By Bruce Wilcox (Lay Pastor/Teacher in the Cariboo House Church Mission)
In pondering the amazing grace of God, it strikes me that my whole younger life, which was the “night-life” every weekend, was spent mainly in the bars of these same two communities of Forest Grove and Lac La Hache. There was one at each end of Lac la Hache and the other was the Forest Grove Legion! Drinking way too much, and just general dissipation. And if anyone would have told me or any of my blood-shot eyed friends, of which there were many, that I would one day be ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ in these places, and that church would actually be in the Forest Grove Legion, well, it would have literally seemed more realistic to say that I would fly to the moon!
But come to think of it, if God takes us right back to the very “scene of the crime”, back to the places of our greatest failures, follies and jackass moments, (which for me also include flying an airplane through the powerline at Forest Grove) – it shouldn’t be all that surprising. If it seems a little scary at times (and it does), we remember that Jesus also gave His disciples the courage to go right back to the scene of their most awful failures. He said to them, “You will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). People knew them in Jerusalem, which was where they’d also been exposed as weak and cowardly men, but it was to Jerusalem that Jesus sent them first.
It seems that as far as God is concerned, our best witness for Christ may often be where we are known, where we’ve been defeated, because that is where people will then see the transformation Christ has made in our lives. But really, wherever we are geographically, the Lord has placed us there for His purposes. It starts where we are. How well He can use us to be involved in His work in our own areas, communities, and neighborhoods, we can’t even imagine.
