Missed Opportunities

There's a story about D.L. Moody which I can't get out of my mind. Moody was in Chicago preaching to his congregation and he ended the service without giving a public invitation. Rather, he told them to go home and think about it and they would talk next week about what to do with Christ, but next week never came because that dreadful night, it was 1871, the night of the great Chicago fire, where half the city burned and became an inferno.

Listen to Moody's words about his deep regret of not giving a public invitation that terrible night, friends. What a mistake. I have never dared to give an audience a week to think of their salvation since.

If they were lost, they might rise up in the judgment against me. I remember Mr. Sankey singing and how his voice rang when he came to that pleading verse, Today the Savior calls for refuge fly. The storm of justice falls and death is nigh.

I have hard work to keep back the tears today. 22 years have passed away and I have not seen that congregation since and I will never meet those people again until I meet them in another world. I have asked God many times to forgive me for telling people that night to take a week to think it over and if he spares my life, I will never do it again.

One lesson I learned that night, which I'll never forget, and that is when I preach, I press Christ upon the people then and there. How many times in my life, friends, have I missed God with missed opportunities of failing to witness to someone he put in my path with the gospel. I remember years ago, I was in a hit-and-run accident and my car was totaled and a stranger stopped to help me and give me a ride home.

It was a long drive and I was so upset about my car I failed to be upset over his soul and he got away. The good news about missed opportunities, friends, is we can learn from them like Moody did and have a firmer resolve to press Christ on the people going forward. It's made me not hesitate to hand out gospel tracts to just about anyone I come across.

I remember driving through Atlanta one time and a state trooper pulled me over for speeding and I apologized to him and explained I was a preacher on my way to a meeting and I wasn't paying attention to the speedometer because I was praying. He wrote me out a warning and handed it to me and I asked him, You gave me something, can I give you something too? And I handed him a little Bible and he took it very seriously and thanked me for it. While driving out of town one time with my daughter in the car with me, we got two flat tires on two separate occasions and she got to watch me witness to two different men who were putting on a new tire on my car as I handed tracts to them and pressed Christ on them.

We can make up all those missed opportunities, friends, if we want to make the effort. I'll go to McDonald's through the drive-thru and hand a tract to the person in the first window who takes my money and then I hand another tract to the next window picking up my meal. I always say something as I hand them a tract like, This has been a great help to me.

If you read it, maybe it will help you too. I keep a dollar in some tracts that I keep in my visor in my car for homeless people. When they ask me for money, I'll reach in my visor and pull out a tract that I have a dollar bill in and say here is some money inside this little booklet, but the real treasure is the booklet if you'll promise to read it.

Buy a bunch of good gospel tracts, friends, and try to give them all away. People need Jesus. They just don't know it yet, and they don't know him yet.

But we can point them to him and make some opportunities to make up for some of the ones we've lost. Let us pray.