Go Home and Tell Your Friends

.
"Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you" (Mark 5:19).

Here we have the account of one man's assignment, given to him by Jesus after the Lord had freed him from horrific enslavement to demonic powers. Surely, he had a story to tell!

We have no record given to us of what happened when he returned home, but our imaginations may soar with just how far-reaching his testimony must have become.

Like him, we each have a story to tell.

This verse of scripture came alive in my heart almost forty years ago, when as a young man in the Texas State Penitentiary I prayed one night in my cell, asking the Lord if I could go home. I opened my Bible and these words seemed to leap from the page -- "Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you."

Something happened inside me at that moment, and I knew two things for certain. I was going to be released from prison, and I was to go home and tell my story. Within two weeks, it happened. And I have been telling my story ever since!

Yes, God has saved me by His grace. But there's more.

He has sealed me with His Spirit, secured me in His Kingdom, satisfied me with His Presence, and sent me on His mission. He has set me up as a husband, a father, a teacher, a seer, and a friend. He has sustained me through His people, and shown me marvelous things in His Word, in dreams, in visions, in circumstances and in others. And He is still at work, doing even more and more.

And I tell you now the simple, undeniable truth -- it is no secret what God can do! What He's done for others -- He will do for you, with arms wide open.

Ask, and you will receive. Then, "Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you!"
.