The Lord said, “My Spirit will not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3a. The following story illustrates this very clearly…..
“Hi Ozzie”, Bob sang out as he drove up to the house, “Are you coming out with me tonight to the church service?”
“Aw, I can’t make it tonight”, Ozzie said, “We’ve got a visitor coming for tea, so that cramps my style a bit. Maybe next Sunday.”
“OK, That’s a pity”, Bob said as he swung the car around.
He went down the road in a thoughtful mood. He had been taking his cousin Ozzie to the church services for nearly twelve months, and he had noticed a big difference in him in that time. His language had cleaned up, and he seemed to be more cheerful and not so complaining.
Bob hoped Ozzie had been really listening to the different preachers as they spoke each Sunday night, and not just been enjoying the singing and company of the other people there. After all, that was only part of it all. He thought of those verses in the New Testament where Jesus frequently said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”.
He knew it was one thing to hear what is being said, but quite another to let the words sink into one’s mind and then down to the heart and then put them into practice .
Bob knew what it had been like for himself….once he was faced with the facts, there was no turning back and now he couldn’t have been happier. Now he really wanted his cousin Ozzie to know the same peace of mind and heart that he had found.
But from that time on, Ozzie seemed to be making more and more excuses as to why he couldn’t make it on Sunday nights. The day came when he told Bob that he wouldn’t be going any more….it just wasn’t convenient, he said.
Bob was disappointed, but he knew that people have a free choice. He had made his mind up himself to continue going to the church services and as he did, his understanding grew. He wasn’t going to let Ozzie’s attitude change his mind.
Over the intervening years, they met occasionally and still did certain jobs together (both were farming), but the old camaraderie was missing. More years went by, nearly twenty in fact.
Bob was visiting his father one day. “You know, I had a visit from Ozzie the other day”, his father said. “He said a very strange thing. He told me that he’d had a very vivid dream one night recently…. He dreamed he saw a big blind coming down from the sky and he knew that it was between him and God. And then he said, ‘You know Unc, I couldn’t come to God now, even if I wanted to!’ I really didn’t know what to say to him”.
Bob knew the verse in the Bible where God says He won’t strive with people for ever, that there comes a day when He will take people at their word, and leave them alone. He was very sad to hear that, and yet he himself had been unable to pray for Ozzie for some time, and felt that this was indeed a message from the Lord concerning him.
We do well to take heed to the consequences of Ozzie’s choice and realise what a sad plight he was in. His attitude was still the same when he eventually died….he couldn’t call on God even if he wanted to!