The Power Of A Half Hour DevotionalExemplo

Spreading the Gospel in 30 Minutes

God gives us divine appointments every day of our lives. Sometimes we keep those appointments; sometimes we don’t. Every day you have encounters with all kinds of people—at work, in the grocery store or shopping mall, in the neighborhood, at your child’s school, in the doctor’s office—everywhere. Each of these encounters is an opportunity for you to help someone get right with God.

How important are these short opportunities? The director of our Dream Center in Phoenix, Brian Steele, knows exactly how significant they are.
He recalls a turning point in his life, though, while giving food and clothing to homeless people. Part of the organization’s philosophy was that they were going to do good works for the sake of Jesus but not tell the recipients about Jesus. Brian got to know the homeless people quickly, seeing them return week after week. What got to him, though, was one particular homeless lady who disappeared without notice.

“There was one lady who had been coming consistently,” Brian recalled. “She was probably in her forties but very hardened; she had clearly been on the streets for quite a while. One day I was serving food, and I didn’t see her there. It didn’t make much of an impression on me; I was just aware of her absence.

“I started asking a couple of the other folks who always served and they said that she had died of a heroin overdose a few weeks earlier. I was stunned. I felt so convicted that here I had been, passing out beans and burritos, giving her and all the others the bread of this world, but at no point did I ever touch base with her about the love of Christ or explain to her how much God loved her.

“I spent the last half hour of that shift thinking deeply about the purpose of my life and what it means to be called to the mission field. Is it just about giving food and clothing? That was a real change moment in my life. From that point on, I have been determined to not only address the physical needs of the poor but to also be about my Father’s business of telling people about the true bread of life.”