Hay-soos

God continues to use people to teach me timeless truths as I walk the streets in Los Angeles. Last week's lesson came from a homeless Hispanic man ironically named Jesus (pronounced, "Hay-soos", in case you were you confused about the quirky blog title). From here on out, I will refer to him as "Jay" so as to avoid any potential misunderstandings between the man I met and the Jesus who died for mankind on the cross.

I met Jay at our weekly outreach to Santa Monica. Each week we go out there with the church teams and canvass the entire area, inviting all the homeless to come to the pier for free food and testimonies about God's love. Once we get to the pier, we have two individuals from the church teams share a quick 5-minute testimony about how God has changed their lives, and someone from our staff shares a quick word (or sermon), offering everybody the chance for prayer. After that we break out the food and enjoy some good eatin' and fellowshipin' under a sunsettin' California sky.

It was at this point when Jay made eye contact with me as he ate his food on a nearby bench. Jay was wearing a gardener's hat and spoke with a little bit of an accent. He was also holding a brown paper bag and smelled a bit like the alcohol he had been drinking (though, he wasn't drunk). He said something to me that I couldn't quite understand, so I moved closer to him and asked him to repeat.

"Do you really believe we will see each other again someday in heaven?" he asked.

"Of course! Whoever professes that Jesus is Lord, believes that he died on the cross and rose again from the dead, and commits their lives to Him will go to heaven and have eternal life," I replied. I showed him Romans 10:9 to assure him of this truth. I've found that there is true power in reading the Word and allowing others to read it for themselves.

"But what if you do something really bad? Do you think he forgives you then?" His tone was so sincere, so innocently inquisitive, that I couldn't help but wonder where this conversation was headed.

"I know he forgives you. If we repent and ask him for forgiveness, we receive it instantly. It's as if that sin never happened in God's eyes. It says so here in 1 John 1:9..." Again I showed him this verse to give him assurance that God is indeed "faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" if we confess our sins.

To this, he looked up and with a rush of emotion declared, "But I feel so bad! God cannot forgive me when I feel this bad!" He continued on to explain that he had done something horrible (without explaining the details), despite the fact that he had been a good boy when he was young. He kept repeating the line, "My mom always told me to do right, but I didn't listen. Why didn't I listen?"

It broke my heart to listen to his story. Emotions are so deceiving. Just as the mind can serve as either a bridge or as a roadblock to the heart, as was the case with "Saint" James in my last blog, emotions can either enhance one's faith or destroy it. Misleading emotions take the here-and-now circumstances and use them to trap the unexpectant traveller in lies that attempt to annihilate timeless truths. They deceptively shroud absolute truth with clouds of subjective thought and relativity. The timeless truth in Jay's story was that God had forgiven him, but because Jay did not feel forgiven, he could not believe that he was forgiven.

This is precisely why God has blessed us with His Word, the Bible. In his great wisdom God knew we would somehow forget the promises he gave the early believers and recorded them in a great book that is the eternal record of truth. He knew Satan would use our emotions against us and try to get us lost in our "feelings." Romans 10:9, 1 John 1:9, and John 3:16 are all promises God gave us to remind us in times of doubt that we would not be forgiven for whatever reasons.

I encouraged Jay with these promises. I told him a thousand times that since he had asked for forgiveness for his sin he was forgiven. I even showed him the example of David in 2 Samuel 11, when he sins with Bathsheba. I gave him Psalms 51, which was written by David as he desperately sought God's forgiveness for his sexual sin. I told him a thousand times that God loved him more than he could ever fathom. I showed him verse after verse that promised God's love for him.

"But I still feel so bad!" he replied.

At this point Jay's emotions had him in such a vicegrip that his mindful was unfruitful in understanding God's promises. It's one thing to feel forgiven; it's another thing to know you're forgiven. It sometimes does not make sense to our limited human minds that a perfect, infinite Creator would erase the errors of our past without another mention of the mistake. The parable of the prodigal son, which might better be titled the "parable of the incredible father," illustrates the unmatched compassion our Father has for us. I pray that one day Jay will run into the open arms of the Father who did not send his Son to condemn, but to save (John 3:17).

In the meantime, we have to carefully take a toll of our emotions and examine how they are leading us into truth or guiding us into confusion. John Piper writes in Desiring God:
"Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full (or half-full) of artificial admirers... On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the discipline of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship."

Emotions are a vital aspect of faith, but we cannot naively trust in them to define our theology or we will never truly grasp how deep, how wide, how great is the love of God!

As tears flowed down Jay's face, I could not help but cry out to God with a spirit of gratitude for his love, and for the realization of that love as articulated in the Word of God. I urged him to replace his feelings of worthlessness with Jesus Christ himself and see how God changes his life. I exhorted him that it is never too late and that God never gives up on us. I prayed for him fervently right there on the bench he was sitting that the Holy Spirit would move in his life so powerfully that his misguided emotions would be replaced with the timeless truth of God's love, grace, and forgiveness.

Please join me in prayer for Jay as you finish this blog, for the "prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective" (James 5:16).

Living in faith...