When God calls someone to be a pastor, He gives him a compassion for people that even the pastor finds unusual. This unusual, God-given compassion pushed aside my annoyance over the intrusion. I told my guest, “I am a pastor.” As I ate, I listened, I probed, and encouraged him. His wife, I learned, has a debilitating disease and he has been her attentive caregiver for more than twenty years. I commended him for his devotion and encouraged him to stay with it. He asked if I thought God was pleased. “I’m certain that He is.” Then, he wondered aloud if God was pleased with the rest of his life, much of which I now knew. He decided that God was pleased, then asked, “Don’t you think?”
I don’t claim to speak for God. God doesn’t consult me or solicit my opinion of anyone. What God has done is reveal himself – his person, his precepts, his plan and promises – in his Word, the Bible. There we can learn what God thinks of us, what pleases and displeases him. “At one time in my life,” I answered, “I thought that what was most important was what I thought about God; do I love him, do I want to do good? That’s noble, but what I’ve since learned from the Bible is that what matters most is what God thinks about me, not God on my terms, but me on God’s terms.” This was a new thought for him. I pressed on.
“From the Bible, I was troubled to learn that sin has separated us all from God and that our sins are an offense against his perfect righteousness. I also learned the good news that God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world, not to condemn us, but to save us from sin. Christ lived a sinless life, yet he died for our sins that by God’s grace, through faith in Christ alone, we can be saved from sin and God’s just judgement against us. So, I agreed with God, confessed my sin, and put my trust in Christ.”
This turn in the conversation made my guest very uncomfortable, so as I pushed aside my now empty plate, he decided that this was a good time to leave. “Well, I’m off to Walmart,” he said. Since that was my next stop as well, I said goodbye, promised to pray for him and his wife, then refilled my cup of tea and drank it very, very slowly.
