Years ago in Detroit, Michigan, the well-known evangelist, Dr.Charles Finney, preached on the text, “The blood of Jesus Christ,God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin,” from 1 John 1:7. After the service a stranger asked Dr. Finney to walk home with him. Some of the church officials knew this man, and advised Dr. Finney not to go with him. But he went anyway.

They walked down the street, and the man stopped and unlocked a door, ushering Dr. Finney inside. He then turned and locked the door, put the key in his pocket and said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to ask you a few questions. Do you believe what you preached tonight?” Dr. Finney said, “I certainly do.”

The man responded, “We’re in the back of a saloon. I am the sole proprietor. Mothers come in here, lay their babies on the counter, and beg me not to sell liquor to their husbands. I turn a deaf ear to their cries. We see to it that when a man leaves here he’s well under the influence. More than one night a man leaving here has been killed by the express train at the tracks. Dr. Finney, tell me, can God forgive a man like me?”

Dr. Finney replied, “I have but one authority: the Word of God, which says, “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”

“But that’s not all,” added the man. “In another room we run a gambling hall. If a man doesn’t spend all his money on liquor, we bring him back here and with marked cards see to it that he’s fleeced out of his last dollar. We send him home penniless to a hungry family. Dr. Finney, I’m sole owner of this gambling hall. Tell me honestly, can God forgive a man with a heart like that?”

Again Dr. Finney replied, “I have but one authority: the Word of God, which says, “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”

The man spoke again: “That’s not all. Across the street is my home where live my wife and little daughter. Neither one has had a kind word from me for five years. Their bodies bear the marks of my brutal attacks. Dr. Finney, do you think God could forgive a man with a heart like that?”

Dr. Finney’s eyes lowered. His eyes filled with tears as he said, “My friend, you have painted one of the darkest pictures I have ever gazed on, but I still have only one authority which says, “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”

The man then opened the door, escorted the preacher out into the night, then never left the room until the sun was rising—but before it did, he ripped up the decks of cards and poured out all the contents of all the bottles down the drain. Then he crossed the road to his home, where he sat in his living room quietly.

His little girl stood at the door of the living room and called, “Daddy, Mother says breakfast is ready.” When he answered his little girl kindly, she ran back to her mother, and said, “Daddy spoke kindly to me! Something is the matter!” When the mother followed her little girl into the living room, her husband motioned for them to come closer.

Taking one on each knee, he explained to their amazement how they had a new husband and a new daddy. He ended by saying, “I’m done with that business across the street.” He became a whole-hearted follower of Jesus Christ, joined the very church whose leaders had advised against Dr. Finney going with him, and later became a leader there himself.

When asked to tell how his life was changed, he would reply, “ I have only one thing to say: The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”

(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com) via “Cup O’ Cheer

This World Is Full of Complete Idiots

1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.

2. A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other’s head.3. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film’s depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film.

4. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.5. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

6. Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.7. A convict broke out of jail in Washington, DC, and then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.

8. When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.9. A Los Angeles man, who later said he was “tired of walking,” stole a steam roller and led police on a 5-mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.

As seen in The Good Clean Funnies List.

God Runs Toward You

Brighten your day by envisioning God running toward you.

When his patriarchs trusted, God blessed. When Peter preached or Paul wrote or Thomas believed, God smiled. But he never ran.

That verb was reserved for the story of the prodigal son. “But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20 NKJV)

God runs when he sees the son coming home from the pig trough. When the addict steps out of the alley. When the teen walks away from the party. When the ladder-climbing executive pushes back from the desk, the spiritist turns from idols, the materialist from stuff, the atheist from disbelief, and the elitist from self-promotion…
 
When prodigals trudge up the path, God can’t sit still. Heaven’s throne room echoes with the sound of slapping sandals and pounding feet, and angels watch in silence as God embraces his child.
You turn toward God, and he runs toward you.

From Great Day Every Day:
Navigating Life’s Challenges with Promise and Purpose
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 2012) Max Lucado
Previously published as Every Day Deserves a Chance