Emphasis Preaching Journal

Bette Brown tells of a friend, whom we shall call Jeffrey, who decided to take his own life early one morning. As he walked through the kitchen, he saw an envelope containing a letter from one of his mother's closest friends. Even though she lived many miles away, he decided to phone her. He had remernbered visiting her as a child, and the fact that she always kept a promise box on the kitchen table.

Even though he had not seen this woman for 15 years, she remembered him. He asked, "Do you still have that promise box you let us kids use?" "Yes, it's right here," she replied.

Jeffrey asked her to take out a card and read it. She read Matthew 7:7, and they talked and prayed together. He asked for another promise and she read Psalm 37:5. Almost two hours of tears and prayers followed, and he said, "I'll not do what I had planned, but one more promise, please." She read, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Bette Brown writes that through this experience Jeffrey is now living a new life. He had found a new spirit through Christ, and he found it through a woman who believed that the promises of God were more important than the other things she kept in her kitchen.
--Dessem