God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
We need to know what kind of sales we can close and what kind we can’t. The redemption of an eternal soul is one sale that we, in our own strength, cannot accomplish. And we need to know it, not so that we won’t preach the gospel, but so that we won’t allow the gospel that is preached to be molded by what finally gets a response!
We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious second-best. So long as we can fuss and work and rush about, so long as we can lend a hand, we have some hope; but if we have to fall back upon God — ah, then things must be critical indeed!
