To Encourage You

Acts 26:9-11 “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.”

Galatians 1:13-24 “For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.But when He who had set me apart before I was born, and Who called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me, in order that I might preach Him among the Gentiles . . .Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.  And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.”

One of the most powerful things in all the world is a transformed life.  It’s something that I’ve witnessed many times in my own life, and it is one thing that I often look to as a ringing testimony that the teachings of the Word of God are, in fact, true.  I think of my Uncle George, the eldest of my father’s brothers.  My Dad used to tell me stories about Uncle George. He told me about how he used to drink and how he would get into horrible bar fights. He told me about how he used to treat his wife – in ways that were anything but good.  But then one day, as my dad was helping my Uncle George do some work on his house, he told me that my uncle said this to him: “Leroy, there has to me more to life than how I’m living.”  My dad said he almost fell off a ladder when he heard this, for he had never heard anything like this come from his lips.  He then told me how my uncle, soon afterward, went into a closet in his home and prayed to ask Jesus to save him from his sins.  And I had the wonderful privilege of witnessing my dear uncle’s transformed life. 

I remember several things in particular. One thing I recall was a time my dad and I were sitting at McDonalds one night eating dinner with Uncle George. It was there that my uncle told me about what Jesus had done in his life.  He quoted to me, almost verbatim, Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus from John 3, and he told me how this very same kind of encounter with Jesus had changed his own life.  It was an awesome moment that I will never forget. And then there was a time when my uncle injured his leg in an accident at home.  It was a blood clot from which he almost lost his leg. He suffered terrible pain from this and he endured a long and difficult recovery.  One day I visited him in his room at the hospital. I’ll never forget what he said to me.  In all that he had suffered, this was his thought in so many words: “Leroy, just think of the pain that Jesus suffered for us.”  I felt like I was sitting at the feet of the aged apostle Paul, hearing the gracious words that came from this man with a totally transformed life. But then, as a nurse came to walk Uncle George down the hall for some exercise related to his recovery, it was what his roommate said to me that had perhaps an even greater impact on me. What he said to me was this: “There goes a man with a heart of gold.” Can you imagine this being said about a man with a history of drunkenness, fighting, and mistreating his good wife?  It was powerful evidence to me that God is real and the gospel if true – this power of a transformed life. 

I recall the last time I saw my uncle, as I visited him on his death bed at a later time, again at the hospital.  As I left his room that night, I said to him, “I love you Uncle George.” To this he replied, in the last words I ever heard him say “I love you, Leroy, and I love your family.” What gracious words that I will never forget, and a powerful reminder that God loves me and He loves my family, for it was God Himself, Who had put such love in my uncle’s heart. 

May God help me to demonstrate this kind of character in my own life, for there is nothing more powerful in all the world. There is nothing that speaks the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ than words “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of (a) human heart” (2 Corinthians 3:3), letters, like the one  that I had the privilege to read from the heart and life of my wonderful Uncle George.