I sat and watched him last evening. He tried to assume a comfortable position in the chair across the table from me as we sat alone in my office. The meeting had been arranged by his parents. He had gotten into some trouble. Oh, legally it was a misdemeanor but to the family it might as well have been armed robbery. It lay heavy on their thoughts and minds and it was a load for this young man to carry.
He is a good kid. He has been raised in a good church. He has sat under Holiness teaching and preaching. He has grown up around Christians. But as we talked I became angry. Because someone had let this young man down. Someone hadn't done their job and now he was confused, wondering, and even by his own admission, "not doin' what God wants me to do".
He is on the right track now. He is under conviction and knows right from wrong. I told him it was his decision and that God was too much of a gentleman to ever push him into something he didn't want. He stated that he just wants to know what to do. I told him that the day he calls out to God, God will answer and come running. I asked him to call me the day he turns his life over to God. We prayed and parted ways for a while.
But when he left I was angry. First I was angry at our denomination. We call ourselves Holiness people and stress how much we care for the lost. Yet our national, district and local leadership stresses more political correctness than Holiness. We require our churches to submit more reports, forms and files than souls. Instead of a denomination that carries the torch for Christ likeness we have become a denomination that looks more like every other church on any given corner in the U.S.
Then I got angry at the preachers. As I was growing up my pastor was one whom I could always depend upon to have my back. He was the man who prayed for me and was concerned about my soul. He was the one who would be there if I was sick, injured or needed help. He wrestled with God and the devil and stood before us each week and proclaimed "thus saith the Lord". But not today. It is more about, careers, 401ks, insurance and retirement. Instead of "Here am I send me" it has become "Here am I send money". Hirelings and not shepherds.
Then my anger turned toward the family, fathers and mothers who feel it is more important to focus on our child's batting average on the ball field than his walk with God. Parents who will stress the importance of a kids SATs than his SOUL. Good men and women who don't feel successful unless they can provide a quarter million dollar house, a late model car and all the electronic gadgets invented within the last year for their children. And yet these well meaning, good people have forgotten what a family altar is all about. They have forgotten the responsibility, the God given responsibility, given to them when that new born baby was placed in it's mother's womb.
And then I got angry at me. How many young men have crossed my path, how many people whom I could have influenced if my focus would have been in the right place. If I would have loved like I say I love, cared like I am suppose to care, sacrificed like I have been called to sacrifice what kind of difference could God have made.
I heard a story many years ago, I can not be sure if it was true or if my memory of all the details are clear but it went something like this. A great bridge several miles in length spanned a might river. Thousands of cars passed across this bridge each day. However one night during a violent storm a barge broke loose and smashed into the pilings of the bridge causing one of the spans to crash into the river. As the cars sped across the bridge toward the other side many disappeared over the edge of the break into the blackness of the night and fell 100's of feet into the murky water below.
A couple of cars saw what was happening and slammed on the brakes just before going over the edge. One man quickly exited his vehicle and dropped to his knees thanking God for sparing him such an awful fate. But the man in the other car quickly jumped from the vehicle and begin running back along the bridge, waving his arms, crying to the top of his lungs, screaming for others not to go over the edge. Some ignored him and plunged to their death. But some stopped and were saved.
Do you see why I'm angry? You and I have by the grace of God stopped just this side of the edge. We have been saved from our spiritual vehicle and fell to our knees thanking and praising God for His deliverance. And we continue to kneel there as 100's, thousand's rush past us every day and fall into eternal darkness.
Oh dear reader, warn them, help them. No matter how stupid you think you might look, no matter how uncomfortable you might be in doing it, no matter if you've never done it before, for your sake, for their sake, FOR GOD'S SAKE, stop the traffic!
I'm so sorry that I have been so immersed in my own situations that I have let others go over the edge. There are so many people like the young man I mentioned that are wondering and lost and speeding toward eternity without any help or warning.
And I'm mad, and I hope you are too. But let's not waste our time on being mad. Let's not point our fingers but instead raise our hands, wave our arms and get busy warning of the sure eternity that is ahead.
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