“ For the love of Christ constraineth us” (II Cor. 5:14). I read a story the other day about a small boy who lived in the country and who had found a terrapin. He wanted to examine him more closely – but the terrapin closed his shell like a vise. The boy tried to pry the creature open with a stick, but an uncle reproved him: “That’s not the way. You will kill him.”
The story continued that the uncle took the terrapin and placed him on the hearth. In a few munities, warmth caused the terrapin to put out his head and feet, and he crawled away. The story closed with the uncle’s sage remark that “people are like terrapins; they cannot be forced into anything but they can be warmed up by human kindness so that they will come our way.”
The power of the Gospel of Christ is manifest and declared not only in the preached word, but also in a concerated life, in good works, which God ordained, and which will glorify Him in the memorials He left behind.
You may never preach a gospel sermon, but you can lead a person to Christ by the life that you live. You can exude a warmth that that will make it possible for him to learn the truth and be saved. Make no mistake — your personality will not save him — but it may be the instrument by which he is led to the Lord who can save.
Selected from the Beacon, April 7, 1963
