Two weeks ago, a young man named Alex stole a credit card from a World Racer. He was desperate: homeless, jobless, hopeless. He thought he had nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.
Except God was with him.
Two weeks ago, I prayed for a young man named Alex. I told him the Word of God and showed him a hope and his home in the kingdom of God.
It was the first day of debrief at Lake Malawi and our hostel sat right on the shores of the mountain-ringed blue waters. We discovered that a credit card belonging to a member of our squad had been “found” on the beach and a man came to return it.
However, he wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. He demanded that my friend pay him 10,000 kwacha, about $14, before he gave it back. She refused, seeing as it was her own property, and what should have been a simple matter compounded into a drawn out confrontation.
I witnessed this all from a table outside where I sat fuming. I was on the brink of storming over to the small group to give the young man a piece of my mind. I was thoroughly fed up with him and his obstinacy. As I sat there wrapped up in my angry thoughts, ironically writing out Bible verses that didn’t seem to be doing me much good, I heard the still, small voice that brought my racing mind to an abrupt halt.
You could pray for him.
No, I thought. That’s ridiculous. But as it often seems to happen in situations like this, the voice was persistent.
My squadmates who were talking to the man asked if they could borrow my phone to call the police. As I returned with my phone, I made the leap of faith: I would listen to God, despite my own misgivings, despite the seeming foolishness of it.
I asked Alex if I could pray for him and he immediately started defending himself over the whole situation, but I cut him off.
“I don’t care about any of that,” I said. “Can I pray for you?” He consented confusedly.
That was undoubtedly the most difficult prayer I have ever said in my life. It was, quite literally, a battle between my fleshly self that raged and judged, and the spirit of God within me that declared peace and forgiveness. The words of Luke 6 came to me:
“Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.”
I could hardly finish the prayer, so strong were my emotions. I finished and quickly left to sit down outside again. But I knew that was not the end of it.
While they waited for the police to come, Alex was sent outside. I invited him over to sit with me and began to ask him about his life. As his terror, hopelessness, and dejection poured out, I stopped seeing Alex through a human perspective and began seeing him through God’s eyes. I didn’t care what this man had done. All I could see was his desperate need for the love and redemption of Christ.
“You and me are different,” he said. “You can do anything; you have a future. I don’t have a future. I want to die.” I want to die. I heard those lies straight from the mouth of the enemy and the Lord gave me his sword with which to fight back.
I told him I wanted to read him a verse from the Bible, from Jeremiah 29:11-13.
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord. ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’”
I told Alex of the love our Father has for us: deep, infinite, unceasing, jealous love. I talked and talked and talked yet it wasn’t me speaking at all. Someone else was talking to Alex that day, a Someone who had drawn him there through the unlikeliest of means, a Someone who placed me at that table and whispered in my ear, a Someone who knew that only when Alex fell to his knees in desperation could he be lifted up.
We prayed together as he accepted Jesus, but I knew that there was more I could do. I told him to come back so we could talk more. When the police came he eventually gave the credit card back and left the hostel. I wasn’t sure what would happen then; had his heart been in the right place?
But he came back. He returned the next day, and the next. We talked for hours and I poured out Scripture after Scripture to him. He was an eager learner and had a lot of good questions. His thirst for God was obvious. To a drowning man, every breath is a miracle.
One day when he came he gave me a much worn photo of him and his twin brother.
“Tara,” he beseeched me, “I will be very sad when you leave. Please don’t forget me.”
And I told him that his photo will remain pressed between the pages of my Bible so that every time I open it I will remember to lift him up to God, which I do. I left him knowing that his fate is not in my hands, but in God’s. Whether or not the seed takes root is up to Him. But the truth does not go out and come back empty.
Two weeks ago, Alex thought that he was alone in a cruel world. But the curious thing about faith is that sometimes we have to be at our weakest to see God’s glorious strength in our lives. Nothing in Alex’s life nor mine is an accident. God uses the unlikeliest of means and people to spread his Word, as I discovered two weeks ago.
Many would have looked on Alex and condemned him. But that is not how we are called to live. We are called to be selfless, to love, and to forgive no matter the cost to ourselves.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” –Romans 13:21
