Fifty yards in front of me this man popped out of a sewer door holding a coffee cup from KFC!
“FRIEND! FRIEND!” I yelled. He turned around with the biggest smile on his face and ran over toward me.
Murphy isn’t much older than me. He moved to the city because the Informal Settlement he lived in was too dangerous.
The Informal Settlements or ”shanty homes” are plots of land the government set aside where homeless people can go and build a house out of metal scrap.
When he lived here he started to loathe people. Every person he saw he would be filled with hatred. No one would hire him in the city so he resorted to robbing people, cars, stores and doing anything it took to survive no matter how morally wrong it was. He was addicted to hard drugs and an alcoholic.
The sewer he lives in is right outside a big stadium. There was a Christian conference one weekend in that stadium and Murphy heard all the commotion going on so he went over to see what was happening.
That weekend Murphy heard the gospel for the first time and gave his life to Christ. People prayed for the spirt of anger to flee his body and from that day he has had no anger in him at all!
However, these people forgot to tell Murphy about his identity as a Son of God. For a few years now Murphy has been afraid to pray to God because he didn’t want to offend God. He has been afraid to go back to church because of the life he has lived.
Murphy didn’t know that he has been washed clean and redeemed by the blood of Christ. Murphy didn’t know that God sees him as his perfect child and wants a relationship with Him.
For the next hour we stood on the side of the road and told Murphy things that he had never heard before. It was the coolest thing for me to see the joy radiate from his face and watch his eyes glisten as he tried to hold back the tears the joy brought.
He was worried because he could go on a mission trip and share Jesus with people like us. This fired me up because when Jesus said ”go make disciples“ he was actually saying “as you go” in your life share Jesus wherever you are.
We gave him some inspiration to be the world changer on his street. Tons of homeless people walked by during this conversation so we told him to multiply everything we taught him.
When he walked away we watched him for a while and about 100 yards away was a man on the ground. Murphy stuck out his hand, gave him a loving shake and sat down on the ground with the man.
Share the gospel wherever you go! People are in desperate need!
