“…but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” Romans 7:23
“Pssst! Hey! Who’s THAT guy?” Turning around in my booth at restaurant where I was having lunch with my friend, an Orthodox Priest, a man kept peppering me with questions. “Where’s his Church? What kind is it?” ‘Father,’ as everyone calls him, had just gotten up to use the Men’s Room. The man’s interest piqued, I asked HIM, “where do YOU go to Church? “I DON’T!” was his reply.
My friend looks like a Jesus superhero, standing out in a crowd, with his black frock and big, shiny, gold cross swinging through the crowd. When I told the man I might be able to help, since I was a pastor as well, he looked at me like I was a 7 year old dressed in a Batman costume at Halloween! But I pressed on. “Then what do YOU believe I asked?” He barked, “I am an INTELLECTUAL!”
It started to get really good. When he told me he was a former college professor with a Masters degree, I asked him what he thought would happen when he died. “Nothin’,” he replied. “So you think you’ll just become worm food?” He began explaining his faith in science, stating that it was impossible to know, since “no one had ever died and come back to life!” “What about Jesus,” I asked?
Right then, his Lordship, the Father, returned from the restroom and, though he had no idea of the impression he was making, stood at the edge of the table looking down at the questioner. When I filled him in on the conversation, Father joined us from his lofty position! The man sputtered non-intellectual gibberish. But with a moral compass broken long ago, he couldn’t understand. Father invited him to Church.
We are ALL born with today’s Bible Verse SCREAMING at us from within. WE KNOW what is right and wrong intuitively, because God has branded that onto our very souls. It takes willful force to un-believe it. As Father and I played good preacher – bad preacher, the ‘intellectual’s science’ was crumbling all around him. Saying “this is no use, I’m leaving,” I waited outside. In 2 minutes Father came out with a grin, “Ya know, that guy just might show up in my church!” I refuse to buy a frock!
YOU KNOW, deep inside, what is good and evil. And YOU KNOW, deep inside, if what you are doing and thinking is deserving of a smile or a frown from Jesus. Are YOU grateful to be His?
