I was made for the bar scene
I may suck at pool and only order strawberry cider, but something inside me comes alive when I walk into the dimly lit smoky places.
My heart races and I am overwhelmed with immense courage to push past my comfort zone, because believe me, my sheltered Christian life has created walls of comfort that does not include fellowshipping in bars.
It’s not the actual atmosphere of the bar that makes me come alive. It’s the fact that I know I’m walking into a dark place, and the light of Jesus that I carry inside me, pierces that darkness. It makes the enemy mad. It’s a reminder to him that Jesus is winning. He already won. This is His country. These are his people. His blood covers it all. It is finished.
Now let me inform you a little. The kind of bars I’m talking about aren’t your usual Friday night drinks with your bros kind of bar. They may look that way. They may even say, “sports bar.” But these bars are where women come to work. They come to offer services to men or women. They come to sell their bodies. They come hoping to get filled or satisfied enough to push the emptiness away, even if it’s only for a little while.
In the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, in John 12, Jesus met the woman where she was at. Jesus met her at her well. The well she always went to. And he talked to her about how she was never satisfied, but that he had the living water. The water that will cause her to never thirst again.
You guys, we carry THE living water. People keep going to a well that never truly satisfies and always runs dry. We carry within our being, the well that never runs dry, that is overflowing, and never fails to satisfy. Why would we harbor that for ourselves, when people are dying of thirst? It’s time for us to get up, meet them at their well and show them who the true living water is.
We talk about how Jesus was friends with the prostitutes, tax collectors, the misfits, the sinners, the untouchables, etc. people called him a drunkard, so I’m sure he hung around in bars, he probably even had a couple of drinks. But when have we ever actually gone out and done those things? When have we ever sought after ‘those’ kind of people? When have we actually intentionally sought out dark places in order to bring THE light? When have we gone out of our way to meet people in their messiness, in order to love them fiercely?
What if we actually went to the kind of places Jesus went to?
What if we actually sought after the ‘kind’ of people Jesus sought after?
Jesus put people in our life to pursue and seek after us when we were in our sin or dark place. When are we going to do the same for someone else? Because that’s what we have all been called to do. Instead we just shake our heads in pity and disgust, saying, “if only they knew Jesus.”
So if you see me in the bars tonight, call me a drunkard, a hypocrite, or say I’ve crossed the line. But my heart was made to love the unloved. To Pursue the broken hearted. To hug the hurt. And to go into dark places and bring the consuming light of Jesus, and offer HIS living water.
