Embarrassed & Ashamed
That would be me. I’m embarrassed and ashamed of myself. Allow me to explain. It was a red-eye flight by accident. I thought I was booking a 12:20 flight home from Los Angeles to arrive at 5:20. Just in time to make it to our Monday night Bible study. The only problem was I booked a 12:20 AM flight that would not arrive home until 5:20 AM! One of my young preacher friends would tell me that at my age it would probably be a good idea to get someone to help me with my scheduling. It had already been a long busy week of speaking and meetings. Now with the prospect of arriving home after no sleep my attitude was less than stellar:)
However, the misstep in scheduling is not the cause of my being embarrassed and ashamed. There was a lady seated next to me on the plane and not once did I engage her in conversation about Jesus or His Church. As a matter of fact, I barely spoke to her.
It would be nice and comforting if I could blame it on being tired or being upset about the all night flight. But thinking about it that is probably not the only reason for my lack of speaking about the Lord.
Okay, here is my confession of weakness. She didn’t smell good. She was a different nationality. She spoke broken English. She wasn’t attractive, and to top it all off she was from a different generation (yeah, that one).
My plan whenever I get on a plane is always to say something about Jesus and about the Church. But this time I didn’t. I wasn’t acting at all like a preacher of the Good News. More importantly, I wasn’t at all acting like a Christian who cares about other. And because of that I’m embarrassed and ashamed of myself.
My sincere prayer is that God will forgive me for wasting this opportunity He gave me to tell someone about Jesus.
My prayer for every disciple of Jesus is that we will never again refuse to speak about the love of Christ to everyone we meet.
My prayer is that we will never again judge another person’s right to hear about Jesus based on the color of their skin, their level of education, their nationality, their gender, their age, or anything else.
My prayer is that we will realize that every person is created in the image of God.
My prayer is that we will see every person as a soul who desperately needs the Lord.
My prayer is that we will look at every opportunity to tell someone the Good News as a gift from God.
My prayer is that we will show the love of Jesus in the way we treat everyone we meet.
My prayer is that our eyes will be opened and our ears attuned for more opportunities to share the Gospel.
My prayer is that we will consider the fact that every person deserves to hear the Gospel once before any person deserves to hear it twice.
Dear God, please forgive us for the times we have wasted opportunities that You have placed in our path. Please help us to always say something good about Jesus and something good for Jesus to everyone we meet. Dear Father, help us to see every person as someone who is made in Your image. Help us to love the people in our world with the love of Jesus. In His Precious Name we pray, Amen.