Tuesday: Lack of an Inner Push
WEEK 38
TUESDAY
LACK OF AN INNER PUSH
Acts 20:1-2
We saw yesterday that our faces can be the message of our evangelism. “Mary” was standing in a railway station, her face as always glowing with the love of God, when a redcap came up to her, removed his cap, stood looking at her. and then said: “Ain’t you religious?” “Well,” said Mary, “I belong to Jesus.” He commented thoughtfully, “I thought so.” Then they talked about Christ.
Conversion may take place through a spoken word. I listened to a radiant Christian tell how she was ashamed and filled with inferiority because of a broken home. But she listened to a radio address, knelt before the radio, and was soundly converted.
I am writing this in Oklahoma near where George Wade, a very contagious Christian, was converted in a chamber-of-commerce meeting of all places! As I spoke at the meeting, he felt his need, he said, and opened his heart then and there to the love of Christ, was soundly converted, and showed the fruits of it the balance of his useful days.
A doctor said to me, “Many people are failures because of the lack of an inner push from someone in the moment of crisis.” Well, that inner push can come through the word or the silent influence of a life.
Some have that spiritual contagion, and some do not. I saw in an atomic plant a Geiger counter pass over a glass pond in which there were small turtles. Nothing happened when it was passed over some of the turtles; but every time it came to one little turtle, there would be sparks and noises from the machine. That turtle was radioactive. Some Christians are like that; they are radioactive with the Holy Spirit, and you feel the sparks of the Spirit when you get near them.
But some are dead; nothing outgoing coming from them. The society in the Acts of the Apostles was radioactive with the Holy Spirit. People felt that here was something different from the dead forms of religion. Here was religion with a spark.
O Holy Spirit set me afire with the fire of you. Let me emit love and only love, faith and only faith, joy and only joy, peace and only peace. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be radioactive with the Spirit today, and people will feel the contagion.