God moments 

On Saturday morning we had our monthly church leaders' meeting.

One of the leaders asked the Pastor how best do we explain the gospel to someone without offending them.

His response was, "To a person who truly understands what the gospel is saying, they will have only 2 reactions: one is to be offended, the other is to repent and turn to God. Avoid being offensive as a person though."

I remembered many years ago, as a college student, a classmate's cousin was at his deathbed. He was distraught for a while and kept sharing of his despair in the situation and how he had pleaded for anyone to help. Being a young Christian and still unused to the ways of the Spirit, I failed to recognise the nudges the Spirit was giving me to be involved in that situation.

Several things happened in a span of a week. But it came to a final phonecall from the classmate about how he had pleaded with God to save his cousin.

By that time I had prayed a bit and I cannot recall if I had told him that he held the key to the situation - that his cousin could be saved but he needed to believe in Christ.

But I do remember very tentatively and apprehensively saying to him, "Jesus says He is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6)..."

That was as far as I got as he exploded in anger on the audacity of what I was saying when Hinduism was around long before Christ and shouted some other things before hanging up on me. My temper riled, I was going to call him back to argue my case when I felt God stay my hand and said that my classmate's argument is with Him, not with me.

I still am amazed with that conversation. And how the conviction of the gospel was strong then. Pastor called that a God moment. It is when a person is confronted with the conviction of the gospel and make a decision in the face of it. We hope that even should the person decide against God, there may be other God moments for such a decision to be reversed, but no man can know if and when such opportunities would come up again.

But I do recall when I had prayed for this classmate prior to his rejection of Jesus, I had a vision of him preaching to thousands. I hope it is still something that can come to pass.