Tuesday, April 14, 2009

WAKE UP!!!! YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE

i will never forget when my neighbors house was on fire.
I had never told him about Jesus.
One day, my next door neighbor was banging on my door. I had been lounging on my sofa, languidly watching the dreamy clouds that were drifting by. My, what unusual clouds, I thought. I really should get up and see why they look so unusual.
But I didn't. Instead, I just lay there dreamily.
Suddenly, May, who lived beside me, was beating the daylights out of my door.
What's her problem? I get up, and walk to the door, and as I'm walking I hear her yelling
"Suzy, get out, there's a fire".
Okay, now I'm out of dream land. I open the front door, and there she stands, terror all over her face.
I look across the way and there I see it. Al's house in on fire. Flames are ripping through the broken window, and the whole thing looks like it's ready to go.
I should have been relieved...after all, it wasn't OUR duplex...it was the house across from us.
Just one problem...I had never told Al about Jesus.
I had never had a chance, right?
Wrong. I have two lungs, two legs, and a mouth.
It didn't matter that I had had no real opportunity to tell him about Jesus...I should have at least written him an anonymous letter, or sent him a gospel tract.
I always got a creepy feeling from him...he was an older man, who walked bent over, and talked on a cb radio at dusk, out in his back yard.
If I really wanted to, I could have.
But it just never "felt right".
"I'm a single woman" I'd tell myself. "And besides, he looks at me...like in a weird, dirty old man way. Nope..." I reasoned. "That wouldn't be God.". So I said nothing.
"And now, he's dead" I thought.
"He's probably in hell, too."
Believe me, that did not make me feel good.
But as it turned out, Al was not dead...in the days to come, he returned to his burned out home to live.
Weeks later, I saw him lugging some personal things into his shell of a house.
Al had no one.
And, he was probably going to hell.
So, I raced over there one afternoon, while he was working on something in his backyard.
I asked how he was and then I told him how awful i had felt, thinking about how I had never told him about Jesus.
Then, I asked him if he'd ever asked Jesus in his heart.
As it turns out,Al was not a Christian, and how no desire to become one.
But I had peace in my heart knowing I had shared with him.
If you know someone and you don't know if they know the One that you know, why not ask them?
God will give you the way, the timing and the courage.
just ask