ost of us can recognize how God has led us in the past. Occasionally, we see Him working in our lives each day, just as He promised. But is it possible that He likewise works in the life of a gossipy, irascible neighbor or the characters who slink furtively into adult bookstores downtown?
By the same token, how many times has the Creator used His unsuspecting followers to demonstrate His love and acceptance in the life of one of His lost children?
The following story reveals an incredible God, His tenacious love, and the people He used to fulfill His promise in the life of a wayward child. They include a literature evangelist, a children’s Sunday school teacher, a telephone volunteer, and the testimony of a sinner saved by grace. Each supplied the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that eventually revealed the face of Jesus to young Sam.
Following a Lead
It all started in a doctor’s office waiting room when
5-year-old Sam asked his mother to read to him from a brightly colored storybook he found among a stack of outdated magazines. Sam loved the stories and pictures about the Man called Jesus so much that he begged for his very own copy. His mother noticed a card in front of the book and mailed it in.
A few weeks later a literature evangelist arrived at Sam’s house, only to be chased away by a barrage of obscenities from Sam’s drunken, abusive father.
Without her husband’s knowledge, Sam’s mother slipped out the back door of the house in time to catch the unnerved colporteur and purchase the set of Bible Stories for her son.
Whether Sam treasured the books because of the stories, or because they remained a secret from his father, he doesn’t know. But the little boy couldn’t get enough of them,
especially the volume about the life of Jesus.
Sam started school as an outcast. His classmates taunted him and made his life miserable. Unhappy at home and at school, the only place he felt comfortable was at the Sunday school his mother arranged for him to attend. Every Sunday when the “Joy Bus” arrived to take him to Sunday school, Sam steeled himself for the hateful words his father would spew at him before he left and again when he returned. Yet he continued to attend.
One day the Sunday school teacher took Sam aside and asked if he ever considered giving his heart to Jesus. Wanting to please the kind woman, he agreed, even though he had no idea what “giving his heart to Jesus” meant. After he prayed
a short prayer of consecration, he saw the teacher cry tears of joy. He cried because she cried.
Following the Wrong Crowd
Abused at home and rejected at school, Sam made two unfortunate decisions during his early teen years: First, he stopped attending church. Second, he began dabbling in a lifestyle that included illegal drugs and promiscuous sex.
Sam’s life spiraled down into a desperate round of secret trysts; shame, guilt, suicide attempts, and a constant fear of overdosing or contracting a sexually transmitted disease. His shame nourished an anger at God for creating him with urges he felt unable to control.
Sam knew he was traveling down the wrong road, but instead of slowing down, he frantically accelerated the number of sexual encounters he engaged in. He went without sleep for days on end. He couldn’t hold down a job for long because of his insatiable obsessions.
Sam teetered in the hellish never-never land of wanting to die but fearing that he might succeed. His terror grew as he watched his “friends” die of AIDS and drug overdoses.
On his way back from a thwarted attempt to “make it big” in Hollywood, Sam was caught in a Midwestern blizzard in an automobile that kept breaking down.
The storm drove him to the home of one of his only friends, where he met the third piece of the puzzle. His friend’s father was pastor of a small church in town. The pastor’s wife opened her home and her heart to him, insisting Sam call her “Mom.”
For the first time in his life Sam experienced what it was like to be part of a Christian family. But before long the call of his old lifestyle, and the resulting guilt, forced him to leave, even though he had nowhere to go but back to his abusive father.
A Providential Opening
As the years passed, so did Sam’s sordid behavior. He alternately begged God for blessing, made deals with Him, and cursed Him when he failed. Anyone watching would never have guessed what was happening in the young man’s heart.
The fourth and fifth pieces of the puzzle fell into place after a middle-of-the-night suicide attempt. Finding himself unable to sleep after a night of “cruising,” Sam turned on the television and flipped through the channels. All he could find were infomercials and religious services.
One service, however, caught his attention and led him to linger on that channel. The preacher spoke about sexual immorality, and near the end of the program a phone number for counseling appeared on the screen. At first Sam ranted against the preacher and God. But around 3:00 a.m. his heart began to change.
Curious, Sam dialed the phone number. Then, fearful of what he might be getting himself into, he hung up. He did this three or four times before he allowed the call to go through. Not until he heard the sleepy voice of an old woman did he realize that he’d been calling someone’s private residence, waking the arthritic, housebound volunteer with each ring.
The woman arranged for him to meet with a counselor the following morning. At a Denny’s restaurant Sam gave his heart to Christ. He renounced his former life and begged forgiveness for that as well as for the hatred he harbored against his father.
The young man said goodbye to the counselor, returned to his apartment and fell into bed, exhausted. Sleeping around the clock, Sam awoke a day later. “Sunlight filled my apartment,” he said. “Even before I remembered my encounter with Christ at the restaurant, I knew I’d been healed. I felt clean, restored, and refreshed. For the first time in 15 years
I had no desire to ‘cruise.’”
The changes in Sam’s life were evident to his so-called “friends,” who predicted he’d return to his former lifestyle before the end of the month. But he saw the biggest change in himself when his father took ill and asked Sam to move back home and care for him. As a result Sam witnessed the conversion of his father as well.
One Life, Many Contacts
Questions for Reflection
1. What habits or addictions do you struggle with? How are they the same or different from the ones described in this story?
2. What people has God placed in your life to be an influence for good? List at least three, and briefly describe the difference they made in your life.
3. On a scale of one to five (one being "ho-hum" and give being "blown away"), how do you usually experience God's miracles in your life?
4. What mechanism(s) do you use to recognize the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of those around you? And what do you do about them?
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Today Sam’s life revolves around a wife and her three autistic sons. Sam smiles when the boys are mentioned. “I never knew how great it could be to be called ‘Dad.’ Imagine me a father!”
When asked if he ever was tempted to return to his former lifestyle, Sam thinks for a moment. “Sin is sin, and we all fall. But returning to [my old lifestyle] would be like a beggar who won a million-dollar jackpot rummaging through the dumpsters in East LA for food just for kicks.”
Does it take time for God to untangle hopelessly impossible jigsaw puzzles? Of course.
But the God who fashioned the universe and allowed His Son to die for our sins on Calvary does whatever it takes to make “all things work together” for His precious ones. He finishes the work He began, just as He promised.
He uses terrified colporteurs, faithful and exhausted Sunday school teachers, blizzards, compassionate “moms,” shut-in volunteers, and redeemed sinners to make it happen.
The children who flagrantly violate God’s law are as much God’s tender concern as when they were innocent babes in arms. Our prayers will not return void. He who began the work in us, as well as the sinner at our doorsteps, will continue that work until He returns—just as He promised.
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Kay D. Rizzo lives in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where she serves her local congregation as a praise team member and women’s ministries leader. She is married and has two adult children.