Perceptions, and God's mysterious ways

Last night I was planning to do some personal accounting when an unsaved friend contacted me, and stunned me by telling me they had a question they wanted to ask me, but didn't want to offend me in the asking. They explained that they'd been told by someone else that Christians "made up" the "stuff" about Satan's fall from heaven "sometime in the middle ages," and that prior to that it was never heard of.

So we started a little walk through of the bible, and some history books. One of those, "Okay, this was written around 46, AD, and it says," kind of things. Along with, "This cross references back to this which was written around 700 BC."

That lead us to the identities and descriptions of Satan. The one that comes up most frequently as far as I can tell is "accuser".

My friend asked me what that meant, so I went to the easiest one, and pointed to Job.

At which point my friend started laughing.

I asked why, and my friend said, "Oh, I just never realized before that most Christians are Satanists."

I said, "Excuse me?"

My friend said, "The biggest accusers I know today are the people that tell me they are Christians."

Well, that lead to another conversation, about why Job would want to worship a God that let Satan do that to him. Which lead to God's answers to Job on pretty much the same question, and God's reward to Job for in the end.

This lead to a discussion of why I, personally, love Christ, and how I personally know Christ is real, and how to come to Christ. In telling him how I know Christ is real, I explained to him what every Christian knows - before you know Christ - it does seem like just another "myth," and when you take that step of faith, you discover a living God that you can FEEL, that you can communicate with, that you can turn to. There isn't a Christian alive today who is not as sure that there IS a Christ as the disciples were that He was raised from the dead for the very same reason. We have MET him.

Now folks, this friend would have walked out if I had ever gone to them and said, "Hey, sit down, let me tell you how to be saved."

I believe God arranged last night. The friend is a huge history buff, and wanted to do a, "See, this is wrong," stunt, and ended up actually hearing more of the word of God than he'd heard in his entire life.

We ended the conversation when the friend said, "I have to think about this. I don't quite know what to think. I've never heard anyone talk about Him that way before." I said, "You've probably just put me down in your fruitcake book." My friend said, "No, no. I just have to think about this. This is kind of hard to grasp right now. I mean, where exactly does the soul live? Is it the brain? Is it something else?" I said, "More than the brain, think of it as a cross between wisdom, personality and whatever makes life life." My friend said, "I've got to think about this. Understand, I DO believe you. I just don't understand it. Not that I understand everything. I just always thought all of this Jesus talk was some myth that the Hebrews spread around. See, I don't believe in God, but I do believe that there is .. some kind of .. intelligence or life or something... that is who we are so this personal knowing and interacting stuff - that makes it all different. It explains a lot I didn't understand."

It doesn't end there.

My daughter came home from time spent with a Christian friend of hers, and I turned to her and asked, "Hon, you're a Christian, and you know Christ is real. Do you remember when you were saved? How you felt before you stepped out in faith and the moment you met him? That instant when you KNEW it was all true?"

Her mouth fell open and she went, "Mom! That's what John and I were talking about! We were trying to find the right words to describe it all! You can't talk to non-Christians about it because they think you're crazy."

We talked all night.

 

Wow. God is amazing!