“If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:10-12)
One Sunday, about 12:30pm, I drove past a man walking down the Paris Pike with his thumb out looking for a ride. I had the urge to turn around and another urge to keep going. I kept going home, except I sensed the Father’s whisper to turn around and pick up that man. The last hymn we had sung that day at church, was “Trust and Obey.” And it was obvious that Jesus was asking me to trust and obey Him.
There didn’t seem to be a good place to turn around, but after a few words back and forth with the Lord, and waiting on traffic to pass, I turned around and circled back to find this man still walking next to the highway. He got in the car and I asked him where he was heading. He began to tell me about his beloved uncle passing away and that he was trying to get a ride to Morehead, KY. Earlier in the day, he had received a ride from the ARC, a Christian addiction recovery ministry, to Lexington. He had been walking on the other side of the highway walking north, when someone stopped and explained that he was going the wrong direction to get to Morehead so he turned around heading back south to Lexington. If not for a wrong turn, I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of meeting my brother, CJ (not his real name) on the road.
I didn’t know where Morehead was but after finding that it was an hour east on the map, I sensed the Spirit saying “You can take him.” So, I called my wife to let her know that I wouldn’t make it home for Sunday dinner. So CJ and I were off.
On the drive we entered into a beautiful conversation about how the Lord saved him from going to prison for drug possession recently and how he is in this addiction treatment center where he has been clean for three months now! Hallelujah! One story that CJ shared with me was a near death experience in the last few years where it sounded to me like Christ resurrected him from the dead after an overdose although he didn’t say it exactly that way. It was definitely a near death experience and a powerful encounter with Jesus seated with a grandmother who prayed for him throughout his young life.
Our God still raises the dead! He is a prayer answering God and sometimes those bowls of incense are poured out at the right time long after a praying saint has already gone to glory.
We talked about God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt and how He intended to teach them in the wilderness to hear his voice and to trust and obey Him, but how they longed to go back to Egypt instead of pressing in and pressing on to freedom in the promised land. We talked about how when God’s people cried out for help, God heard their prayers and answered.
CJ shared with me how after he learned that he was going the wrong way this morning, he knelt down on the side of the road and prayed, and praise the Lord, I got the blessing of being the answer to his prayer today!
After arriving in Morehead, we broke bread together at a table for three. I asked CJ to pray for us, and I couldn’t help but notice that there between us was a seat for Jesus.
After he contacted his family and made arrangements for them to pick him up, I had the blessing of also praying with him. After prayer and a few tears, CJ reached over and hugged me. I thank God for that hug, and how he made my joy complete today in the fellowship of the Spirit.
Jesus brings us into a new family, and the Spirit joins our hearts together in a blessed unity, a fellowship that makes strangers quickly into longtime friends, into brothers and sisters.
I might see about visiting the ARC sometime, CJ said they have worship services every day of the week and that volunteers come in to preach the gospel some days alongside the staff who are there throughout the week.
As I left I felt the Lord saying to tell my brother to “pass it on.” But as I drove home through the rain, I pondered what is it that we pass on? I think it might be our inheritance in the gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
“So now I charge you in the sight of all Israel and of the assembly of the Lord, and in the hearing of our God: Be careful to follow all the commands of the Lord your God, that you may possess this good land and pass it on as an inheritance to your descendants forever.” (1 Chronicles 28:8)
Chance is a disciple on every day mission with Jesus
