Ripe for Harvest: Prepared to Give an Answer

As you read through
the book of Acts, look at every conversion, and see what happened right before
it: what was said, who said it. The situations are the same today.    

A long time ago, my
duty in the Officer’s Christian Fellowship was the east coast of the United
States. I went to an officer’s office at Fort Lee, VA, and stayed overnight,
then I went on to Norfolk and Fort Bragg.  

Forty years later, I
was no longer on the staff of OCF, but I had to go to Denver. While I was in
Denver, I checked in at the OCF offices. There was the same Air Force officer I
had met in Fort Lee, retired now, a colonel. I had stayed in his house when he
was a first lieutenant. He asked me, “Do you know what happened when you stayed
overnight?”

I said, “No, I just
remember staying in your home.”

He said, “You led
the next-door neighbor to Christ.” I had no memory of it.  

Ten years after that,
I was speaking at a banquet at the Hotel Salisbury, and who was there but this
Air Force colonel’s wife. She came up to me and said, “You’re the man who led
Dr. So-and-so to Christ.”

One remembered this
event forty years afterwards, and the other remembered it 50 years afterwards.
They told me, “When we moved to Fort Lee, we decided to be the best officer’s
family on the base as a Christian.”

I said, “It looks
like you were, and this next-door neighbor was waiting six months for you to
tell him how to be like you.” I showed up, and he fell into the Kingdom. They
thought it was unusual. It isn’t. The world is full of people saying, “What
must I do to be saved?” If you are living like a Christian, they see your
happiness, they see your character, they see all kinds of things you probably
don’t realize, and they want answers, although they might not want to ask for
them.

When I was still a
midshipman, one of my classmates came to see me about some trouble he was
having. He was about ready to get kicked out of the Academy, and he thought I
was the person to see. But he had been giving me a bad time all the time for
being a Christian. Non-Christians will give you a bad time because they know
you’re different. They don’t want to give you any credit for it—until they get
in trouble. Then they come to you, because they know you’ve done something
right, and they hope you will have answers for them.

“Always be prepared
to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that
you have” (1 Pet. 3:15).

Written 2022.

This post coordinates with today’s reading in the To
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