A Tract for Yadira
Author
Faustino de Jesús Zamora Vargas
Summary: Before going out to share the Gospel, we prayed that God would prepare people's hearts. When we met Yadira, whose illness had left her feet twisted, we found a receptive heart. She accepted a tract and gave her life to Christ through tears; her disability did not prevent her from standing up. Her response reminds us that God's grace frees us from sin and gives us new life. Around us are people who, though they have no physical limitation like hers, live in spiritual death. God needs us to bring them the Good News. Let us remain attentive to his missionary call, responding with obedience and courage, and trusting that he will not abandon us.
When I looked into Yadira’s eyes, I remembered the prayer we had offered to God before setting out for the harvest: “Father, prepare the hearts of those who will be saved this morning.” Yadira is a beautiful creature of God. We met her as we passed by her humble home with a handful of gospel tracts in our hands and a burning desire in our hearts.
She could not run like the other children during her childhood because a terrible illness twisted the bones in her feet and left her physically disabled. But her eyes were unchanged from childhood: large, dark, shining like a pair of stars God had just made.
She took the tract in her hands and smiled, inviting us into her humble home as she dragged her left leg with difficulty. A heart receptive to the Gospel can only be the work of God’s grace. Again I remembered our morning prayer, pleading to reach lost souls: “Lord, Lord, guide us by your Spirit to where there is need.”
The moment Yadira agreed to give her young life to Christ, her eyes filled with tears of emotion, and she gripped the tract in her hands as though she feared someone might snatch it away. The brokenness of a spirit being freed from the prisons of a life without Jesus. “But now, having been set free from sin and made servants of God, you have sanctification as your fruit, and eternal life as its result” (Rom. 6:22). Her twisted feet could not prevent her from standing up, and for a moment her limp seemed to disappear. My fellow missionary, F.B., prayed in the Spirit with gratitude for Yadira’s (new) life.
God performs this miracle every day, but He cannot do it alone. He needs you. There are many Yadiras around you, sitting on the threshold of salvation, waiting for someone to approach them with the Good News of Jesus Christ so they can cross the boundary that separates them from eternal condemnation. Most have not lived like Yadira, with feet that are almost useless, but in a state of total spiritual death that encompasses not only their feet but their souls and hearts as well.
If you do not do it, Jesus says the stones will preach to the lost: But He answered, “I tell you that if these keep silent, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). Christian life falls short of God’s expectations if it does not set out to proclaim His Gospel of light and hope. Living according to the Gospel means always being alert to God’s missionary call. Either the stones or you. God would rather it be you. The Book of Life still has many pages without names.
I know that in your mind Yadira has become a flesh-and-blood person for whom you have prayed for a long time. Be obedient and do not be afraid. Help God build His spiritual house for eternity: Then David said to his son Solomon, “Be strong, be courageous, and do the work; do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or abandon you until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished” (1 Chronicles 28:20).
God bless you!