Smoke lacquered the walls around me. I sat at a bar drinking Coca Cola and watching my new found christian friend C. interact with his old life. Normally I wouldn’t go near a place like this. The air was suffocating and stale. A movie played behind the bar as people stood mouth agape looking at pixelated images. Amidst this den of liquor and dim lights these people found life, community, and enjoyment. C. once spent hour after hour in these places.
Location: Dallas, Texas
Funds Needed: 15,350$
Currently: Visiting my supporters and community around the U.S.
He brought me out tonight to meet his friends. C. accepted Jesus recently and is so serious about bringing christians to meet them. As much as I have reservations about going to certain places the truth is that his friends are too bitter and hurt by the church to ever step foot on those grounds. So C. decided to bring me to them. When he asked me to share Jesus with his friends I didn't know where we were going but I knew one thing is I couldn't say "No." to reaching his friends.
I think at this stage in his new found life in Christ the concept of witnessing is strange. All he knows is that when a community of believers began to talk to him. Life Changed. C. found himself no longer satisfied by the old haunts. Friends that seemed to fill him with happiness reeked of discouragement. It was strangely beautiful to watch C. talk about the change in his life, that they need to meet Jesus because it will change them for the better. Only a week or two in with the big guy and C. is starting to peel away old feelings, desires. The old man is shrinking as rivers of living water begin to cleanse him. C. is beginning to embark on a strange part of his journey, a journey between worlds as he loses his old home and comforts in trade for greater everlasting ones.
This is me singing Karaoke in Asia… trust me… I know what it’s like to be a foreigner in a room…
Part of me questioned whether or not I could reach anyone in such a place. This next year I will find myself in places of darkness. I will go to countries where sin is prevalent and laws are different. That intimidates me in some ways. Years ago I could have sat at that bar and felt mere indignance at the drinking and smoking. I perhaps would’ve said “I feel uncomfortable so I’m going to leave.” One thing I would have still felt though is that strange connection of humanity. That feeling of camaraderie that comes from loving the same football team.
These days though I feel so alien. A sojourner on this earth. The physical is both delightful and rapturous as I fill with gratefulness for the skies that God paints me every morning and the grass of the field. The smile that rises up when my arm brushes up against the arm of another life and I feel love for a girl. The noise of crickets in the swamps of America and the squirrels in the trees. The strange delights of food and a good movie with a kindred soul.
All I felt towards the people in that dark lounge was compassion. The darkness did not ward me off. Like watching sheep without a Shepard look for water and grass in a dry and dusty place. They wandered to and fro between drink and lust without direction. Some yelled and fought, laughed and cried, kissed and fumbled. I watched people who seemed broken numbing the pain. People who seemed unbroken shattering themselves. It was almost overpowering and unsettling to feel the hurt of other people so closely.
It caught me off guard despite being abstinent, drink free, and smoke free… how much I love life. That goes so against our culture and people.
I feel so happy all the time through my relationship with Jesus that I appear to be on drugs. I have crazy memories from destroying a false God in Asia, to climbing mountains in Panama, to seeing Mayan temples in Mexico. God has thrust me into the most adventurous and epic life and I didn’t need to be numbed, drugged, doped, high, or fake. I just live life and my heavenly father casts me about willy nilly into the most fascinating places and memories.
Later that night a tattoo artist named Andrew drove me to his house. C. told him I am a missionary. Between blue grass music and swear words Andrew began to wax eloquent about his respect for missions but how he doesn’t think you can know God. He told me “I asked him, send me a sign, anything from a phone call from an old family member to a bunch of coincidences.” I smiled and told him
“God may very well send signs but we are often so ignorant to the signs around us. I mean tonight you went to the bar and now you are in the car with a missionary who traveled 12,000 miles to be in texas and is one among untold millions. I know a lot about God. That seems like a sign.”
Then I shared with him Deuteronomy 4:29 and how if we ask God to show Himself and really pursue Him with open eyes. Well, we will find Him!
He turned up the music.
The night continued with many conversations about Jesus, God, the bible. I chatted away and defended the bible to people who have been very bitter, hurt, and wounded by the religious fog.
It brought me back to the thought that Jesus is the light of the world. We are little lights in such great darkness. It brought me back to His deep compassion for the lost. I was heart broken. So many people need Jesus. So many people hate Him because of other christians.
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and king to the brightness of your rising. -Isaiah
Recently my walk with Christ has turned to a point that leaves me so intrigued.
I used to work so hard to see people become christians. Now though I cannot help but grin and think about how my closeness with God has made my very presence a refreshment and light to those around me. I’m starting to learn what it means to just be so foreign from this Earth I seem different.
It’s so strange but I find myself being plastered with questions about God from strangers, feeding the homeless, teaching my friends. The light in me is so charged from Jesus that it pours out and billows over like living water upon all that are near me.
That sounds high and lofty. I still am dumb and sinful. I still cross the line when joking occasionally… but the whole thrust of my christian walk has changed from this constant trying in the flesh to serve…
To just a pouring out of the wonderful and graceful spirit in me. I no longer feel like I spend all my time trying to serve God.
I just do serve God.
Lives change and community is just springing up around me. I feel unworthy of such an incredible life, such a joyful life.
I love the concept of bringing light to darkness. I wasn’t always like this and to know how I’m growing is so encouraging!
I hope in a few years I will meet C. again and he will feel more like a brother than is explainable, he will be a stranger on this earth, but we will be brothers. I hope we will both look forward toward the cross and a new home. I hope that he will be stepping out and feel so strange and foreign in a bar that it catches him off guard. I hope he’ll go out with Andrew some night as Andrew says “You have to meet C! He’ll tell you all about Jesus!”
It will be the best feeling in the world. So I have to ask, when was the last time you felt like a foreigner on earth? When was the last time you got to watch a new believer shed his old life for a new one?
I'm preparing to leave the country for an amazing journey to many countries to bring the light of Christ to places of darkness! Please take the time to consider supporting me in prayer and financially.
I may look goofy but it reminds me of learning a new hobby. Just like learning to skate for the first time… learning to be like Christ is both an incredibly joyful and hard experience. When you fall… you only keep going if you get back up.
