Suzanne's Story (Evangelism Episodes, part 1)

For this new series, I will be chronicling unique people, events, and situations I have encountered giving out the Gospel, God's Good News of salvation.

I met Suzanne at a donut diner two blocks away from my mother-in-law’s home.  I noticed the elderly woman immediately, for her Bible was spread out before her and she seemed lost in meditative thought.

After we had ordered, I approached her.  “Reading your Bible?” I offered. 

“Yes,” Suzanne replied.  “I will be teaching Sunday School tomorrow.  I’m not very smart, so I find I must keep reading the same passage and studying it--to have the words I need to say.”

After I offered her a Gospel tract, she looked at me confidently: “I know I have eternal life," she said without hesitation.  "May I tell you my testimony?”   

Eager to hear this elderly woman's words, I nodded.

"When I was a young emigrant child from China," she began, "a missionary woman approached me.  Although the woman communicated in rather broken Chinese, she told me as best as she could about Jesus.  I learned that He is God and that He loves me.  But I didn't understand.  How could this Jesus, this God Who made me, love me?" 

Her sense of unworthiness startled me.  In a narcissistic society, bent on catering to the needs of the individual, validating people, and assuring them of their worth, Suzanne stood as a rarity, someone unable to consider that this great God should stoop to love the likes of her.

“I wasn’t pretty," the elderly woman continued, squinting up at me from her corner table, "And I had nothing to offer.  I wasn’t smart—so I just couldn’t understand.  Why would Jesus love me?  Why would He love me enough to die for my sins, giving His life and rising from the grave for me?  At that time, I did not accept Jesus’ love for me, because I saw myself only as unworthy."

Tears filled her eyes as she remembered these moments from decades past. 

"Years later, as a mother of two children, I found myself driving my car down a steep California hillside in the rain.  I was losing control of the vehicle when I asked God to please be merciful to my two children.  I didn’t deserve to be spared; but at least if He would take compassion upon them, I would be glad.  At the top of a precipice sat a bench.  In God's providence, I hit that bench and the car suffered only minor damage to the front.  Two more inches and we would have plummeted to our deaths."

She paused with a faraway look in her eyes. 

"It was then that I remembered the missionary woman’s message to my soul so many years before.  I saw, in this life-threatening instance, that only God could stop my vehicle.  Only He could spare mine and my children's lives.  It was at that time that I believed the message of Jesus' love for me. I immediately trusted Christ and gave my heart to Him.  I am undeserving, but because I embraced Christ that day, I now have eternal life.”

These days, Suzanne passes her time in prayer and Bible study, asking God for daily grace as she ministers to others and seeks to effectively teach His Word to her Sunday School class.  

The message she embraced that day--that Jesus loved her personally and died for her sins--is a radically powerful truth. 

The amazing love of Christ should regularly dominate our thoughts.  With the psalmist, we can say,

“I will remember the works of the LORD:

surely I will remember thy wonders of old.

I will meditate also of all thy work,

 and talk of thy doings”—Psalm 76:11-12.

That Jesus, this Lord of Lords and King of Kings, should stoop not only to serve us but to love us, calling us not only servants but friends, welcoming us into His family as adopted siblings through the blood of His cross--beckons us to plummet the riches of His grace.

Thanks in part to my friend Suzanne's testimony, the children's hymn "Jesus Loves Me" now strikes me as one of the most potent love songs on the planet.  Let us never cease to delight in the magnificence of His amazing love!

What God has done—

This be my theme, my ruminating thought!

His joys, His ways, His truth, His path—

The wonders He has wrought!

May this my frequent focus be--

The God of Heaven lovest me!

 Oh, then I'll sing through all my days, 

Rejoicing with eternal praise!