I don’t
really want to be here, I kept thinking to
myself. We had just returned from a
conference when a friend convinced me to go evangelize to all the people going
into a club that was connected to the motel we were staying in. I tried talking to people, but it all seemed
pretty useless.
“I’m kind of busy,”
a man wearing a dark shirt said as he brushed past my shoulder.
“Don’t you think you could go bother people somewhere else,”
another quite aggravated women snarled towards me.
I wasn’t trying to be in their way. I don’t get enjoyment out of arguing or
harassing people. I just want to share the love of Jesus with
them, but sometimes it is hard.
I walked away from the motel down a back alley. I was just
sick of no one listening, no one caring.
I started asking God, “What’s the point?”
I turned the corner and saw a young lady sitting on a park
bench. She looked pretty sad. I felt like I should talk to her. But what do I say? What if she gets mad? The
questions continued to ring through my mind.
I am not sure why I said it, but I did.
I told her, “Jesus loves you.”
That was it, I didn’t preach a sermon or argue, I just said
what I knew.
I walked back feeling pretty much the same way I did before,
that my night had been a complete waste of time. As I got closer to the hotel someone came running up behind
me. I turned around to see it was the
girl from the bench.
“Hey,” she said, “I just wanted you to know that I was
sitting on that bench over there, crying out to God. My family is going through some tough times right now. We got evicted from our house and we are
barely getting by. We are living in
this motel and some days we don’t even have food to eat. And so I was sitting there asking God, God
are you out there? Do you even care that I am here suffering? And as I was asking that, you came up and
told me that Jesus loved me. And it was
as if God was answering me through you.
And so I just wanted you to know how much that meant to me.”
I don’t know how it all works. I don’t pretend to have all the answers or pretend to know what
to say. But I do believe that I serve
an awesome God, who will speak through us, work through us, love through us, or
do anything through us. I believe that
if we would just stop trying to have it all together or learn a routine of what
to say or do. And instead if we just
let God work through us His own way.
That is what has the power to transform lives. And that is what I believe.
