James & Carolanne

I received this story recently from our director and thought you would find it encouraging.

This week we got a comment on the site from someone I’ll call Bill.  Bill was very upset. His fiancé had cheated on him, stole from him and called off the wedding. Bill was angry that everything he loved had fallen apart. He felt that he had been a good Christian, served God faithfully and God had not held up his side of things.  Bill wrote:

I’m upset that God not only didn’t deliver his promises, but that I wasted my time serving, following, and praying to a God who either ignores most of us, or just barely keeps us alive.

One of our blog mentors wrote back to Bill less than two hours later urging him not to give up on God.  He reminded Bill of Hebrews 13:5 where God says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” He acknowledged Bill’s pain and share some of his own story.

The very next day Bill wrote back:

I’ve been through trials before but this feels different…thank you for your kind words and encouragement, I appreciate the reminder….I hope that this time I can actually find some sort of help to my pain…I’ve signed up for the mentoring, to try to give Jesus another shot with the strength I have. Anyways, thanks and sorry, I’m facing some things I don’t know how to get out of.

I am constantly amazed at how the simple of act of listening has such a profound affect on hurting people.  We were not able to give Bill his fiancé back, we couldn’t even answer all of his questions, but were able to remind him who God is.  We listened and we pointed the way to Jesus and God in his provenance used that to start Bill on a journey back to his faith.