“True Worship”

“Get Right with God”

“Reality Check”

“O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee” (Psalm 63:1a). “Jesus stood and cried, saying, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink’ ” (John 7:37b).

“I am not going to a Christless grave—are you?”

As the conductor came for my fare on a streetcar in Buffalo, N.Y., I gave him the leaflet, Where Hell Is. In part it read: “A young man, while distributing tracts, met some of his old companions who mocked him as he spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ and God's way of salvation. One of them said, ‘Can you tell me where hell is?’ After a moment's hesitation, the young man answered: ‘Yes, at the end of a Christless life.’ ”

The conductor laughed and retorted, “You always give me one of these papers; I suppose you think I'm a wicked fellow. But I'm as good as they make 'em.”

I held up my Bible, “Do you see this Book?” I asked. “It tells me, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked’ (Jeremiah 17:9). That means your heart and mine. It doesn't sound so good, does it?"

“Oh,” he said, “there's plenty of time for me to think about these things; I'm still young.”

He little imagined “This night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Luke 12:20). On leaving the car I said, “Remember, the time is short. You don't need to go to a Christless grave and to hell. Christ died for the ungodly.” This young man had been a conductor only six or eight weeks. I had often given him a tract and talked with him.

The next morning I travelled the same car. A new conductor was there. He told me the conductor I had spoken to the day before had intended to take an afternoon off, but jumping from one car to another he lost his footing, was run over by the car and injured. In a few hours he died. I felt very badly, thinking he had found a Christless grave.

Later that day I was told that he had accepted the Saviour and wanted me to know he was not going to a Christless grave. I went to his home. As I looked upon the young man's dead face, I thought, “What an awful warning to anyone who thinks there is plenty of time!”

Remember how short life is (Psalm 89:47), and “after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). God in His love and mercy gave this young man time, but the time was short!

Maybe this is God's last message to you! “Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Are you trusting that “doing the best you can” will save you? Listen: “he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). Why live in fear of the grave? Christ Jesus rose again triumphant over the grave. Won't you come to Him now? Tomorrow may be too late!

“He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).

—See Abigail Townsend Luffe, I am not going to a Christless grave—are you?

“You, Me, or Anybody Else!”

A man was preaching in Hyde Park one afternoon to a number of its usual visitors. As he was on the point of dismissing his audience, at the conclusion of his address, he was stopped by someone touching him on the arm. He turned around and saw a man whose appearance and attire evidently showed that he came ‘from the country’. Addressing the preacher, he earnestly begged to be allowed to speak a word to the people and tell them the story of his conversion, which had only taken place a few weeks before.

He spoke with a broad English country accent, and this with his happy face and heart-felt manner secured him a riveted attention.

His story was to the following effect:

“The gentleman who has just spoke to you has given me leave to tell you what's in my heart, and has been there this few weeks past. I am a poor labouring man, and never being no scholard, you can't expect me to talk much grammar, so you'll excuse my simple way, and let me tell you how the Lord saved my soul.”

“I was ploughing for my master, in a field beside the road, and just sat down agen the fence nearest to it, to have my bit of bread and cheese, the horses standing in the furrow at the headlands, when I sees a gentleman leaning over the gate looking out at the prospect. Presently, he spies me, and comes across the gate to where I was sitting. He said it was a fine day, and I said it was so, with the blessing of God, as we always says down in them parts, not thinking nothing about God all the time.

“Howsomever, he pulls me up sharp, though in a kindly voice, says he: ‘Do you know the blessing of God in saving your soul?’ It quite took me aback, and I says, ‘Of course, we all wants to be saved, and hopes we shall afore we comes to die.’ Then he spoke a great deal to me, as I never heard the likes in my life, about being born again, and all to that away.

“Before he goes, he takes out a book and says, ‘I should like to give you this, and will you read this chapter where I turn the leaf down?’ I thanked him with all my heart, but told him I was no scholard, never having had no booklarning.

“ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘never mind that, you get the first person that can read to read this chapter to you.’ So he left the book and I never seen him from that time.

“After a bit, as I sat on the bank, thinking in a dazed way of what I had been told, with my mind all in a muddle, I hears a boy coming lumping along home from school, whistling some tune to himself. Thinks I, he'll do! So I calls, ‘Hey, boy! Come here!’ He comes over. So I tells him to sit down just there beside me, and read me out of a book a gentleman gave me.

“I asked him, ‘Can you read?’ ‘Aye, can I, and write my own name too.’ He reads away, and I sits listening with all my might. He reads about a man what came to Jesus by night, and I never knew anything take such hold on me as them words did. I had often heard sermons with fine long words, but these came right home to me; and I was wholly stammed when He read about being born again, for that was what the gentleman was saying to me before. Then I lost what he read for a bit, for thinking to myself, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of Heaven’ (John 3:3). Now, I want to go to Heaven, and I always thought if a man did the best he could, and paid his way, and loved his neighbour, what more could he do, and he would surely go to Heaven at the end; but this floored me, this being born again.

“I called out to him to stop, and read that last over again. As he read, what he told me was the sixteenth verse, the light began to shine in on my heart, and I thought this is what being born again means, this explains it. I know now, it was the Holy Spirit of God through them words, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’

“Yet I couldn't half think it was for me; and there was one word that seemed to me the chief word, that I couldn't understand, so I asked the boy, ‘Can you tell me what that there word whosoever means?’ But he seemed to know it as little as myself, he looked this way and that, as boys do, but couldn't see the meaning nowhere’s; then he said, ‘I can't for the life of me tell you what it means.’ But I wasn't to be put off, I was too anxious, so I urged him to think again. ‘You’re such a good scholard, and can write your own name, surely you know what this word means?’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘I don't know what it means, unless it means you, me, or anybody else.’

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘why didn't you say that at first, I can understand that easy enough. Now, read that verse over again, if you please, and put them words in instead of the long one.’ So he read over again.

“ ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that you, me, or anybody else believing in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’

“I lifted up my heart and thanked God there and then; for such mercy to a sinner like me. His love was so wonderful, and those words made it all plain that it was for me. I got the boy to say the verse over and over again, walking by me as I went on with my ploughing, until I knew them myself as well. The rest of that afternoon my heart was singing for joy, and as I followed the plough up and down the furrow I kept repeating the words over to myself, getting fresh understanding of them every time.

“After I had baited my horses, and put them out in the yard for the night, I went home, and the first thing I says to my wife when I gets in was, ‘Wife! with the blessing of God—and I meant it this time—my fortune's made! For this very day I have received everlasting life.’ She said, ‘Thank God then, my prayers are answered.’ She had been a Christian woman for a long time, and often had I given her sorrow through my ways.

“ ‘But how did you come by it?’ Then I read to her—or rather said it to her, though I opened the book—the 16th verse of the 3rd of John.

“I was so full of my new-found happiness, that as soon as I had my supper, I felt I must go down and tell my mates the good news, thinking, of course, they'd be glad to hear it. We were accustomed to meet at the public in the village street, called the ‘Fleece’, and I think now it's a good name for such places, for it’s just there a fellow does get properly fleeced, as I have proved many’s the time.

“So I goes down there this night with my Testament in my pocket. When I gets there my mates, and the landlord especially, begin by crying out how late I am, that I must have something very good to tell, and so on. Then when they are quiet, I tells them what I [told] my wife, and pulls out my Testament, and says the verse to them: ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever—that means you, me, or anybody else—believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’

“Well, they stared at me, but hadn't a word to say; at last the landlord spoke up. I suppose he thought that if all came to this way of thinking there would be an end to his trade, so he says: ‘Come, we don't want any of that sort of cant here, we have enough of preaching on Sundays by larned men without your setting up to be so good.’ I answers him, ‘Is that the way it is, landlord? Well, it opens my eyes plain, what the friendship of the world's worth, I could come here and talk all manner of stuff about anyone, and anything, no matter how low, drink till I was scarce able to find my way home, and I was welcome, but now that my soul is saved I mustn't speak about that, nor about my Saviour, then I can't come here anymore indeed. Here's the three shillings I owe you, and good-bye.’

“Now, if you go down to my country and want to find me, all you'll have to do is to ask where ‘Whosoever’ lives, for that’s the nick-name they gave me then, and the little children cry out when I pass them, ‘There’s Whosoever! There goes old Whosoever!’ But I don't mind; indeed I rejoice ,for I'm on the winning side, and I would that all ye who hear me now, took your place as one of these ‘whosoevers’. If not, ye must be among the other ‘whosoevers’ in Rev. 20:15: ‘And whosoever—you, me, or anybody else—was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire!’ ”

—See Hy. Pickering, 100 Thrilling Tales

“Jesus Christ in the Place of Suffering”

Mimosa had turned from Hinduism to God the Loving One while growing up in India. For many years, during which she married and had children, Mimosa received little teaching by man of His ways—yet God’s Spirit taught her.

Mimosa longed for her sons to be able to choose the worship of the living, true, and holy God. Yet how? She gave herself to prayer, to prayer streaming through the busy day, flowing far into the night. Her prayers were not always in words, for the longings that consumed her could not wait for words. “I am a prayer” might have described her.

Her educated brother taunted her: “Thou thinkest that thou canst pray! From whom hast thou learned? Thou who canst not read, thou the ignorant who canst not even read the first letter (and he named it), thou thinkest that thou canst pray!”

Mimosa, humble, in poverty, was deeply pierced; what if her concept was a mistake?

The prophet Jeremiah once addressed God in his sorrow: “Wilt Thou be indeed to me as waters that fail?”

Yet Christ drew near, the Christ who told His disciple Peter, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”

“Have I been a wilderness unto thee?” (God speaks, Jeremiah 2:31).

A glow of joy came to her; Mimosa knew what He had been to her all through the bitter years. “You know Him by learning,” she later told her Christian sister, “but I know Him by suffering.” It was not that her sister had not suffered—yet she had a Bible and many books, and Mimosa, ignorant of the first letter of the Tamil alphabet, had learned Him through suffering.

Who but Christ, the crucified, risen Redeemer, is enough in the place of the fellowship of His suffering?

“I have in my study pictures of Millet, Goethe, Tolstoy, Beethoven, and Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane,” wrote a Chinese student, not yet a Christian, to his friend in Paris. “After seeing a beautiful picture, reading some wonderful poetry, or hearing some exquisite music, my spirit goes out, not to Jesus, but to the pictures of the other famous men. But when my heart is in trouble, these can no longer charm: only my contemplation of Jesus in His agony in the garden seems able to bring me peace.” 

“No picture reconciles us to God—but Jesus Christ does. “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6). 

—See Amy Carmichael, Mimosa: A True Story

About Us

This newsletter is produced six times per year by the Laymen’s Evangelical Fellowship International. It is printed and distributed in the US, UK, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and Australia and is supported by unsolicited sacrificial gifts of young people. For a free subscription or for other enquiries, please contact any of the addresses below.

This Fellowship is an inter-denominational missionary and prayer group working for revival in churches and amongst students in several countries. We invite every layperson to become God’s ally in changing his or her corner of the world. We train people in evangelistic work and to be self-supporting missionaries.

• USA: P.O. Box 14, South Lyon, MI 48178. Phone: (248) 486-6326.
  
• CANADA: P.O. Box 31002, Windsor, Ontario N9G 2Y2. Phone: (519) 966-4603.
• SINGAPORE: P.O. Box 320 PSA Building Post Office, Singapore 91114. Phone: (65) 63562724 (Sam).
• MALAYSIA: P.O.Box 236, Jalan Kelang Lama, 58700 Kuala Lumpur West Malaysia. Phone: 012-3416203. Or contact No. 3, Lorong Beduk, Taman Sungai Bakap, 14200 Sungai Bakap, Seberang Prai Selatan, Pulau Pinang. Phone: 019- 4493115 T.K. Ong.
• AUSTRALIA: P.O. Box 1072, Armadale, Western Australia 6992. Phone: 61(08) 9498 3735.
• GREAT BRITAIN: P.O. Box 737 London SW2 4XT. Phone: 020 7738 3302.
• IRELAND: P.O. Box 18 Cavan Co. Cavan.
• INDIA: 9B Nungambakkam High Rd. Chennai 600034. Phone: 044-2827 2393.
• INTERNET: http://lefi.org
• EMAIL: post@lefi.org