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One Saturday afternoon, I felt the desire to get up off the couch and film a documentary about how God changes lives. I am an introvert, so this can only be the work of God. I came to a garage where a family was doing some work on a bike. I told them the thesis of my documentary and asked them if any of them would like to be participants. There was a husband, a wife and a child. The the husband looked suddenly burdened, he looked up at the sky, his eyes set with what I can only describe as duty. He looked back at me squinting, his eyes adjusting from the hot summer sun. “I don’t like being filmed", he protested I pulled out a notebook and told him I would take notes if he preferred. His wife came to his side, “Share your testimony with him honey”, she insisted gently. I don’t know how long I stood in front of that garage in the hot sun, but it was long enough for him to share his shortened testimony with me. He sighed and started, “Six children started out on a path of death and destruction.”
Six children started out on the path of death and destruction. One of those children went to night school in his youth. A man would stay around and witness to the students there, one day he witnessed to that particular youth named Levi. The witnessing man asked Levi if he were to die that night, if he would go to Heaven. Introducing himself as Nico, he showed Levi his lost condition with passages out of the Bible everyday for three months. Eventually, Levi agreed to go with Nico to church.
Levi’s father and mother split up when Levi was quite young, but Levi still held on to his father’s prejudice against hispanic people although he primarily lived with his mother. As soon as Levi walked in the church he realized that everyone was hispanic except for himself and the preacher. He was handed a salvation card and went through the steps. Many times before that day Levi had read through salvation cards like this, but this time he applied his will. God used the very people who Levi was prejudiced against to bring him to Christ.
Change was evident in Levi’s life and that bothered his mother, because she had raised him as a Roman Catholic. Levi and his five siblings were being brought up with the rules of the Roman Catholic religion but Jesus had not worked in any of their hearts, not even in their mother, who was raising them that way. Levi stopped going to bars with his friends every weekend and getting drunk; God took that desire away from him. Levi invited his brother to his newfound church and many Sundays after that, the brother came home with wet hair. A phrase that echoed throughout the years as the mother saw such change was, “Not in my house!”, she didn’t completely understand why he was being baptized because he had been sprinkled as a baby, for she was not in a changed condition. Sometime after that two of Levi’s sisters decided to follow Christ as well.
The third sister was witnessed to before she went to Colorado to live with her boyfriend. Levi showed her the salvation card and explained to her how Christ had changed his life. She was not saved on that day. Later, she called Levi and told him that she had been given a pamphlet like he had shown her, and she too, had decided to apply following Christ to her will. Five out of six children had been saved and their mother had seen the transformation in each of them, as each of the children were changing the way they lived.
Years passed. Yet daily, Levi prayed and prayed that his mother would let Christ into her heart , The day came when he felt relieved of the burden of praying for his mother. He still wasn’t convinced that she had been changed, so he visited her, by this time Levi had a wife and four children of his own. His mother told him that one day when nobody was home she picked up and read one of the salvation tracks he left behind; she placed it back precisely where she found it so no one would know she read it.God spoke to her heart and she visited with each of her children. Afterwards, she felt so convicted that she surrendered herself and let Christ change her heart.
Only one of the siblings remains unsaved, he is being prayed for constantly. Levi’s father became saved after undergoing some hard times.
What I took away from that story
Levi was the only person who cared to share anything with me that day, needless to say that documentary doesn’t yet exist. But this story is filled with more substance than I ever expected to glean from a Saturday afternoon. Here are some things I took away from my time in front of that garage.
- God uses impossible situations to his advantage, in this case, Levi and his siblings being brought to Him through a church full of people they were prejudiced against.
- Never give up hope on someone, God softens people’s hearts with time.
- God also uses change to bring his children closer to him.
- God gives us spiritual gifts, Levi told me that the more we use them, the more even our own relationship with God is strengthened.
- I have never personally been a fan of the mass production of salvation cards and shrink wrapping the message of salvation, but I have now seen how God can even use those in situations.
- This story is a reminder that even if one is raised in a Christian household, if evident change hasn’t taken place, then one should brutally question their own salvation.
I also want to hear what others took away from this. And I always want to remind people to email me if they want to share how God changed them or even the lives around them as you have read here.
