I can never lead a person to Jesus Christ by my clever rhetoric or even by my compassion

unless God the Holy Spirit opens that man's heart, he will never respond to my message.

But at a human level, what a beautiful thing it is when I get to see somebody respond and their life has changed.

Here's a changed.

Here's a passage written for me and written for everyone, not just the ordained, but for those who were involved at all in Christian work of evangelism.

Listen to what he says.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them who bring good tidings and who publish peace.

Do you see the imagery that Paul is appealing to back to the Old Testament,

where Isaiah is making feeling to back to the Old Testament.

Isaiah is making this beautiful statement

in the name of God.

And he has in mind obviously the messenger

of the A1 galleon of the good news the king's troops go out to battle and the battle

Rages and there's no on-the-spot TV-2 to give us an up-to-date report on what's going on in the battlefield. The whole

history of the nation may be at stake in one pivotal battle. But how are we

going to know who won or who lost.

You've heard of the Battle of Thermopylae and the Lameus and of Marathon.

The Marathon race is named because of the story of the one who was commissioned

to bring back the news of victory or defeat at the Battle of Marathon.

And so a marathon runner is one who runs a long distance

because in antiquity, news was carried not by radio or by television or by Pony Express, but by

human runner.

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