Being God-Conscious

Read a good story in one book this morning. It is a good reminder on the importance of being God-conscious rather than man-conscious. Indeed, often it is not that God doesn't want to move. He is waiting for someone willing to be used as His instrument.

A man was once flying from Atlanta to Dallas, and it so happened that in the seat next to him there was a little girl with Down's syndrome. After a while she turned to him and said, 'Do you smoke?' 'No,' he said, 'I don't smoke.'

'That's good,' she said, 'My mummy says you shouldn't smoke.' Then she pointed to the businessman who was sitting the other side of him and said, 'Does he smoke?'

The man was naturally rather embarassed by this, but he thought he ought to humour her, so he asked the businessman sitting next to him, 'Excuse me, but do you smoke?' 'No,' he said. 'That's good,' said the girl.

There was a little bit of pause, and then a few minutes later the little girl said, 'Do you love Jesus?'

'Yes,' the man replied, 'As a matter of fact I do love Jesus.'

'That's good,' she said. 'Everyone should love Jesus.' And then it suddenly dawned on him what she was going to say next. And he hunched down in his seat and hoped against hope that she wouldn't. But she did. 'That man next to you,' she said, 'does he love Jesus?' So he swallowed hard, and turned to the businessman sitting next to him, and asked him.

And with a tear in his eye the man replied, 'Do you know, I've been wanting someone to ask me that for a long time.'

And so Milton Cunningham, who was a preacher on his way to speak at a seminary in Dallas, led that businessman to Christ there on that aeroplane, all thanks to a little girl's utter of self-consciousness.