remember billy?

For those of you who have endured the entirety of my blogging days, suffered through countless spelling typos, grammatical errors and other such flaws let me take you back a few blogs. The blog entitled "Internet not cool....singing cool". Before you read the blog that I am about to write, take the time to re-read that old blog. For those of you who have more recently experienced my blogging massacres, take the time to read the blog titled "internet not cool....singing cool".

Throughout this blog I talked about a teenager that I called "Billy". In this blog I wrote, "Billy hasn't accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. Really, if I were to ask or remind Billy about him singing last night he probably wouldn't remember or think anything of it. Sadly enough, Billy probably wasn't sincere about what he was singing. Why wasn't he sincere? Chances are that Billy doesn't really know who Jesus Christ REALLY is. That's why I want to be here. That's why Ron and Chandy want to be here. That's why Paul, Suzanne, Don, Martha, and all the countless others want to be here. We all want to be here so maybe over the course of time we might be able to fill Billy in on just who Jesus is. Who knows, maybe the next time he sings those words he will be sincere."

Guess what? Billy got baptized Tuesday.

Billy, along with another one of our teenagers, got baptized Tuesday upon confessing Jesus Christ as their Savior. It was quite the experience. Not only for Billy, but for Ron, Chandy, myself, and all the other teenagers present.

Several minutes before I baptized Billy I took him into a small room and talked to him for a few minutes. I asked him, "Billy, why do you want to be baptized?" He responded, "I just want the devil to leave me alone, to quit tricking me". He also explained how he just wants Satan to leave him alone. I went on to explain to Billy how if he decides to get baptized and to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior his troubles wont end, the devil will come at him just as hard, even harder. I read to him in 1 Peter how it talks about how his faith will be tested in order to confirm or make sure that he really, really wants to follow Christ. It will be tested so that once his faith proves to be true and authentic it, "may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed". Billy said that he was ok with that, he was ready to accept Christ.

Billy doesn't know the entire Bible. Billy couldn't name all the books of the old and new testament. Billy couldn't tell you all the stories of Jesus as a child. He couldn't sing the Sunday morning church songs that most of us know from our childhood days of growing up in the church. Billy doesn't know memory verses and scriptures by heart, but one scripture that Billy has heard and does know is Romans 10:9...
"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Not only does Billy know this scripture, Billy lived this scripture. On Tuesday afternoon in front of his neighborhood friends Billy confessed and accepted Jesus as the Son of God, the ultimate, perfect sacrifice, and the Savior of his life.

love them like jesus

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Before you read my blog, press play on the video. That's cool if you read the blog while the song plays, but once you have read the whole blog, go back and listen/read the video again.

A couple weeks ago today the topic of the worship/discussion was brokenness. Chandy spoke about brokenness and how it essential for each of our hearts to be broken in order for Christ to fill that void. How in our brokenness we can reach others that have or are currently in similar situations. During some periodic conversations that I had over the last several weeks with Chandy, Ron, my parents, and some random people that have stopped by the mission un-announced, I started to become somewhat discouraged. Discouraged isn't really the best word for it. Rather than give a word for it I will explain my scenario.

People who have overcome alcoholism can help mentor, direct, encourage and give advice to similar abusers. Individuals who have lost family members such as parents, brothers, sisters or other significant others can help comfort and relate with a person who recently lost a close, loved one. The list could go on and on...

Then there is me. I'm incredibly blessed. I have good health. I have never lost a loved one tragically or suddenly. I live a comfortable life. I have good friends. I go to a good church. I have never, really, ever had some huge, catastrophic incident in my life that was life-changing. For the most part I have made decent decisions over my years. So I don't really have a dramatic, inspiring, "turn-around" story to shock people with when they ask how I came to know Christ. At worst I have bad grammar, a terrible ability to spell and an everlasting, inability to proof-read my blogs to make corrections (that's not for real, that's a joke, that's just an exaggeration of how I feel sometimes).

My point is, I have really had some trouble recently deciding how I can minister to people that I don't share similar experiences with. How do I go about ministering to a mother of three when she discovered hours ago that her forth child, still in her womb, had died? How do I minister to the kid that comes to Rock Island in tears because his sister's, babies daddy is threatening his family unless they agree to give the child to him? How about the kid who has lived in the US since he was a child and now is forced to leave his school, the only friends he has, and the only life he has known to move back to Mexico because of legal involvement and family issues? Or what about the countless alcoholics, crack-heads and other drug abusers who come day-in and day-out just to get a small bag of food and some coffee? How do i go about ministering to these people? What makes me think that I can say or do anything that will influence, comfort, help or change these people's lives? Along with these concerns comes the ever so popular question, "why"? Why do things such as a baby dieing or a kid being shipped back to Mexico happen?

So far, with the help of this song and some divine, scriptural (is that a word?) intervention, this is what I have come up with.

"Just love her like Jesus, Carry her to Him.
He yoke is easy, His burden is light.
We don't need the answers to all of lives questions.
Just know that He loves her and stay by her side.
Love her like Jesus...Love her like Jesus."

"The Lord of all creation holds our lives in His hands.
The God of all the nations holds our lives in His hands.
The rock of our salvation holds our lives in His hands.
He cares for them just as He cares for you.
So love them like Jesus, love them like Jesus"

So this is my answer. How do I, how do you minister to a person with an unfamiliar situation, someone you feel like you can't relate to? You love them like Jesus. You can't explain to them why things happen like they do. You can't give them an answer to the questions they might have. But you can do just as the song says...

"WE DON'T HAVE THE ANSWERS TO ALL OF LIFES QUESTIONS, JUST KNOW THAT HE LOVES THEM AND STAY BY THEIR SIDE, LOVE THEM LIKE JESUS"

2 in 4 days, yeeeeah

Bet you didn't expect to see two posts in four days. Well here it is...

Ever since I decided to commit my "career" to ministry I have learned I did more than that. Ron, Chandy and I have all come to the realization that you can't really commit your career to ministry. It's kinda like being, "100%, completely, without a doubt, no question about it, ALMOST sure". I also realize that we aren't the first missionaries to ever experience what we have experienced. I hope I'm not too ignorant that I think I'm the first person whom God has used in this way.

Basically what we realized is that we can't commit our lives to ministry, specifically inner-city ministry, and expect that once we "clock our hours" or put in our 9-5 (which all too often turns into a 9-11, yeah, check my math but I'm pretty sure that after some long division and after you multiply by the numerator that is a 14 hour day) we can be done with work. Ministry is our life. It should be for any and every person who claims to be a Christian, but once you decide to do as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:14, you can pretty much guarantee that you are in ministry mode 24/7.

Every person, Christian or not, has run-ins and experiences with homeless men and women on the corner at the stoplight, the guy at the gas station who needs some gas for his car down the street, the family outside the window when you are eating lunch downtown, along with a handful of other scenarios. It's a part of life. Not like this it's not. Several times over the past few months the three of us have had conversations about how so many individuals approach us for help, outside of work. But just recently have I really processed in my mind why this is happening. What's happening is that God is taking my commitment seriously, maybe even more seriously then I had originally intended (in a good way).

Was I really expecting to be a inner-city missionary 40 some odd hours a week and then be an off-duty, inner-city missionary the remaining hours of the week? Whether or not I intended that to happen, it's not. People approach me in the most un-thinkable situations. At McDonalds with 15 kids and happymeals a man approaches me. Body shaking, hands trembling as he holds out the dollar or so that he has collected to this point, his voice not so confident, "Could I get like forty or fifty cents." After some conversation and him declining the offer of a meal and drink from McDonalds it was clear that his intentions were not to go across the street to buy some food, as he had told me. Regardless of his intentions, whether or not he needed food or a few ounces of alcohol, he picked me out of a crowd. Why? Why would he confront me? Of all the people in McDonalds, why did he peak through the window, point at me and motion for me to meet him at the door? Because that's what I told God I was open, willing and available to do.

I'm not writing this blog in hopes that people will think, "Man, Luke, Ron and Chandy must be so cool with God. God is sending people to them because He wants them to help them out. They must be so in tone with God." Don't get me wrong, I like to think that I'm cool with God, but by no means do I feel like any of the three of us are any more special then anyone else that would simply make their lives available to God's will. That is all it is. It has all to do with you making yourself available to be used by God. I say all of this simply to say that any and every person can be used by God. Regardless of one's history, past experiences or current life situations you can be used by God. Problem is, alot of times when we pray/tell God that we want him to use us or create situations where we can be used to minister to others, we avoid them. What if all this time you have been praying that God would use you in great ways to change the world, when really all He wants you to do is change the world of that individual on the corner? What if instead of asking God to put you in the lives of some one person or some group of people to minister the love of God to, He really just needs you to minister to the people that you "know best", your family.

Really this blog turned into alot more then I intended. I planned on telling about another way that my job has alot more to offer then I ever expected. Welp, sorry, at least I blogged twice in four days right?