| | March 1, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
It is not often that you get to immediately apply what you learn in a Bible Study or discipleship teaching. I was just having lunch with a young man named Kenneth, whom I have written about previously and who is being discipled by Terry and me. We were reading through a chapter in Dr. Keith Phillips’ book The Making of a Disciple, and the topic was forgiveness. We discussed how we were doing in the area of forgiving others, forgiving ourselves, receiving forgiveness from others, and receiving forgiveness from God.
After leaving this meeting, I went to go pray with my team in the local World Impact Los Angeles office. Right after the prayer time, a few of us helped to transport some items that the office no longer needed down to our thrift store, The Sonshine Shop. What you need to understand is that the office has been going through some major renovations in the last month for the first time since it was initially used, and so we have been used to seeing major activity and foot traffic in and out of the office at all times, usually with the downstairs door unlocked while we were there to allow people in and out with less hassle. After taking my load of stuff to the Sonshine Shop, literally next door, I returned to the office, and I closed the door behind me. Coming down the stairs was a man I had never seen, but I assumed he had been meeting with someone in the office. I apologized for having closed the door on him, as I had not seen him at first. He said, “No problem. God bless you.” I went on my way. Finishing my climb, I went over to my backpack, and noticed its front zipper was open. Then I noticed my wallet was gone. Not wanting to be quick to accuse or assume, I quickly scanned all the places I had been since coming to the office after lunch. Realizing that I indeed had probably been robbed, I ran down the stairs to the street to see if I could see the man I had so benignly passed. Of course he had vanished. My next thought was, well, maybe I left it in Terry’s Pathfinder, or at the restaurant where we ate lunch. Again, no luck. Within an hour of all of this, I called my bank and my two credit card companies, and found out to my chagrin that almost $500 had been charged between the three of them. Thankfully, I had no cash in the wallet. In fact, the day before I had received a tract from a ministry contact of mine which was a pretty convincing fake $1,000,000 bill with the gospel message on it. This must have been a disappointment to the thief. This is not to mention all the other cards which had Bible Study invitations on them, summaries of the Gospel, the seven basic commands of Christ, and the Nicene Creed.
I tell you this story to demonstrate God’s goodness and ability to redeem good out of a bad situation. Were this not to have happened, this lesson on forgiveness probably would have gone unnoticed, another forgotten lesson amongst the thousands that we hear over the course of our lives. It has forced me once again to evaluate the simplicity of my life and the priorities I give to things and security, and realize the importance of every man’s soul over against our love of money. I do forgive this man. I pray that he gets way more use out of the Gospel cards than he does the credit cards. The Lord knows his soul is worth more than $500.
In His Service,
Bryan Cullison
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| | Posted 4/9/2008 11:57 AM - 20 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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