Dear Mick,
I thought tonight would be a normal evening here in Georgetown, Malaysia. I had a spring in my step as me and my team left the hostel and headed out on our way to bar ministry. We stopped at the falafel stand to get a bite to eat before the long night of ministry. I am constantly looking for ways to live out “life is ministry and ministry is life” so when I met you, I figured it would be a perfect way to just love the person in front of me. We both were waiting for our falafel wraps to be made and I thought you were going to be a friendly Irish man whom I could share a pleasant conversation with as I waited for my food to be made. I was wrong.
At first it was interesting to hear about your experience in the Irish army and your years and years of life experience. I encouraged you in the fact that you are a teacher here in Malaysia and teaching a younger generation. I chose to not focus on your curse words or negative attitude and continued to pray for you in my head and ask the Holy Spirit what you needed.
You quickly took our conversation to a dark place and the second I mentioned that I was a Christian, you had a lot to say. I understand that you have a few PhD’s in your pocket, you have a lot of knowledge and intelligence and the idea of faith was completely foreign to you. What I believe in is ridiculous, pishy-caca, or bull$#!! (to put it in your words). You practice Buddhism, and I respected that and honored it, but it became clear to me that you were not going to honor my beliefs.
I couldn’t answer a lot of your questions and the most I could say is “That’s interesting” or “I appreciate your perspective.” It seemed like you had made it your mission for the rest of our conversation to convince me out of what I believed. To you, it made absolutely no sense. As our conversation continued, I saw how deep you were into your ideology and pain that there was absolutely nothing I could say in order to push you closer to the Father.
You mentioned you had pain in your knee and I thought that maybe making an impact in your life meant praying for healing for the years of pain you have had from your army injuries. I asked to pray for you and you could not have turned it down quicker with more disgust. It was offensive to you and I guess the best way to love you was to not pray for you. But you have to know that I have not stopped praying for you since.
Maybe God just wanted me to be there to listen to you, make sure you felt heard. You brought up hypocritical and angry Christians and Catholics in your past and I made sure to let you know that I wasn’t about that and I just wanted to love people like Jesus did. I tried to explain that I don’t feel a part of a religion, but more a personal relationship with God and you responded with more curse words.
There was nothing I could do, there was nothing I could say. It absolutely broke my heart. Suddenly the Holy Spirit and His heart for His lost children came upon me and I could barely hold the tears back from my eyes. When I was 17, God took me Ecuador and absolutely broke my heart for the children I saw that did not know my sweet Savior and I felt the heaviness of God’s heart. I thought that heaviness was about children, but it remains the same for an Irish man at a falafel stand. You are still a child of God, but you just don’t know it. His heart breaks for those that don’t know the depth and height and extravagance of His love.
That’s you, Mick.
I’m sorry I had to end our conversation early- I had to signal to my squad leader in order to come interrupt our talk because my sweet heart couldn’t take it anymore. I had to mouth the words “help” to her because that was what my heart was saying.
Help, Lord Jesus.
Praying for you was offensive to you, but I am going to pray fervently for you as often as I can. I pray that God melts away your hardness of heart, I pray that He shows Himself to you in marvelous ways, I’m praying that God stands in the midst of your battle with logic and faith, I am praying that you find healing with your past, praying that you feel the weight of His love for you, and that you come to know Him deeply and intimately.
Mick, my conversation with you was really hard, but it taught me something about my God. I want the big stories of healing and prophecy and people coming to know Him, but He is a God that just wants me to love. He also reminded me that prayer is powerful and the fact that I prayed about you realizing His immense love, if I pray in faith, it will happen. God reminded me that He holds you. Although there was nothing I could do, it does not mean that God is not working in your life. I was a small seed planted in your life. I hope that me listening, me respecting you, and me just trying to love you sticks with you because my God loves you so much more.
I’m confident I will see you in heaven one day. You are a case where most Christians would look at you like a hopeless case, that there is NO possible way you could come to believe, but I reject that. I have the kind of faith that you will one day be my brother in Christ and we can reminisce about that one time we met at the falafel stand in Malaysia.
Your future sister in Christ,
Jamilyn Joy
