Every preacher at some point has experienced the painful vulnerability of baring their soul.
For my wife and I, it’s a joy being Lucero’s pastor.
A young, intelligent, and enjoyable mother of an exuberant boy, Lucero has recently abandoned herself fully into the arms of Jesus, a true testament of the gospel’s power to transform hearts from darkness to light.
A few weeks ago she was telling me about her life before Jesus. “Tell me,” I asked, “what happened that finally made you trust your whole life into God’s hands?” (I never get enough of hearing the stories that flow in answer to that question.) Her response, however, took me aback.
“It was you!” she promptly answered. Puzzled, I simply waited for her to continue. Surely, I must have heard wrong. I don’t recall ever having a deep conversation about spiritual matters with her before. She continued:
Yeah. It was you. That Sunday you were preaching from Genesis about how when Jacob was returning to Canaan he had a choice to come back home with God or without God at the center of his life. Then you made a passionate call. You had tears in your eyes. You truly believed that this would be the most important decision that anyone hearing you could ever make … At that moment, I knew! I just knew God was speaking to me. I didn’t ever want to go back to my regular life without God in control. All I could do was surrender my life to Christ. And that was the day I crossed from death to life.
Silence. Shock. Puzzlement. That was my response to Lucero’s testimony.
How could such an amazing life transformation happen, just like that? I didn’t know. She hadn’t told me. The only reason this conversation came up is because she was about to get baptized.
This is a repeated story. The mystery …