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Here is
one of the many stories from the Pacific Garden Mission of the marvels of
God's saving grace: |
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"Sunshine
Harris," was steeped in sin for seventy-one years and most of that time
an infidel. Leaving home because he was such a disgrace to his family, he
wandered around in the country. He never went to church except for a funeral,
unless to ridicule what took place. For fifty long years he smoked and drank,
then became such a slave of tobacco that he picked up stubs in the street to
satisfy the craving. Filthy with sin, he wandered often into the Pacific
Garden Mission, usually drunk, each time resisting the pleadings of Colonel
and Mrs. Clarke with scorn and mockery, and determining never to return. |
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On |
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In
vexation, he began with Matthew's genealogy and kept reading until the words
were located. A few nights later he said, "God, tonight I am going to
the mission. If you help me, I'll raise my hand for prayer." It was a
"never to be forgotten" night for "Sunshine Harris." |
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"When
the invitation was given, I looked at one hand and it was so black and
sinful, and then at the other and that was just as bad, so I raised both
hands and was assisted by a Christian lady to the altar," he wrote,
"and when I called upon the Lord He heard my cry, and the load of sin,
mountain high, rolled off, and I rose to my feet and exclaimed: 'Thanks be to
God for His unspeakable gift and for Pacific Garden Mission.'" |
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Harris
sponsored an unscheduled housecleaning in his own filthy little room that
night. Whiskey and beer bottles, old pipes and tobacco, disgusting pictures,
cards and other habiliments of sin went into the furnace, and on the table by
his favorite chair he placed instead the New Testament with a slip of paper
marking the verse, "Thou fool, this night thy soul is required of
thee." Somebody named him "the miracle of the mission." |
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He served
God with such spiritual fervor and delight that the mission workers called
him "Sunshine Harris." He loved everybody and everybody loved him,
with just one note of exception: During the first weeks of his Christian
experience he kept waking during the night and shouting "Glory!"
until some of the nearby roomers complained. He moved to other quarters. |
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Night
after night he continued to testify at the mission, eager to tell how the
Lord had cleaned his life. When he died, |
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So clearly
had his testimony rung out on Van Buren Street among the drink and tobacco
addicts that once were his companions, that when Harris' body was buried at
Elburn, Illinois, all the hoboes on the levee knew his soul had gone to God. |
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From:
2700-PLUS SERMON ILLUSTRATIONS By Duane V. Maxey |