The Insurance Audit...

Insurance audits, or, at least the ones I’ve been through, seem to go very quickly on the telephone. Each year we receive a package in the mail from our company’s insurance agency. Inside are pages and pages to be filled out. The cover letter says that we are welcome to fill out the form and mail it in, fax it in, or simply call in for a phone audit.

I called in last week and went through the phone audit (it took about 5 minutes). I don’t recall whether or not I then shared the gospel with the lady on the phone.

Today we had another call from the insurance agency about an audit related to another policy we have.

The agent and I had a good time on the phone. When I identified myself and company I could hear him beginning to dig through what sounded like an enormous pile of paper as he tried to locate our policy. I made a comment about the paperless office, and “welcome to the 19th century”. He laughed, and said they had tried to go paperless awhile back but it, obviously, hadn’t worked. I said I could tell, as it sounded like he had just dove into a huge recycling bin. He finally found it and we went through the various questions.

Three minutes later he said we were all set until next year. Well, I said, I wouldn’t necessarily be looking forward to the call next year, but, it is always nice to have done. I said they had originally missed us with their first phone call because we were traveling for a month. He asked if it was a vacation, and I said, no, we had a Christian ministry.

I asked if he had a Christian background and he said that he did. I asked if he knew where he was going to go when he died and he laughed – saying someone else had once asked him that same question. I asked what his answer had been and he said whatever it was, the other guy was fairly negative about it! He shared that he, like everyone else, hopes to go heaven.

I asked if he had a minute before the next call came in to take a quick test. He was quiet and I assume he was thinking about it – perhaps he wasn’t very interested in taking the test but couldn’t figure out a way to tell me that politely? I reminded him that he had just asked me a bunch of questions --- surely he had a minute for me to ask him a few? He agreed.

I asked if he was familiar with the ten commandments – and he was. I asked if he had kept all of them, some of them, or none of them. At first he thought he had kept them all – then he said he may have broken one of them!

My next question was whether he could name them all (which he couldn’t) and I wondered aloud how he could have kept commandments that he wasn’t aware of.

We went through a few of them:
- Lying (guilty)
- Stealing (guilty)
- Blasphemy (guilty)
- Adultery of the heart (guilty)

He agreed that he was guilty before God and felt that he would go to hell as a result. I encouraged him to get right with God before it was too late. I said, perhaps, if he didn’t want to get right with God today he could call me back on the day he was going to die and I could share more of the gospel with him, but, unfortunately, he doesn’t know the day he is going to die.

I then shared the good new of the gospel: how a person that has broken God’s law and deserves hell can go to heaven when they die. He listened and agreed with everything I shared. He seemed to be awakened to his need for salvation, but not alarmed about his condition before God.

We talked more about hell, and I asked him if he has a Bible. He does. I asked if he ever reads it.

He response was that he is guilty of having gone to church and read his Bible in the past, but hasn’t been doing that lately.

I gently shared that not attending church and not reading his Bible are probably some of the mildest sins that are currently in his life, and that an unbeliever who isn’t seeking God and hasn’t repented and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ will likely have a lot of serious sin in their life. He humbly agreed that I was right.

He went on to say how grateful he was that I was talking with him as just the other day another gentleman had been sharing with him. He agreed that God was trying to get his attention.

At the end of the call I asked if I could pray for him – and he said that would be good. I thanked God for arranging circumstances so that he and I could talk, and for the work that God was doing in this young man’s life. I asked God to continue convicting him, and at the same time to reveal Jesus as Savior to him. I asked God to open his eyes to the Truth in God’s Word. I thanked God for the health that He had blessed this young man with, and asked God to continue blessing him and his family.

“Oh, I lie all the time!”

I help a certain church with their finances, and this week needed to apply for a credit card on behalf of that church (ordering any type of product from a web site, these days, is almost impossible without a credit card).

I decided to call and apply for the credit card over the phone.

The card I was applying for was a small business credit card, and at the beginning of the call she had assured me that it would work fine for a small church

At one point in the application process she asked me, “What is the purpose of the business?” My response was along the lines of, “To share the good news of the gospel with those that are lost and dying and headed for an eternity in hell.” Obviously, God has other purposes for the church as well, but it was interesting to be asked the question by a credit card company!

After the application process was done, she didn’t ask if there was anything else she could help me with (which is normally the perfect segue into sharing the gospel). Instead, I had to jump in and say I had another question for her, but that it didn’t have anything to do with the credit card application – did she have just a minute before the next call came in? She had time, so I started into the Good Person Test with her.

She felt she was a good person, and she was then OK with me asking some questions to see how true that was. She said she was familiar with the ten commandments, and felt she had kept most of them.

I started with the 9th commandment: thou shalt not lie. I shared that I have told lies in the past, and I asked her if there was ever a time in her life when she had lied.

Her response? “Oh, I lie all the time!”

I wondered whether it was at work (as people are asking questions about the credit cards?!?) or in her personal life, but I didn’t ask...

I was impressed with her honesty in admitting her habitual lying – although one would have to say that it is an oxymoron to have an honest, habitual liar.

We went through the rest of the test and, after hearing (and agreeing with) the bad news (she was facing an eternity in hell) we went through and she heard the good news of the gospel.

I’m praying that the Holy Spirit will continue to work in her heart and she will surrender her life to the Lord Jesus Christ.