An Instrument of God

A flood was coming. There was plenty of warning, and plenty of time for people to evacuate. But there was one guy who lived on a hill on the edge of town, and he said he wasn't not going. He said the Lord would save him.

When the water got up into his yard, he was standing on his porch with his dog, and one of his friends drove over in a big jacked up four wheel drive truck, and he said, "Come on, Sam, I’ll get you out of here." And Sam said, "No, the Lord will save me."

When the water got up over the first floor, a fellow came by in a boat, rowed right up to the second floor window, where Sam was standing with his dog, and he said, "Come on, guy, I’ll get you out of here." Sam said, "No, the Lord will save me."

The dog jumped out of the window, swam to the boat, and the man rowed away.

When Sam was up on his roof, the Coast Guard came in a helicopter. They lowered a guy on a ladder, tried to put Sam in a basket, tried to offer him a life jacket. Sam said, "No, the Lord will save me."

So when Sam was standing in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he said, "What happened, I thought the Lord was going to save me."

St. Peter said, "He sent your friend with a four wheel drive truck, he sent a guy with a boat and he sent the Coast Guard with a helicopter. What else do you want him to do?"

This is one of the most important things I can tell you. But to start it off, I have to get catty.

I know this has happened to you. You go to service, and you see there’s a guest musician. And you see on the overhead that they’re going to sing one of your favorite songs. You get all excited, and then they start and it’s terrible. It’s just terrible.

The rhythm is all wrong, they’re going too fast, and they’ve done something so bizarre with the melody that you have to go out in the hall and sing it to yourself a couple of times, just to remember what it’s really supposed to sound like.

Or someone gets up to speak, and it turns out that they are a Baby Christian and they really have no experiences to share, all they can say is God is so good, He’s so good. And you are very quickly ready for them to sit down and get on with the service.

These people, as weak, as annoying as they might be are instruments of God. And there is someone out there that they will reach.

So you need to be tolerant of them, and you need to give them your attention and your encouragement, and you need to remember that somehow God is using them.

But you also have to remember that you are an instrument of God. And you have to remember when you’re out there in the world that other people see you as an instrument of God.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stand up in the front of the room and perform. Most of the time the best thing you can do to be a witness for Christ is to lead a good life. People will see you doing the things you do, and it doesn’t matter if they know you’re doing them because you’re a Christian, they will just see you being nice to a waitress, picking up something that a stranger dropped, handing the homeless guy standing in the sun a bottle of water.

They don’t have to know because it’s very seldom just one act that leads someone to Christ. It‘s a series of things that eventually get through. And you might just be one tiny part of someone‘s journey to the Lord.

There are a lot of people out there who will tell you that they do not believe in God, and when you talk to them what they mean is they do not trust the Church. They have had bad experiences with Christians who have misrepresented the intentions of Jesus Christ, who have come at them with a bunch of rules and thou shalt nots and driven this person away from God instead of toward Him.

You could be the difference that brings this person back to God.

Preach the Gospel everyday. Use words if you have to. -- St. Francis of Assisi