🌎🇺🇸 Stories from the Field: Woodstock, Georgia — “No One Can Forgive Me”

Stories from the Field

Not every mission field requires a passport.

One day, I was serving with the Gideons at a local church food distribution in Woodstock, Georgia. As families waited in their cars, we would walk from vehicle to vehicle, offer them a free Bible, talk with them for a few moments, and simply ask, “How can I pray for you?”

Most of those conversations were brief, but there is one I have never forgotten.

“How Can I Pray for You?”

I walked up to a car where an older gentleman was sitting and asked, “Sir, how can I pray for you?”

He simply replied, “I’m good.”

I respected his answer, but before leaving I offered him a Bible. I opened it to the back where the plan of salvation was printed and began walking him through the Gospel.

We came to Romans 3:23:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

— Romans 3:23 (NKJV)

Suddenly, everything changed.

The man looked at me and said, “No one can forgive me for what I’ve done.”

Then he began to weep.

I didn’t know what he had done, and I didn’t need to know. I knelt beside his car and told him about the One who already knew. I told him that Jesus loved him, that Jesus had died on the cross for his sins, and that there was nothing in his past beyond the reach of Christ’s forgiveness.

As the tears continued, he reached out, held my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said words I will never forget:

“I want Jesus.”

Right there beside his car, I had the privilege of leading that precious man through the plan of salvation, and he prayed to receive Jesus Christ as his Savior.

The Mission Field Is Closer Than We Think

I have shared the Gospel in villages, jungles, churches, and homes around the world, but that day God reminded me again that the mission field isn’t somewhere we go. It is wherever God has placed us.

There may be someone sitting beside you at work, living down the street, standing behind you in a grocery store, or waiting in a car at a food distribution who believes the same thing that gentleman believed:

• I’ve done too much.
• I’ve gone too far.
• God could never forgive someone like me.

But that is why the Gospel is such good news.

We don’t come to Jesus because our past is clean. We come because His blood is sufficient.

Grace Is Greater Than Our Past

That man came looking for food that day. But God had something far greater waiting for him.

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

— Romans 5:8 (NKJV)

Maybe someone reading this needs to hear it today: your past is not greater than the grace of Jesus Christ.

The mission field may be across the world, or it may be sitting in the car beside you. Wherever God has placed us, there are people who need to know that forgiveness is possible, hope is real, and the love of Jesus reaches farther than their past.