Be the Anti-culture

I have never had a blog before so here it goes. In this day and age it seems as though we are growing closer to each other in physical space (new house's seem to almost touch) yet more distant in our relationships. There is little or no depth in our romantic relationships (divorces are common) and as far as other relationships they are almost always convenience orriented (we hang out with people who are in our everyday lives. There are few people who go out of there way to make friends or even talk to a stranger unless they are looking for a date. Here is short story that happened to me just a few days ago dealing with both reaching out to a stranger and faith.

On sunday 8/8/04 at 9am I had a friend of mine a fellow church goer hand me a phone he said "there is a man on the phone that wants to talk to a CHRISTian who isn't fake who is in his 20's do you have the time to take it. My first thought was no I was setting up the projector for the service and didn't know if I would have enough time if I took the call. I said sure I can take the call with some hesitation and went to a back room where it wasn't so loud. He proceeded to tell me how all people in ministry me included were phony because he had a bad experience (his wife left him for a youth minister). He said he would like to call back at 12p and have a Bible study over the phone I said ok. He didn't believe I would be there near the phone at 12p, I was there 15 min early waiting. He called, we talked, he then asked if I would meet him in public have a Bible study with him there, I said sure. I meet him at a mall we talked for a while and then he made a unusual request.
He said if I valued GOD more then money I would give him everything I had. I was really nervous after a lot of thinking I did. We walked and talked around the mall he gave me my things back. I took him to my church and he paid to fill up my gas tank. During this discussion I asked him why he had called and why he felt the need to test me. He said if he could find just 1 CHRISTian who valued him more then money he would give his life to CHRIST. I gave him the Bible and he said if I valued his soul I would let him keep my atm card with my pin and one of my Visa card's. Everything in me told me to tell him no. You have to look out for number 1 first. I then thought after GOD sent his only son for me how could I not do this for him. If he was lying and just wanted my money it would have been weird for him to fill up my $60 gas tank. Bottom line is that I felt I need to once be able to say a could gave up something I really didn't want to for GOD. Culture would have told me that this was a poor choice but I knew I needed to do the hard thing if I was going to make a difference in this man's life. We scheduled a time to meet the following day. I hang out with my fiance and my friends and after a while I figured I would check my balance online just to check. I checked it and sure enough all my money had been withdrawn even though he told me my account would not be touched. So I figured I would be a man of my word and show up where we had discussed the next morning. I didn't think he would show up so I brought a book much to my suprise he did. Told me he was homeless and that he was going to use the money to buy diabetic meds but couldn't do it he showed me the money then we went inside a restaurant nearby. He gave me the cards but put the money back in his pocket. After talking a while he said he was going to prove how poor he was and that he really was diabetic by getting a briefcase in the bushes he said he would be 5 min and I had told him I had to be at work by 9:30a after 20 min he had not returned. How much do we care about one another I would say in this culture not much at all. Take this time to think about what you value more then people I know it has made me think.