We were waiting for the bus to come, and noticed a guy walking down the sidewalk coming towards me. As he got close, I reached out and handed him a “Born of the Spirit” card. He stopped and looked at it. He said that he no longer believed in God. This is all to common. Then we asked him, “What happened?”. He basically said that it was because of everything that has happened it his life. Again, we hear this all the time.
He was not your average guy who was walking down the sidewalk. He was dressed nice, good looking, strong and fit. He had a certain desperateness about him though. He was on edge. He said he was running from his wife, and that she was supposed to be in the area looking for him. However, I am certain that there was more to the story. He also said that he hadn’t slept much in the last week. If I were to guess, I would say that drugs were also a problem in this guys life, even though he had not confessed to it. Yet, he didn’t look like your typical addict.
We asked him if he had been born again. That led to him saying that he was raised a Christian, and that he went through the steps of giving his life to God when he was a kid. He said that he now believed that he was a god. Yep, “that he was a god”. And he also said that we all have many gods inside of us. This is where we had to step in and correct him. We told him that if he had been truly born again, he received the Holy Spirit at that time, and that God was in him and that was all he needed. He then went into some off the wall stuff about gods. This of course, let us know more of what we were dealing with and where he was at.
In the course of our conversation which lasted some 45 minutes, we told him that God loved him, and that it was no happen chance that we were there talking to him. We shared what town it was that we were from, which was a few miles away, and that he was the first guy in this area that we had any real conversation with. This caught his attention a little more. He had that look in his eye.
In closing, he understood that God was after him. Oh, another thing that he was struggling with was forgiveness. He didn’t believe that God could forgive him. I assured him that that was the reason that Christ died for him. He was not ready to take that in, and I’m sure that that had a lot to do with his running.
As he walked away, he turned back and heard me saying, “Remember Eddie, God loves you”. He smiled and said, “I sure hope so”. I said, “why do you think we met? “. And off he went……
Pray for Eddie!