GOSPEL

Tim graduated from High School with no sense of purpose or ambition so he joined the Army. While at the reception station where new soldiers are in-processed, a chaplain handed out Bibles. Tim remembered the New Testament his dad kept from World War II and decided to take one he could keep as his own memento.

The Army sent Tim to Germany where unfortunately he got involved with the wrong crowd using drugs and drinking alcohol to pass the time. His assignment was to sit for six hours at night in a tower guarding a nuclear weapons site. With nothing to do for long periods of time, he began to ask questions like, “Who am I? . . . What’s my purpose in life?” One day he grabbed his Bible, took it up into the tower and began reading it. Many nights as he read he said it was like the Bible spoke directly to him. Finally, on Christmas day in 1971, Tim read the plan of salvation written on the back page of his Bible and made a decision to follow Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

Tim got involved in a local chapel and a chaplain nurtured him in his faith. After leaving the military and attending college, he felt a strong call to serve God. He attended seminary and came back into the military to be an Army chaplain. Years later during a field exercise, he sat down with another soldier on a night so dark they could not see each other. The young soldier said he had never talked to a preacher before and listened intently as Tim shared how God changed his life. A year later he received a letter from that same soldier telling him how he placed his faith in Jesus as a result of what Tim shared that night.

Meditation
Colossians 1:6—. . . All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.

Tim and fourteen other senior Army officers gather for several hours each day as a small group working toward the completion of a Masters Degree in International Strategic Studies. One of our classmates opened up his heart with me at a restaurant last night. Essentially he believes all religions are basically the same and he can’t understand why people don’t just get along. I’m praying I will have the opportunity to share the gospel with him as it is evident that he is searching for purpose in life. I thought of Tim and how wonderfully God transformed his life through the power of the gospel. What God did in Tim, in you and in me, He wants to do across the planet. The gospel is life-transforming. It is the message of hope that should always grace our lips; the word of truth that gives our heart an eternal beat! Without it we have nothing . . . something to think about . . . in reveration!

Inspiration
The gospel is a gift to our poverty, not a triumph of our resource.—Oswald Chambers in Approved Unto God