I’ve Been Put In My Place

So, the Lord totally convicted me about my post yesterday.  I have realized that I live a totally cushy life, and I don’t do anything in return.  For the past few years I’ve been at a place with God, where I know that He’s there, but it hasn’t effected my life.  I haven’t made decisions based on this fact, or loved people based on this fact, or spent my time or money based on this fact.  I’ve basically just become comfortable being “tepid” or “luke-warm” as the Bible says.  I’ve been really convicted by it for the past several months, but God is just now starting to change me.  There was even one time, several months ago, that I had a dream that God audibly told me that He was tired of me being luke-warm.  The next day I had lunch with one of my best friends, Aileen.  I told her about the dream, and she said, “You know what, I was reading my Bible and praying last night and God very clearly told me that you were being luke-warm.”  He didn’t tell her to do anything with that info, but obviously, He spoke to her in order to confirm what He had told me.  She recommended I read a book called Crazy Love, by Francis Chan.  God is totally using this book to change my life. 

I was talking to Jason about my desire to be more for God, and he told me that I need to call my mentor and see if I can start meeting with her again.  He also said that we need to get serious about finding a church home and that I need to follow my mom’s advice about finding a community Bible Study.  He’s right.  I have totally isolated myself.  I don’t get to hang out with other believers very often and all my time spent in the car is listening to audio books written by people who have no concept of a life as a Christian.  So, I’m feeding myself with stories like, Confessions of a Shopaholic and Bridget Jones’s Diary and stuff like that.  They aren’t bad in doses, but to listen to them all the time, you start to think like they do.  And, the movies are so much less invasive than the books.  Listening to the books is in all truth, listening to the same characters, how they think and act, for hours on end.  It can really shape the way you see life. 

This morning in Crazy Love he told the stories of certain people who have or are making a difference in the lives of others.  These two stood out the most to me:

I don’t know how old exactly Rings is, but he’s definitely what you would call and old man.  I also don’t know where he was born or what his real name is; he simply goes by Rings.  His home is the cab of his pick-up, which he parks near downtown Ocean Beach, CA.  He is a chain smoker, and ex-convict, ex-addict, and ex-alcoholic. 

Rings likes to say that if Jesus saved him, then Jesus is able to save anyone and everyone.  So, instead of using his monthly check to buy alcohol or a hotel room for himself, he spends all of it on food at the local supermarket.  He transfers the food he buys to coolers in the back of his truck, then he drives to the beach and makes meals for his fellow homeless.

While preparing the food, Rings tells the gathering crowd about the freedom that Jesus brought into his life.  He tells them that God is the One who told him to feed them.  This man gives everything he has to others—literally everything—because he knows he has nothing that wasn’t given to him by God.

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If you met Lucy at church, you would probably think she was somebody’s innocent, dear grandmother.  She is the kind of woman who will come and give you a huge hug and then introduce herself. 

You would never guess that Lucy is an ex-prostitute.  When she was in her teens and early twenties, drugs and prostitution dominated her life.  Through an older Christian woman who reached out to the prostitutes, Lucy met Jesus and her life was completely transformed.  To this day, almost forty years later, Lucy lives near the same streets where she once worked as a prostitute and consistently opens her home to other young women who are caught in prostitution.  It is common knowledge on the streets that if you need anything, you can come to Lucy’s house.  She doesn’t have a lot, but her home is always open.  Prostitutes, pimps, drug users, dealers, and anyone else who most people avoid—Lucy invites them in.   This is her way of loving people who are in desperate need of the hope and love that Lucy found forty years ago. 

There are other stories, stories of people who have known Christ their whole lives, stories of people doing things in Africa and other parts of the world, but these stories stuck out to me the most, because they are taking place where I live.  A place where you do more so that you can make more so that you can have more.  A place where Christians don’t necessarily feel like they need Christ.  I am one of those people.  What a shame.