Pounds of Cheese, Discarded

Mike has taken off. Which is good, because I feel sure I gained 15 pounds during the time he was here. I just threw out what had to be six pounds of pizza cheese, because I could not face the danger of having it in the house. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a whole bunch of fresh vegetables to eat at lunchtime. I have to detox.

Here’s the great thing about Mike’s time here: we went to church together. At last. I can’t remember when I started praying for his family; it must have been a couple of years ago. Every time he came to Florida, we talked about religion, and I shared my experiences with him. Somehow I was still surprised when he said he was interested in going to church; as far as I know, he’s the only person I’ve ever convinced to attend a service. I can’t say it was a challenge. God has been on his mind for a long time, and he was already an occasional churchgoer.

Yesterday we decided to go to the 6:00 service at Trinity Church. During the afternoon, I checked their website, and although I was sure I had heard them mention 6:00 over and over, the site said 7:00 p.m. So we showed up a little bit after seven, and naturally, Pastor Wilkerson was nearly at the end of his sermon. The site was wrong. This has happened twice this month, but last time, I was able to get the right information in time to avoid missing the service.

When we arrived, he was teaching about signs of the Rapture. He was on the tenth of ten signs. That sign was the blossoming of the fig tree (somewhere in Matthew 24). He explained how the fig tree symbolized Israel, and he said the blossoming was the restoration of the Jewish homeland, which occurred in 1948.

He gave an altar call and blessed the crowd, and that was it. We started walking out. Mike said he wanted to talk, so we met up at a Dunkin’ Donuts a few blocks away (we were driving separate cars). I was frustrated. I was hoping he had gotten something of the feel of the church, but what can you get in fifteen minutes?

We got a couple of totally unneeded doughnuts and some coffee and sat down, and he told me he was glad he had heard about the fig tree, because it was something he had been wondering about! On Thursday, mother of one of his employees died suddenly, and Mike had to go to the funeral the next day. The deceased was Jewish, so the funeral had to be fast, as dictated by Jewish law. At the funeral, the rabbi said something about fig trees. I can’t recall. Maybe a Jewish reader can guess for me. Mike had wondered about that for two days.

Many established denominations think the Old Testament is nearly worthless. “Obsolete” would be a better term. It’s hard for me to relate to that, because when I first became serious about Christianity, it was in an Assemblies of God church, and they realized that the Old Testament was just as important as the rest of the Bible. I don’t think Mike came from that kind of background. I’m used to thinking of my religion as something that grew from Judaism, so I was able to talk to him a little bit about the validity and importance of the Torah and the prophets and the psalms.

He said he had always had an interest in prophecy. As it happened, I was very well prepared to talk about that with him. I’m much more concerned about things that are directly applicable to my daily life, but prophecy is very entertaining, and it contains all sorts of evidence proving the existence of God and the validity of Jesus, so I’ve learned a good deal about it. I was able to direct him to Perry Stone; I can’t imagine a more engrossing teacher.

So the small amount of preaching Mike heard (which didn’t seem exciting to me) turned out to be relevant to a recent experience of his, as well as an interest I didn’t know about. And the prophecy videos I had been watching (in spite of not being an eschatology buff) turned out to be the ideal thing to recommend to him.

Funny how those coincidences keep happening.

He said he wanted to go again, so we met for the 10:30 service today, and we heard the whole sermon. On the way out, we stopped near the entrance to try to decide where we should go to sit down and talk about the service, and while we were there, we caught Rich Wilkerson’s eye, and he yelled to us and shook our hands and started talking to us. I thought, “Hey, this would be a good time to ask him to recommend a church near Mike.” And before I could get it out, he had found out Mike lived near D.C., and he had recommended Mark Batterson’s church.

Okay, I guess you could say that worked out well.

Now Mike is up in Delray with some other friends, and tomorrow he’ll go back to D.C. I have to wonder what his situation will be a year or two from now. Mike is an extremely sincere and open person; my guess is that he’ll make progress in a hurry.

The strangest thing happened last night, as I was driving home. I felt the presence of God sweep over me. Not as powerfully as it did on the two occasions when I could actually pinpoint its location, but still, it was very strong. I felt almost as though the car were flying above the road; it almost seemed to drive itself. I don’t mean it literally steered itself, but I felt as though guiding it took almost no effort.

I thought of a story someone told me about ten years ago. This person claimed she was driving to her mother’s home, and she said a light filled her windshield so she couldn’t see the road, and she sat back while the car literally drove itself. I think that story was probably a ridiculous lie told in order to manipulate me, but last night I could not help thinking about it.

Are we really in the times the prophet Joel described? A lot of people think so. The things I’ve seen lately make it hard to dispute.

Church was nearly unbearable when I was a kid. The churches I was dragged to were lifeless and faithless. Churches are so different now. Some are, anyway. I wonder how many Christians realize that. I’m thrilled with the things I see happening, but sometimes I think the vast majority of Christians have no idea what God is up to.