Send Me?

Just past noon on New Year's Day 2007 I found myself standing in a locker room, surrounded by professional athletes. They were getting ready to go to work and I was to pray with them. I thanked God for another year. I asked that everyone be kept safe. And since everyone there was waiting for the call telling them to take their places, it occurred to me to pray that the Lord make us all ready for the day when His trumpet sounds and we're called to stand before Him. My host was effusive about the athletes' turnout but as we talked, he also made it clear that he was grateful that I'd even shown up.

Now you might be thinking, "How hard can it be to get a pastor to do a locker room prayer with pro athletes? I know folks that'd climb over one another for a chance like that!"

Me, too.

Except that these athletes are jockeys. And the locker room was where they were getting ready for the day's racing. And, my host explained, many church folks are so offended at the fact that there's gambling going on at the one part of the track that they forget that there are people there who need Jesus' touch.

I knew what he meant. I grew up in churches that maintained a long list of places we weren't to go. The track sure would have been one of them. It's had me thinking ever since...

In my travels I've passed through a lot of places that good church folks don't go. I've seen what happens when the redemptive power of God as expressed through the presence of His people is withdrawn. It leaves a vacuum that gets filled with un-nice things. The worst that humanity has to offer really moves in and takes over. And why not? There's nothing there to oppose evil. Worst of all, the price is usually paid quickest by those least able to afford it.

I've thought about Jonah. Not even God (at least at first) could convince Jonah to go to Ninevah. Jonah's argument was that those folks were so evil they didn't deserve the chance to repent. In fact, Jonah was afraid that the people there would repent if they were told about God. And Jonah found their behavior so repugnant that he'd rather see them condemned than changed. Look it up.

Yesterday, I was reading in Acts 9 about Saul (who became Paul) and how Jesus confronted him. And in Damascus there was a guy named Ananias whom God had to convince to go pray with Saul. As with Jonah, there was a "Lord, you don't understand what he's like..." part of the conversation. It didn't take a whale to convince Ananias, though.

And today in Acts 10 I read about Peter learning this same lesson.

So I've been asking myself, what are the places that not even God has been able to convince me to go? Who are the people that God's been asking me to reach? What else is out there waiting for someone to say, "Here am I. Send me!"

Be praying about this with me, will you?

Posted by email from Ferndale Tonight (posterous)