Once upon a time in Africa I needed a good car, but I didn’t have the money to buy a nice one. Then I discovered that the Japanese Consulate in Nairobi had wrecked their brand new blue Volkswagen sedan. It had turned over on the road to Thika. It looked awful! The top was bashed in, the windshield was broken, the left door was bent out of shape, the left front fender was mangled; and the front wheel was bent in.
But they were selling the wreck cheap, so I bought it. It was a new car. I had an African help me. We welded a new top on. I bought a second-hand door and fender and wheel and put them on. Then the African and I painted the car the same blue it was when it was new. When we finished, you couldn’t tell it from a new VW just off the showroom floor. And of course the engine and everything was new. It ran perfectly.
The wreck was “converted” to be a new VW again. You would not have laughed at me if you had seen me driving it. You would have thought I was driving a new car! I think I enjoyed driving that VW more than if I had had the money to put down to buy a brand new one from the factory. I had restored this one! That made it special for me.
Don’t ever think that anybody is a wreck that can’t be “converted!” I felt just a little bit proud of myself for restoring that banged up VW. Then I got to thinking about how Jesus rebuilds ruined people.
It’s what He loves to do most. Of course He loves sinless angels who have never fallen into sin like we humans have done. But I think He has a special love for some human being like you and me who was lost, someone who made a mess of his life, maybe became an alcoholic or a drug addict or even a criminal, someone who had lost all hope and thought he was doomed to die forever as a wreck.
When such a person hears the Good News of the gospel of Jesus and his heart takes hold of it, a change comes over that person from top to bottom. People who saw that alcoholic lying in the gutter may have thought, “There’s a hopeless person!” but they are surprised when that person is delivered from the sins and addictions that have held him, and becomes a new and free person “in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus tells us that when the news is sent to Heaven of such a transformation, all the holy angels break out into song, they are so happy. It’s like when the Good Shepherd finally found His sheep that was lost. He tells His friends, ‘“Let us celebrate!’ In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over ninety-nine respectable people who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:4-7).
Yes, I could see 99 perfect VW “bugs” going by on the highway every day; so what? But I had saved one from the horror of being left in the dreary junkyard forever! That one was special.
I think I will never forget how nice it looked and how perfectly it ran when I had finished with it! Yes, I am happy just telling you the story about it. And Jesus will tell everybody forever how happy He is that He saved you and me from a far worse “junkyard.”
Anyone who turns away from Him wrecks his life more than my VW was wrecked. Stay out of the world’s “junkyard.”