During the Christmas season we turn our focus to the birth of Jesus Christ. We are reminded that God chose to allow his own son to come live among us and suffer so that you and I might be made right with God. At Christmas we remember God giving us his son so that you and I might come to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us in Acts 4:12 “There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them.” (NLT)

God sent angels to announce the birth of Christ to some shepherds in the field. Since then God has depended upon people to share this message of good news and great joy. Some go on short term mission trips to other nations while still others give their lives to telling others about Jesus. There are missionaries who serve in all kinds of conditions around the world so that others might hear and respond to this wonderful news that a Savior has been born. This is the story of one volunteer team from South Carolina and a missionary serving with the International Mission Board.

A volunteer team from South Carolina journeyed deep into the “bush,” right into the teeth of Mali’s rainy season. A mud hole trapped their land cruiser. They slogged 1.5 miles through knee deep muck to the nearest village. None of the volunteer team members or missionaries had ever stopped there before. The villagers welcomed the dripping strangers with dinner, tea and a hut for the night—Bambara hospitality in action. After Steve Roach, strategy coordinator for the Bambara people, arrived to dig them out of the mud the next day, the team was able to travel on to its destination. But a few days later they returned to this village to share the Gospel. Six men accepted Christ.

One of the village elders shared: “My great-grandfather was a Christian in this village. He died in this village about 100 years ago. Some Christians from Bamako (Mali’s capital city) came out to bury him. When he died, we lost the road to God. We forgot about it. We’ve been watching you drive back and forth through our village, and we wondered where you were going, but you never stopped. (The volunteer team’s ministry was focused on a village farther down the road.) But we weren’t thinking about finding God’s road. And you weren’t thinking about us. But God was. He finally said, “Enough!” And He stopped your car in the mud so that you’d have no place to sleep except our village, so that we could find the road to Him again.”

How many people do you pass by each day that are living in emptiness, despair, hopelessness and are simply waiting for someone to stop long enough to show them the road to God? Could it be that some of those seemingly annoying delays could be God’s way of putting you in someone’s life who needs to hear about the love of Jesus Christ? Is it possible that the time you spend waiting in an office or in line could be God’s way of putting you next to someone that needs to hear about God’s love for them through you?

The next time you experience an interruption in your life, pay attention to what God may be doing in the midst of it. It may be that your “bad luck” or “waiting in line” is God’s way of giving you a divine appointment with someone looking for God’s road.

Merry Christmas,

Dr. Phil