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On Halloween my wife and I had an interesting moment as we heard this really creepy, kind of scratchy voice whispering something as he headed toward our door. So I swing open the door and there is a man dressed as Satan. He has the pitchfork and everything. And my first thought was it was one of our elders or a guy in the church just playing a joke with me. (That should tell you a little about what things are like out here in Madera.)
But it wasn't. After kind of an awkward pause, the man took off his mask, and it was one of our neighbors, kind of an older gentleman who lives just a few doors down from us. He had been very quiet, reserved and hard to connect to, and here he was at our front door. And his first comment was, “Hey, I know you're a pastor. I thought it would be funny to come over with my Satan costume. I always like to dress up as Satan during Halloween.”
And through this interaction, he kind of started to feel bad about it a little bit and began apologizing. “I shouldn’t have come over to your house dressed as Satan. I thought it would be funny. But you know, while I'm here, I want to ask you a question. If God really loves us as much as people say, how come He dropped Satan in the middle of the garden to screw everything up?”
Then he proceeded to ask me question after question after question as I did my best to answer them, and I realized that at the heart, this man was really struggling with the question of, “If God is a good God, if God is a loving God who really does love us, how come I've experienced so much pain and so much heartache and so much suffering during this lifetime?” So we talked through some of these questions, and he even asked me if I could pray for him. And ever since Halloween I've been able to develop this really incredible relationship with him. He has been coming to our church. He has been coming to the men's Bible study I lead out of my home. And we’re texting throughout the day as I'm praying for him.
This interaction with a man God brought to my door has made me come alive. It has made me passionate about what I get to do as a pastor, and not just as a pastor but as a Christ follower. It has been exciting. It has brought joy and energy to me as a believer. But it has also been very convicting as I stop and think about how long it had been since I'd had this type of interaction. If I'm honest, it was a couple of years since I'd had this type of opportunity to see the life of someone outside the church transformed by the power of Jesus.
I began to realize how difficult it can become to remain passionate about Jesus and the power He has when we get caught up in the everyday logistics and details of life. Paul says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
This passage has been really hitting home with me, as I believe the Apostle Paul, as a fellow minister in the gospel, felt what you and I oftentimes feel when we get caught up in the details of being a Christian but forget why we became believers. Paul was passionate to see other people come to Jesus, but he realized if he wasn’t careful, he'd begin to lose sight of his own love and his own passion for Jesus. So he says, I beat my body. I train. I work. And I'm going to continue to run my own race so I don't lose sight of how much I love Jesus.
In Philippians 3, Paul says, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14, NIV). Paul understood that his goal, his primary purpose was to pursue Jesus, and in the meantime pull people along with him. I pray that may be true of us, that our original passion would not become a job or a task, but instead our passion would remain true as we pursue Jesus and bring people with us.
Dave Hawes is the pastor at The Well Madera.