Let me interrupt Bonnie's words to say the obvious. She was looking for a hug from God. The preacher really didn't care about her. I never heard the message that Jesus died for everyone's desperate state. No matter how much we failed ourselves and Him, the miracle of the whole thing was that His love knows no bounds, no constraints.
Selfless love is an ear-opening experience for the other person.
To be saved a person needs to hear and believe that God sent Jesus to die for our sins and to hear and believe that because Jesus was raised, eternal life is a dependable promise. But to be believed, those words need to be heard, really heard by the person living without Christ. To be believed, those words need to sink in to the heart and mind. When you show selfless love to someone living without Christ, you are opening their ears so that sooner or later they can hear, really hear the Gospel. A friend of mine, Dawn Smith, told me a true story about a man named Dan.