NEVER GIVING UP ON SOMEONE

I just started a new job when I met him, the man God wanted to reach. At the time, my job was to work on radio towers and he soon became my climbing partner which meant we were now climbing up radio towers together. You get to know someone really well when you are stuck with them 9-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week with literally nowhere to go. I never wanted to push God on him, but I also wasn’t going to hide who I was from him. I would share with him how every morning as I drove to work, I turned on worship music and had a list of people that I would pray for. He responded, “you don’t pray for me, do you?” It turns out he hated God. Still, I continued to pray for him and kept telling him I was praying; I wanted him to know someone cared. After a while, his response softened and he told me, “well, if you’re going to pray, pray for my daughter but not for me.” He later moved away, but we stayed in touch as I saw his heart continue to soften. He fell off the wagon one night and became suicidal. He came to me that night, and as my dad and I sat with him for two hours, all we knew to say to him was he had purpose, that God had a plan for him. Later, we found out that simple truth saved his life. He ended up in jail that night, but he had a new soberness of mind and a new outlook on his life. He told me seeing the level of love and commitment we had actually showed him “there’s something different you have that I want and the only thing I can come up with is God. This Jesus thing you guys have, I need that. It’s the only other way I’ve got left to go.” When I look back, I’m amazed to see how God used my ordinary life to reach this once hostile man. I didn’t do anything special, I just lived the truth of who I am in Christ. The result was a man’s life was saved. It wasn’t me who did that; it was God!