Friday: An Old Tattooed Woman Won a Thousand
WEEK 37
FRIDAY
AN OLD TATTOOED WOMAN WON A THOUSAND
Acts 8:4-8
We ended yesterday with the emphasis that evangelism is not for the specialists; it is for the Christian as a Christian. When I was in Formosa, I was told that during the war an old tattooed grandmother, a member of the head-hunters, was converted and immediately began to convert others. The Japanese tried to stop her work, but the people carried her on their shoulders up into the mountains, where she continued her witnessing and converting. When the missionaries returned at the end of the war, they found she had won over a thousand of these head-hunters to Christ; and they had erected their own churches and were self-propagating. When the missionaries arrived among them, though they had been starved during the war, their first question was not about food but, “Do you have any Bibles in America? Could you get some for us?” They were hungry for the Bread of Life. An old tattooed woman, her own heart aflame, set the mountains aflame.
If an old woman can do it, then a child can do it too. A little boy of ten said, “Mother, I think I saved the soul of a policeman today.” “How?” asked the mother. “Well, he was so nice to me in taking me across the street that I said, ‘You’re so kind, you’re like a Christian. Are you one?’” Whether or not the policeman became a Christian, the little boy was more of a Christian by sharing his faith.
“Genie and I went to see a neighbor, and in half an hour we had prayed her into the arms of Jesus,” said “Mary.” This same Mary had been talking all day to people and leading them into conversion. At eventide she came into the hotel, and a man opened the door and asked, “How are you?” He got the unexpected reply, “Converted.” She was so full of it that it simply overflowed spontaneously. She says of people entering conversion, “It is wonderful to see the light go on in their eyes.” It is. And when you see the light go on in their eyes, you get the reflection in your own.
O Lord Jesus, let me be so full of the spirit of conversion that out of the abundance of my heart my mouth may speak. And may it speak with clarity. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Everything I say and do and am shall cry “Converted!” to everyone I meet today.