December 24, 2019 – Click here to listen
I had a friend and his wife who live in the Florida Keys visit our home yesterday. He recently read my book Miracle on Luckie Street cover to cover. He is probably in his early sixties and has been an atheist all of his life. He is not one of these antagonistic atheists, but one that just cannot seem to convince himself that God exists. He is adamant that he will not fake believing and will only commit if he truly believes. Then he told me that I was one of those who truly believes, and he wishes he could.
My book seems to have had an impact on him. He and his spouse told us that aside from us they don’t know any couples who seem to get along in their marriage and seemed incredulous that we know many people with happy marriages including all three of our sons. He of course knows from the book how I went from a homeless drug addict to financial security with little education, and no help from anyone. He also remarked how happy I seem to be compared to his crowd.
I have had many long discussions with him, and he always asks me how I was able to achieve so much with such a bad start and I tell him time and again that it was God and not me. When I turned to Jesus, my life was transformed, plain and simple. When I tried to make it alone on my own, I failed miserably at everything. When I turned to Christ, I became successful.
When I visited the keys this past spring and summer we fished together quite often. I prodded him to look deeper into his spirituality and I invited him to church and lo and behold he and his entire family attended with us and they said they enjoyed it. So yesterday he starts quizzing me again about it and I encouraged him to read the Bible for himself and offered to go along through the Bible with him to help explain anything that he didn’t understand to the best of my abilities. He didn’t have a Bible but wanted one that was written in modern language. I gave him my personal Living Translation Bible that came complete with years of markup and notes and I told him to start by reading the book of John and then Romans and then the entire New Testament.
Today I’m sending him some information I used in a Bible study that I did that provides much material on how the Bible was written and how any objective person just could not refute that the Bible had to come from God’s inspiration. One thing about my friend is that he is very intelligent. He is open minded and ready to dig in. I feel good that God is moving in this man’s life.
I’m praying for him and his entire family and ask you to do the same. His name is Terry. Now I have to tell you that hearing him tell me he wants to read the Bible and he wants to have what I have as a Christian, (peace, joy, and happiness) made my Christmas. Tonight, I’m going to a Christmas Eve service and I intend to spend much of it praying for Terry and thanking God for introducing us. And I intend to thank God for giving us the indescribable gift of Jesus Christ (on His birthday no less . . . )
2 Corinthians 9:15
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Merry Christmas!