June 22, 2012
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Greg Day
Have you ever had that conversation, listened to someone talking or preaching, where it was real? What about when someone reads the Word of God and it becomes alive? It doesn’t happen as often as it should.
God’s word is alive and powerful. I believe that—I know that. But I can pick it up and read it, or hear someone else reading it, and my mind is all over the place. And they are just words made up of letters. Because I am not ready to receive it. Even if the person sharing is completely sincere, it becomes “blah blah” to me.
But sometimes, every once in awhile, there is a person so surrendered to the Lord that when they share and read the Word it is like one thing—it is God working. God moving. And it is like those words from the Bible were written just then, by the Holy Spirit, through that person instead of through Moses or Paul or John. The whole power of God shown through a life is something you can’t help but stop and listen to. Stop and say, “Wow, so that is what it looks like.” And you know, you know for sure—that is what you want. What you were looking for to fill that hole that is in you.
Scripture takes on the shape of the person talking in front of you and it does not leave you the same. Because you can’t close it. You can’t deny it. You can’t say it doesn’t work for you—because you’ve seen it work. You have had a personal encounter. No more excuses.
That happened last night at the Good News Ministries Youth Center. 10 years ago I first walked through those purple doors. We’ve been having “old school” reunions the past couple of years to get all the old kids and staff together and remember and laugh and play basketball.
And they come—these kids who are not kids anymore, with their own kids. And I see faces and give hugs and hear stories and meet babies whose parents haven’t figured out what it means to be a parent yet. And I am happy. And I am sad. And some things never change—like all the pop bottles laying under the picnic tables and the kids who leave before Bible study starts.
But Bible study does start, and the mumbling and shuffling stops when it is time to get serious. When they remember why they keep coming back to the center—because God touched them in some way through some person who was there. And this is one way of saying thank you to something real that was/is in their life.
One of those kids stood in front of the pulpit to talk. He didn’t talk for long, and he didn’t say a lot. Everyone had already heard his story—having serious health problems, leaving everything to seek after God and be there for his children—to be a man of God, a father. They had facebooked about it, called, texted, and whispered good and bad things about him. But no one could deny it—Greg Day had changed.
And after his few words, he opened up a Bible and read a few words. They were God’s words spoken through Greg Day in a powerful way, because they were Greg Day’s story. They were Greg Day’s life. And I stopped taking pictures and cleaning up and making sure people listened and kids were quiet and I watched Scripture come alive through one of my kids—now grown—now a man. All I can say is “Wow, so that is what it looks like.”
