Mobile Prayer Station: DAY 17

Today I spent most of the day just saying hi to people. I saw a lot of people I've talked and prayed with before and they all waved hi to me while some stopped to chat for a minute or two. Even more, there was an usual amount of people today who initiated greetings with me by waving and/or saying hi to me that I never met before. All in all, today was a day of rest for the most part. I got to see my friend Jeff today which I was happy about. Jeff has been having some health issues as of late and I usually see him at least once a week while I'm out on the street but I hadn't seen him for a couple weeks, so I was very happy to see and talk with him. 

Another highlight of the day was seeing Bridget and Stephanie, a couple girls I met and prayed with when my friend Tyler joined me on DAY 10. They are art students who would consider themselves "spiritual" but not religious in anyway. We talked at length about faith and life and I shared my story with them and the many spiritually supernatural experiences of God's Kingdom of light breaking into the darkness of my life. I really enjoyed talking with them because they were honest and genuine. They believe people are spiritual beings and they pray to the universe and believe that a higher power may exist, but wouldn't call this higher power God. I shared with them my heart of wanting to be more light than heat with the Mobile Prayer Station and they said that that's why they came back to talk to me. They appreciated that I listened to them and wasn't trying to force them to believe in Jesus, but was still willing to talk about spiritual things with them. I did ask them if I could pray that "If God is real that He would personally reveal Himself to them" and I was thrilled when they agreed. 

We had some good laughs together about the fear of being converted by Christians. This may sting a little, but honestly, I share some of their fears.  You see, I have quite a few tattoos and when I'm wearing a t-shirt sometimes I get nervous when I visit a church I've never been to before or am hanging out at Starbucks or some other place that I know Christians hang out because I'm afraid that I'll be a victim of "drive-by evangelism," where someone comes by and shares the Gospel with me without any real interest in cultivating any sort of relationship with me. They drive-by hurl bible verses at me and then drive away leaving me feeling like I just got mowed down with a bunch of information that virtually makes no sense to me. Now hear me on this, I love sharing the Gospel with people and especially enjoy talking about Jesus, even jump at every opportunity that someone allows me to do this. But, from my experience and what I've heard from far too many people is that rather than feeling like they've been heard and really engaged with, people say that they mostly feel talked at by Christians who come off having an "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude.

I don't know about you, but when I read through the Gospels about the way Jesus lived life, I see Him sharing Himself with people. He opened His life up to people. He took the time to cultivate deeper relationships with people who were interested. Sure He shared hard truths with people, but He was also willing to relationally engage with them. Even reading through the book of Acts, the disciples were also willing to open up their lives to the people in their community. I believe this is what's been missing from the church, the willingness of believers to open up their hearts and lives to the lost children of God. Sure, we all say that we love our neighbor as long as that neighbor is another Christian. I believe we all need (and I include myself here) to ask God to both enlarge our hearts to love and to reprioritize them because many of the found children of God have entitlement issues and messed up priorities within our hearts. What we need to do is to ask God to come and turn our worlds right side up and establish within our hearts and lives greater Kingdom of God values and passions.

But, the sad reality of this is that we may all say yes and amen to this, but when God actually starts doing this and He begins smashing the idols of our hearts, we scream bloody murder. Being refined to do great things for the Kingdom of God takes sacrifice. It means accepting that Jesus is worth sacrificing for, even suffering for. I mean isn't He? Please, if none of this applies to you, than just let it fly. But, if it does, hear my heart on this. I'm not here to lay a bunch of guilt on you. That is definitely not my intent. My intent is to spur you on to be honest with yourself and to get real with God. It's time to stop brushing God off as He taps us on the shoulder. It's time to ask God for the grace to stop being complacent, the grace to want to change even if that means making us uncomfortable and the grace to love more fully. It also means admitting that we do have messed up priorities and idols within our hearts. It means admitting that our love is shallow, even selfish at times and admitting that we desperately need Jesus to de-compartmentalize our lives and transform us into fully integrated followers who's faith permeates every aspect of our lives. 

Ok, I'm done preaching and I hope that I haven't offended you too terribly. But, I don't know, maybe it's not so much about trying to not offend people because honestly, I don't think this can be totally avoided no matter how hard we try. I believe it's more about being in relationship with people, leaning into more of God's love and being willing to open up our hearts and lives, so that we can by God's grace work through these offenses with a humble spirit, a listening ear and an open heart. It's about loving people unconditionally all the time and withholding our judgments of them all the time, especially when we disagree. Because not only does Jesus command us to not judge others (John 7:1), but our love should never be based on whether we agree or disagree. It should be based on who we are as people made in the image of God and who are precious to Him and never on what we do, think or say.