Lord, here I go

“Lord, here I go — please help.” That was my prayer before I left my house to go over to Frank's.

Frank was a great person; he would do anything in the world for you. But Frank did not know the Lord. I knew him through family — he was my wife's uncle. He had been to church years before but never followed the Lord. Frank had many problems, but the biggest one was drinking. He was an alcoholic. The Lord must have been working on Frank — and on me too — because He put it on my heart to go over to Frank's house and share the Gospel with him. That night went well, but I did not know how well until a couple of weeks later.

When I got to Frank's house, we talked for a while, and then I said, “I have something to share with you.” It is hard sometimes to just tell somebody what you know. So I shared using the Three Circles method. It was easier for me to start with something I knew and had practiced before. I did not feel like I was putting pressure on him — I was just explaining why we are the way we are, and what God did about it.

God's perfect design — that's how it all began. God made all creation, and it was good. Then something happened that brought the world we know into being: sin. We live in a broken world, broken because we are separated from God by sin. That is why we turn to all sorts of things to try to make ourselves feel good, such as drugs and alcohol. We are never happy or satisfied, because we never have the thing we were made for — a true relationship with God. But there is something God did, I told Frank, so that we do not have to stay that way: the Gospel. I explained how Jesus came and died for our sins so that we could be forgiven and made right with God. And I explained that if we believe that, we can repent, and Jesus will save us and set us on the path back to God's perfect design.

I asked him, “Where do you see yourself on here?” He answered: in brokenness. I told him he did not have to stay there. “Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?” He replied yes. I asked if anything was keeping him from accepting Jesus as his Savior. He replied, “I know what I have to do.” That was not the most encouraging thing to hear, because I was not sure how he was responding. We prayed together and talked a little while longer. I went home not knowing how it had really gone.

A few days later, I found out. Frank came over to my house and told me that later that night, he had prayed for the Lord to save him. He prayed for God to remove the drinking from his life — and to my surprise, he said he had not had a drink since that night. He had accepted the Lord.

It should not have surprised me, but it did. One of the things I learned from this is that when the Holy Spirit is calling you to go to someone, you should go. I would never have been able to forgive myself if I had not gone to Frank's house the night the Spirit was leading me there. We are all dealing with something, and Jesus is the cure. It is such a blessing to tell people about Jesus and what He can do for them — if they will just accept Him.