Jake a palm leaf weaver | Kailua Kona | 2008
On Tuesday nights, I take some of our students down to Waikiki and partner up with a local pastor and we hand out food and spend time talking to and praying with homeless people. The other week I had an interesting run in…
I felt led to go and talk to a group of people sitting on a blanket and I took a student with me. On the way we ran into a guy who stopped us and through slurred speech started talking to us. He thanked us for being down here, saying he knew who we were, telling us that he was just an alcoholic, but wasn’t pushing drugs and how he knew every (expletive explative) down here. He told us that he would give us information on anyone.
He thought my student and I were undercover police officers.
He came over to where we were handing out pizza and kept talking to me. He was drunk, and was up in my face as he talked, I crossed my arms in front of me, and was backed up against a picnic table. He kept telling me how he could read my body language and that I needed to be careful down here because I don’t have a badge or a gun.
He then went on to tell me that he was down here because God sent him to tell me this. As we talked he quoted scripture to me, and sang gospel songs. I found out later that he used to be a gospel singer and piano player and his dad and uncle are both pastors.
I walked away from that evening a bit shaken, wondering how we can know and say the right things, and have our lives and actions not line up with our words at all. How can this man through obvious drunkenness quote scripture to me, tell me he was sent there because God sent him to give us a message and then sing praises to God in drunkenness? It made me wonder what actions in my life speak louder than any “spiritual” thing I can say.
It scares me that we can know the right things, we can say the right things, and our lives and actions can be completely unaffected by what we know and say.
Engage: What are some areas actions of your life that don’t match up with what you know or say? Share with us in the comments.
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by Jim Baker
When I am overwhelmed with stress, I realize that I am not in the Word. There are so many promises of God’s provision, His love, His peace beyond understanding – and yet I worry myself sick. I know that if I abide in Him, then He will be with me and guide me, but my worry contradicts this knowledge.
Thanks for being vulnerable Jane, I think WORRY is the number one Christian pet sin. It’s something we’re commanded over and over again not to do, yet we make so many excuses for it.
Wow! I really like what you were discussing about what your life is saying…there is new organization in Haiti that Seth is going to do some video for and their name is My LIFE Speaks, based on one of the founder’s sons, who is deaf, crippled and blind. Although he cannot speak, walk or even see, his LIFE is what is speaking. You’re so right, sometimes we need to see what our LIFE is saying to other people rather than what we are merely saying.