October 21. Jerry Dunn. Jerry was a recognized expert on alcoholism and alcoholics. Trouble is he earned that distinction the hard way–firsthand experience.
He presented at special conferences for pastors, medical students, and doctors. Jerry was also the executive director of People’s City Mission Home in Nebraska and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions. He is author of Alcoholics Victorious and God is for the Alcoholic.
Obeying God gives him an opportunity to provide for you.
It was a cold February afternoon—the kind of cold that numbs the fingers and tests the will of winter-weary commuters scraping frost off icy windshields.
When Jerry Dunn drove home and walked in the front door, he didn’t expect to see his family isolated in the kitchen. His wife Greta had turned the oven on high, but it wasn’t eliminating the damp chill. The home’s fuel tank had run out.
Jerry’s income should have been enough to cover household expenses, but there were other expenses—restitution that needed to be paid on account of his drinking days.
Thank God those drinking days were over. Jerry had discovered new life in Christ when he surrendered his old life to God and was converted in his jail cell. It happened after a two-year drunk and a stint in a Texas prison.
There was nothing Jerry wanted more than to stay sober, and to honor God and to keep the steps in his AA recovery. The Eighth Step was to make a list of all the people he had harmed and to become willing to make amends to them all.
Paying restitution was a necessary part of making those amends, and Jerry was more than happy to do it because now he belonged to Jesus. He wouldn’t let a hardship like running out of fuel destroy his peace or drive him to the bottle like he had in the old days. Instead, with Greta, he bowed his head and prayed that God would fill the oil tank.
Wishful thinking? Jerry didn’t think so.
That same afternoon Jerry felt like he was supposed to go over to the print shop, where he had done business before and had made friendships. After some small-talk with a guy in the front office, Jerry wondered why he had come. Was it really God prompting him to be there or just desperation?
Jerry asked God to let him know why he was there. Then he decided to just leave and head over to the Open Door Mission, where he worked serving broken men, who needed a warm bed and a hot meal.
Jerry was wrapping up the conversation in the printing shop, when the man he had been speaking with stopped him. “ … Jerry … wait … can you take a gift?”
Jerry assumed he meant a gift for the rescue mission.
But that’s not what the man meant. He wanted to give Jerry a gift—even though Jerry had said nothing about his financial troubles or the lack of fuel at home.
The generous man proceeded to write out a check to Jerry in the exact amount needed to fill the oil tank. When Jerry looked at the amount written on the check, he was overwhelmed at the magnitude of God’s provision.
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14–15 NIV).
Jerry was learning what it meant to live by faith and trust in God alone.
Has God taught you how to trust Him in everything? Obeying God gives him an opportunity to provide for you.
Dunn, Jerry. God is for the Alcoholic, Revised and Expanded. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1965
“City Mission: An Oasis of God’s.” Daily Nebraskan. October 21, 1974. https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974–10–21/ed-1/seq-6. pdf.
Story read by: Joel Carpenter
Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter
Audio production: Joel Carpenter
Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/
Project manager: Blake Mattocks
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