The Personal TouchChapman, J. Wilbur (John Wilbur)
Religion
The Personal Touch
Chapman, J. Wilbur (John Wilbur)
Evangelistic work; Salvation -- Christianity
One would not expect a police officer to be a personal worker, but many
of them are, and notably so in Great Britain. Ex-Sergeant Wheeler of
Oldham came to attend one of our meetings, and being asked to speak, he
said: "Though an Ex-Sergeant, I am not an Ex-Christian. There are a
large number of people who look upon a policeman from many standpoints,
but it is very seldom that they see him in the position in which I am
placed to-night. They have an idea that a policeman does not exist to
preach the Gospel or to tell them about Jesus Christ, and it is
Christian people who get that idea sometimes."
"I know a police sergeant in London who is a particular friend of mine
and a great Christian worker. A lady went to one of our Provincial
Police Conferences in connection with the Police Association and saw
this big man who was so enthusiastic in connection with the work that
the lady doubted his genuineness, and to satisfy her curiosity she
ascertained his private address, travelled by rail from London, visited
his home during his absence, and asked his wife what sort of a man he
was. That is the way to find a man out. But she found that he was even
a better man in the home than he was out of it. If you want to find
what a man's character is, you do not ask about it on special occasions
when he is on his guard, you ask what it is when he is at home, it is
there that he unconsciously reveals it, and this revelation just
because of its unconsciousness, proves invariably correct.
"When the Lord Jesus brought me out of darkness into the light, when He
broke the fetters and snapped the chains eleven years ago, I went home
and said to my wife, 'I am going to live for Jesus, and we will start
here, at home. We will have family prayers--we were not a large family,
only nine of us, and for the first time in their lives, my children
heard their father pray; and there on my knees in all humility I
pledged myself before God that I would do anything, make any sacrifice,
if by so doing I could help a weaker brother and lift him out of the
gutter. That is the way I started. I am not what I ought to be, I am
not what I hope to be, but, thank God, by His grace and love, I am what
I am and not what I once was. The Lord changed my desires when he put a
new heart within me. When I see a drunken man in the streets I do not
pass him like I used to. My heart goes out to him and I look beyond the
man in the streets to the life in the home he comes from, and see the
misery there; but I thank God that He put the desire in my heart to try
to help that brother. And how often opportunities present themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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