Memorial Stone Two, The Greatest Invitation!

       As I remember it, it was a typical Saturday in rural Naples, North Carolina. How wrong I was! Little did I know, I was about to begin a quest that would lead to the greatest invitation of my life!
  
As a teenager living with my family in our modest home, I remember a knock on the door that Saturday.

The ones doing the knocking (A Pastor and his son) were from the Calvary Baptist Church, in Hendersonville North Carolina. They had a bus ministry and on that Saturday they "just happened" (what some people call coincidence, we know is the will of God) to knock on our door.

Because of their mission heart, and invitation, my brother and sister and I began riding the church bus week by week to the church, where we heard the Word of God preached!

I must confess I was more motivated by the candy they would give you if you attended!

 Their kindness would set in motion my personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, and sow seeds of truth in my brother and sister's life that would one day have eternal results...mainly their own conversion to the "Way, the Truth and the Life!" The Lord Jesus Christ! 

It was in that Church where I heard an invitation to  confess my sins to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in doing so receive His life in exchange for my own. He offered to forgive me, and become the Lord of my life. I said Yes! The most incredible transaction took place in a moment, I was a Kings Kid!

For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son. (Colossians 1:13).

 Speed ahead 17 or so years, I was back in Western North Carolina, as a speaker at a World Missions Conference. By this time I had completed college went on the earn a Masters degree and was Pastoring a church in Eastern Colorado.

I went up to the parsonage where the Pastor of Calvary Baptist, Buddy Mullinax was still pastor (He actually pastored Calvary on three separate occasions) when he answered the door...I said to him, "Sir I have come along way to thank you!"

He asked me in and I told him about that certain Saturday when he and his son Donny had stopped by our home....with an invitation to attend church...that now looking back was engraved from ...heaven!

Upon returning to Colorado I received a letter from Pastor Mullinax that started:

Dear Mark, Thank you for making my day, my week, my month, my year! In actuality, it was the tender evangelistic heart of Pastor Buddy and Donny that I am grateful for both now and forever!

I later was asked to be the key note speaker at Pastor Mullinax's 40th anniversary celebration! While there, the bus driver, who drove us to Church week by week introduced himself, and with tears in his eyes said "I often wondered if it was worth it, picking up kids...week after week, (I was thinking yeah, kids more interested in candy than the Lord) he said but today....God showed me it was!!

Wow, how thankful I am for those dear people who sacrificed their time, to be used of God to change my life, my family's life! To point me to the One who has changed my life in so many profound ways!

Incidentally, the events of that Saturday were published in "Mission Magazine" all over the country a few years ago!

My brother now pastors one of the leading Churches in Colorado, our sister has graduated to heaven, and our family looks back with gratitude to Calvary Baptist for providing the initial opportunity for her to learn about the love of Jesus, that makes her Home-going now easier to accept.


We will see her again!

Today, think about someone you can reach out to, with the love of Jesus, if we all just reached one, think of the possibilities, when one person says "Yes" to the greatest invitation!

The following song by Steven Curtis Chapman reminds me of that day long ago in North Carolina, how fitting that I write this on Valentines Day, how I celebrate the love of My Heavenly Father, His Wonderful Son...and the Holy Spirit!