Sorry for the short blog, but I had to share my thoughts...
A friend and I were driving home from church together today and he showed me a little short cut to bypass a traffic light to make it a little quicker to get to his house. As we drove down the shortcut, we came across a vehicle sitting on the side of the road with a guy standing next to it who looked like he might need some help. I pulled up beside him and asked if we could help out. He said his battery had went dead and asked if we could give him a jumpstart, he already had some jumper cables ready to go for such an occasion. So I pulled up in front of his vehicle, popped the hood and we hooked the jumper cables up from his vehicle to mine. While we were sitting there waiting for it to charge, I asked what his name was and he told me Donnie. My friend Josh and I quickly introduced ourselves to him, then he introduced us to his wife and his daughter. Today was his little girls birthday and he told us he had just started a new job today.
During our conversation, Donnie told us that he still owed money on his vehicle ($2000), he had a ton of miles on it and was about to let it go back to the dealer. After talking for a bit, he fired up his vehicle and thanked us for stopping to help. As he was putting away his jumper cables I heard his vehicle making a weird sound, I looked inside and his wife was on the floor board pushing the gas pedal in and out to keep the vehicle running, he jumped in and off they went.
jumper cables: electric cables having clamps at each end and used for starting the engine of a vehicle whose battery is dead.
After I dropped Josh off at his house, I couldn't stop thinking about Donnie and his family. If we hadn't taken that shortcut, we would have never have met that family and the opportunity to serve them. And why did he feel the need to tell us all of that information about him and his family? Then it hit me. I totally missed the opportunity God was giving me to invite these people to church. God even threw in the jumper cables, the way to connect with them. This dudes car battery was dead and needed a jump, but maybe so was his family's life, and I missed it.
That got me thinking, the next time something like that happens, I will not pass up the opportunity to invite them to church. To someone who doesn't have a relationship with Jesus, we can be that jumper cable to charge someones battery to his, even if they are broke down on the side of the road or we see them on a day to day basis. Just think of a set of jumper cables, on one end it has these teeth that just clamp down hard and don't let go of the energy source, in the middle there is a cord that is fully energized and on the other end awaits teeth for something to latch on to that needs to be charged. Now, think of Jesus as that fully charged battery and we are that set of jumper cables. He is waiting on us to grab a hold of somebody who's battery is dead and we have to be willing to share that power source with them. Don't make the same mistake I did, don't miss out on that opportunity to be that jumper cable for God into someones life.
