Wednesday: Foundations of Progress in Conversion
WEEK 38
WEDNESDAY
FOUNDATIONS OF PROGRESS IN CONVERSION
Acts 26:12-18
We are meditating on the outgoing contagious love inherent in Christianity.
When the constitution of India was being drawn up, it was debated hotly as to whether the sentence, “The right to profess, practice, and propagate one’s faith is guaranteed to the individual,” should be put in. The government rejected two hundred amendments that tried to soften or do away with the word propagate. Although for the most part non-Christian, it said, “No, the Christians believe it is an inherent part of their faith to propagate it, and we shall respect that right.” It is an inherent part of our faith to propagate it. That faith is not practiced unless it is propagated.
It can be propagated in very simple ways and yet, oh, how effective! Sarah Chakko was one of the great women of India and of the world, president of Isabella Thoburn College, the oldest women’s college in Asia, and vice president of the World Council of Churches. She told, two days before she died, how a prayer I had had with her in a crisis in her early days of teaching was the turning point of her life and responsible for her becoming president of the college. I told that story at a meeting a few days after her death, and the president of a great agricultural institute, Henry Azariah, stood up and told how, when he was a student, he was all confused and uncertain. He went to see me in his father’s compound; and as we talked at the junction of two roads, I said to him, “Henry, you are at the crossroads of life. Let Christ have you.” As we prayed, he surrendered his life to Christ. “That decision was the basis of my becoming head of this institute,” he said. Dr. Gideon stood up and said, “If I am president of Ewing Christian College, it is because of a decision I made while a student in one of the meetings Stanley Jones conducted in Delhi. I was all upset and at cross-purposes. But that decision straightened out my life and brought me to this position.” When we lead others to Christ, we start influences that will never stop.
O Christ, inspire me this day to put my hand on the shoulder of some wavering person and lead that person to you. For we all need you, inherently. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall not pass anyone today who needs me; maybe a college president is in the making.