Miracles (15 page)

Shocked, Sam gaped at his pastor. Why would John humiliate him like this? What did he expect him to say? That he'd had a supernatural gift of hearing peoples' souls? John stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Sam, tell them what to do. Tell them how to listen. Tell them what to see. You know.”

Sam's eyes filled with tears, and his mouth trembled as he shifted from one foot to the other. He met Kate's hopeful eyes, and she nodded for him to answer. He cleared his throat and tried to speak. His voice cracked as it came out. “Well, basically, the bottom line, I guess, is . . .” He cleared it again. “Well, uh . . . you just . . . listen. Listen to them talk. Look at their faces. Look in their eyes. Touch them. Use your common sense.” Yes, he thought. That was exactly what he had done every time he'd had any success. Something inside him stirred, and he took a step toward the class.

“If you could just hear with the ears of God, for a day, or a week, or two weeks . . .” He wiped the tears before they could run down his face. “If you could hear what God hears, you'd never forget it.” He stopped and took a deep breath and met Kate's eyes, then John's. “There's not a soul out there who doesn't have those spiritual needs. You've got to learn to look for them.”

Someone in the back of the room raised her hand, and he nodded for her to speak. “Sam, what would you say is their most common spiritual need?”

He shrugged and thought the question over for a long moment, juggling the different answers that came to him, trying to decide what the most common and most important ones were. “Well, they need to know that they're loved, that there's hope, that there's healing, that someone's in control, that they're not a product of their past, that they can be forgiven, that they can be useful, that they're made in the image of God . . .” He paused and racked his brain for more.

But suddenly it came to him. There really was only one answer that filled those needs he'd been naming. The answer he'd been offering for the past two weeks.

He stood there for a moment as the thought took hold of him. “You know, really,” he said, “I guess the answer to all their questions, the fulfillment of all of their needs, is Jesus Christ.”

They were hanging on every word, and he looked around at them as the thought sank deeper. “Really,” he said. “Anybody you walked up to, if you were to ask them what their deepest need was, and if they were to be perfectly honest, if they even knew . . . their answer would be Jesus Christ.”

He glanced awkwardly at the pastor and saw that John was grinning.

Encouraged, Sam went on, “So what we need to do is go out there with the knowledge that we have information they don't have. We can tell them how to fulfill those needs. We can turn their lives around. They all have the same need, and that need is Jesus Christ.”

“What if they already know Jesus?” someone else asked. “What would their need be then?”

Sam looked from his wife to his friends, to the people he had led to Christ. And then he knew.

I want a broken heart.

I need to be used.

I've wasted all those years.

He covered his mouth as those tears erupted again. Finally, he managed to speak, “The bottom-line, basic need of every real Christian,” he said, “is to bear fruit like Christ. You can count on it. Every true Christian has that need, whether they want to admit it or not. The Holy Spirit in them, it just yearns for that. And the further they are from fulfilling it, the emptier they are. Jesus cares about filling that emptiness . . . for a lot of reasons. One of them is our own happiness, but the bigger reason is that . . . it's not about us. It's about advancing God's kingdom.
We're
about advancing God's kingdom. And if we aren't acting like Christ, then we're missing it. It's like we're children of the king, but we're living in a dirt shack and eating pig food.”

He saw in their faces that they all understood. He saw the glow of excitement in their eyes, the tears of resolve and commitment.

“Once you start behaving like Christ, in every area of your life, it's like moving into the castle,” Sam said. “You know you don't deserve that joy, but it's still yours. You are who you are. You have power and the inheritance and all the joy that comes with it. And once you feel that joy . . .” His voice broke off, and he looked down at his feet and struggled to rein in his emotions. “Once you have it, you'll never want to be without it again.”

After the class, John suggested that they all go out somewhere and practice sharing their faith before their zeal started to fade. Sam felt that fear he'd had in the beginning, the first day he'd realized he had the gift. But as the people began getting their bags and coats and heading for the church vans, he realized that he had to do better than this. He couldn't be a coward. He knew more than they knew. He had been enlightened. And tonight, the truth had come from his very own lips. The further he was from being like Christ, the more unhappy he would be. He knew it firsthand. How could he go back now?

John patted him on the back as they left the room. “So where do you think we ought to go?” he asked.

Sam thought for a moment. “Let's go to the bus station,” he said. “There's a bus due in about ten minutes. And those people need the Lord.”

17

N
EEDING TO BE ALONE, SAM TOOK HIS OWN CAR AND followed behind the vans to the station. As he drove, he felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What would they say when they saw what a failure he was? Would they all quit? Would they laugh at him?

The vans parked, and his church friends began filing out just as a bus pulled up. He sat in his car for a moment as the weary travelers began to get off the bus. His eyes burned with fear, and his heart pounded. As he got out, he breathed a silent prayer, a prayer for courage, a prayer for confidence, a prayer that he could hear as the Holy Spirit heard.

The group of them broke up, and each approached someone and struck up a conversation. Sam stood with his hands in his pockets and listened as he heard various ones around the room explaining Christ in the best way they knew how. He saw an older man standing near the glass doors, looking out as if waiting for someone to pick him up. But no one ever came. Sam looked around, helplessly wondering whom he should approach, what he should say to them when he couldn't confidently know what their needs were. Then he remembered the theory he'd come to in the classroom a little earlier . . . that every lost soul's need was the same.

Deciding to approach the man under that premise, he went to the door. “Hey, there,” he said as he reached him. “How ya doing?”

The man nodded and smiled weakly.

“My name's Sam Bennett,” he said, reaching out to shake his hand. “You waiting for somebody?”

“I thought I was,” the rumpled old man said. “I thought my daughter was coming to get me, but—” His eyes reddened with emotion, and he looked away. “We don't get along so well and . . . I didn't really know if she'd come or not.”

Sam's heart began to melt, and he realized that he was hearing the need. He looked through the glass door in the direction where the man had been looking. “Maybe she'll still come,” he said. “Maybe she's just late.”

The old man's mouth trembled as he shook his head. “No, I don't think she's gonna come. See, it's been a long time since I've been in touch with her, and well . . . I guess I crossed over the point where there's no goin' back.”

Sam met his eyes and remembered the lost things of Luke 15. The lost coin . . . the lost sheep . . . the lost son. The poignancy of those stories assaulted him anew, and he realized that the Holy Spirit had reminded him so that he could tell the man. “There's never a point where you've gone too far,” he said.

The man breathed in a heavy, soul-deep sigh. “Oh, yeah there is. And I crossed it a long time ago.” Sam looked out the door again, wishing the daughter would come to show the man that there was such a thing as forgiveness and new life. But even if she didn't, there was someone else who would. There was a father, scanning the horizon for the sight of that lost son. “Why don't you let me give you a ride?” Sam asked. “I have my car out here.”

“Weren't you waiting for somebody else?”

Sam shrugged. “Sort of. But they didn't show up either.” The man looked at Sam with new eyes, as if he could understand how it felt to be rejected. “Come on. I'll take you to wherever you need to go.”

“Well, I appreciate that, sir,” the man said. “Don't you need to tell your friends?”

Sam looked over toward Kate. She was watching him and smiling. He winked and nodded that he was leaving. “It's okay,” he said. “They've got another way home.”

As he got into the car with the old man and asked where he wanted to go, he realized that the needs were right there on the surface . . . in the man's face . . . in his stance . . . in the way he carried himself . . . in his words. And what he couldn't hear, the Holy Spirit could. He could do what Sam couldn't.

This man needed Jesus Christ.

That was all he needed to know.

READING GROUP GUIDE

R
EAD THE THREE PARABLES IN LUKE 15. WHAT WAS Jesus trying to show in these parables? If you could sum them up in one sentence, what would it be?

1. How do these parables relate to you?

2. If you are a Christian, how should you respond to these parables?

3. Read Ezekiel 3. What does this passage mean to you?

4. Even though we can't hear the voices of souls crying out, what are some ways we can understand people's needs?

5. Think of times you've missed opportunities to share Christ with others. What could you have done differently? Rehearse those conversations the way you wish they had gone so you'll be prepared the next time an opportunity arises.

6. Look up Acts 4:18-20. Do you feel the way Peter and John do about telling people about Christ?

7. Think about the people with whom you've come into contact in the last few days. What needs might they have had? Did the Holy Spirit give you any impressions of those people?

8. Rehearse a conversation in which you might have met their needs.

9. Why are some Christians (you? me?) so reluctant to share their faith?

10. Read the Great Commission, Matthew 28: 19–20. How important were Christ's last words before ascending to heaven?

11. What do you think Jesus meant when he said, “And lo, I will be with you, even unto the end of the age”?

12. What do you think is everyone's deepest need? Are you able to fill that need?

13. Even though you don't have the gift of hearing the voices of people's souls, how has the Holy Spirit gifted you to meet their needs?

14. Read Romans 10:14 and 15. Do you have beautiful feet?

15. Pray for God to give you the courage and the words to take His good news to a hurting world.

the
Gifted

This book is lovingly dedicated to the Nazarene.

INTRODUCTION

Y
EARS AGO, WHEN I WAS A DIVORCED MOTHER of two little girls looking for a church home, I went from church to church, desperately seeking a place where I felt accepted rather than shunned—a place where I could grow in Christ and get my life back on track. Thankfully, the Lord led me to that place, and that was the beginning of my healing . . . and my journey back to God.

Some time later, as my pastor spoke to the congregation about our mission to help hurting people, he said that Christians too often shoot their wounded. He said that our church's mission was “to send an ambulance instead of a firing squad.” And that's just what that church did for me, through people who'd experienced what I was suffering, and others who used their God-given gifts to minister to me in my time of need.

But I don't see that working in every church, nor do I see it working in my own all the time. Too often, I see five percent of the congregation doing a hundred percent of the work. The other ninety-five percent just wants to be fed. They sit in their pews Sunday after Sunday, like the man-eating plant in “Little Shop of Horrors” crying, “Feed Me, Seymour!” And the workers do everything they can to accommodate.

That's why I wanted to write
The Gifted.
I wanted to show what could happen if we each used our gifts as God intended. What might that look like in the church? And how would it change us to see God working through those gifts, using every part of the Body of Christ, to minister to a hurting world?

It's my prayer that this book will make readers think about the ways they've been gifted, and prompt them to ask themselves how God might have intended to use those special, unique gifts. Sometimes that gifting takes the form of a talent or skilled service, which God honed in them for a specific purpose. Sometimes it takes the form of an affliction, or an experience of tragedy or suffering, which can be used to help others stuck in the depths of despair. Sometimes it's service or compassion . . . gifts we think aren't important. But God knows they are, and He had a plan for them when He gave them to us.

As you read this book, keep your own gifts in mind. When you're finished, allow the study questions at the end to help you prayerfully seek God's will in your life.

Then imagine the Body of Christ with no paralyzed members, actively laboring in the fields that are ripe for harvest!

1

T
HIS JUST ISN'T WORKING.” BREE HARRIS CLOSED her Bible and looked at her co-workers across the table. Andy Hendrix and Carl Dennis looked as frustrated as she. “I thought you said this Bible study was going to be an outreach, that we were going to talk it up and get half the office studying with us every Thursday. That was the plan, wasn't it?”

“I thought
you
said you were going to be the one to print out the fliers, telling people about it.” Carl Dennis looked disgusted as he got up and crossed the employees' lounge. The office coffeepot was filled to capacity, even though there were only three of them here. “Where are those brochures?” he asked as he poured himself a cup. “I never saw them.”