talk about the gospel for forty-five minutes. But tonight, Eddie was a changed man. Later Eddie looked back and realized that it all clicked the previous Tuesday when I took him through the 10 Commandments, showed him how he has broken every one of them, and showed why Jesus Christ is the only way to be forgiven of his sins. This Sunday night Eddie is getting baptized and since his conversion we have met every week for discipleship.

The next day was Wednesday. I met with Mick in the prayer room. Mick told me that last summer he was low on work, so he prayed to a picture of Jesus on the wall asking Jesus to bring him work. Two hours later I called and asked him to build me a doghouse. I sat there in tears as I listened to Mick’s testimony of God’s miraculous work in his life. Five minutes didn’t pass before we were on our knees and Mick surrendered his heart to Jesus.

When we hear about a Christian leading people to Christ we are tempted to credit the believer for their conversion. In some strange way that believer becomes a super-Christian in our minds. Now it’s true, that through the believer’s obedience, God leads people to Himself. But the irony is that every time God has used me to lead someone to Himself, I’ve felt very tired, inadequate, and not in the mood. God likes to use us when we least expect it. By keeping us humble before Him through trials, temptation, or sickness, we turn and give glory to God in the end.

In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul tells how God caught him up to the third heaven. The first heaven is the atmosphere we breathe. The second heaven is out space including stars and planet bodies. The third heaven is God’s dwelling place. When caught up Paul heard inexpressible words that no man is permitted to speak (2 Cor 12:4). That’s a privileged experience! But God didn’t want Paul boasting so that no one would credit Paul more than he deserved (2 Cor 12:6). That’s why Paul says, “But I refrain from this [boasting about his experience] so that no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me” (2 Cor 12:6). Paul refused to directly say that God caught Paul up into the third heaven  in fear that people would glorify Paul the messenger instead of God the saver.

Imagine how tempting it would be to brag about taking a round trip to heaven! God knew Paul would be tempted with this, so in His great love and mercy, God let a messenger of Satan—a demon—run a thorn into the side of Paul to keep him humble and broken before God. This “thorn” is literally a “stake” in the Greek. It’s not small prick. Paul pleaded God to remove this thorn on three different occasions but God refused? Why? So that through Paul’s weakness God’s power would be seen. God’s grace is sufficient for you no matter what He lets you go through. Too often we ask for God to remove the depression, the temptation, the sickness, the heartache but forget to pray for the most important thing: what is God teaching me through this trial?

Were it not for that stake in his side, Paul could have become an arrogant boaster in his deeds. But because of the thorn in his flesh, Paul stayed humble and God used him.

Looking back I know why I felt so weak and sick while meeting with Jamie: so that I could leave that Bronco Mall with full conviction that God used Jamie and myself in spite of ourselves. God made me dependent on Him so that in the end Jamie and I would not credit our skills, evangelism techniques, or oratory for Michelle’s conversion, but the power of God alone. We are the messengers; God is the life-changer.