God is at Work!
About a month ago, I was answering some emails that I had received through the website. One particular one that had come through the website was puzzling to me. Someone had written and asked if I would like to receive their weekly email. Though I get a lot of these kinds of things, never had someone actually written me to ask if I wanted it.
Not knowing the exact source of the email, I put it off for a few days. However, the Lord laid on my heart to go ahead and respond. I basically said that it would be ok if they sent me the email, but trying to reason why they wanted me to receive it I told them that I would not necessarily use their material. My thoughts were headed in a specific direction making me think they wanted me to post their entries on our Gospel website.
I received an email in return with a thank you. Writing back one more time I was curious to know more about this man. I asked him about his salvation and what he was trusting in to get to heaven. Soon he wrote back with a reply, letting us know that he believed in salvation through faith in Jesus Christ plus works. This set me on a mission to tell him what we believed and why. I took about three hours and wrote him back a very long email explaining why we believe salvation is not by works.
Meanwhile, he was signing up on our website to receive Beams Bibles. A missionary friend Dave Whitmore responded to him that Beams would not accept their request because they were not Baptists. This got Bro. Whitmore corresponding with him.
About four days later I figured I would never hear from him again, but I was wrong. I received an e-mail stating that he had talked to his father about what the verses that I sent him. He said, “I am sorry, I was wrong. I read the verses you sent and talked to my father and you are right. I learned something from you.” Wow! That was a very unexpected surprise. Praise the Lord! This man just admitted that salvation by works was incorrect.
After a few weeks of communication between this man and several of us missionaries (by email), he was invited to a service at our church. He and his wife both came for one night of our recent missions conference. This was a great blessing!
I wrote to him afterwards to thank him for his visit. He expressed much appreciation for the invitation and the welcome at the church. He said, “Should you have any other special services there, please let me know and count me in on them.”
Praise the Lord! He works in peoples lives even by means of email. There are other stories that we could tell of people we have had contact with and the Lord has worked in their lives. We are now able to help pastors on a regular basis in Portugal, Venezuela, and Australia as well as the US and Brazil.
Please continue to pray for this man, his family, and other that we are in contact with at this time.
— Jeremy