Today when I came to our church in downtown Orlando there was a woman outside the door. The woman was so skinny that you could see the bones in her face and she looked and smelled like a living dead. I would think that she had not showered for weeks. I can take a lot, but this was bad. “Go away, go away”, she shouted. Honestly speaking, I got a little agitated over her behavior, but then I recognized her voice.
I called out her name and gave her a hug. “Is that really you?” I said, asking her where she had been for so long. “Crack,” she said. She did not have to explain herself more, I already knew that crack had a lot of power over her and that she never got real free. It was obvious that she did not have a lot of time left to live on this earth.
This woman was one of the first people we met at our public feedings here in the USA She was a prostitute many years on OBT and one of the first ones from the street that we baptized on the beach. In the beginning, she came with us to church, but she always did it her way. She did not want to let go of her rebellion. Nobody could tell her anything, she knew the Bible, the law, the everything better than anybody else. It was hard to see when she floated back into her old lifestyle, and from that point, we would rarely see her.
I tried to reach out to her but she was partly there and partly not there. Most of the time she was talking to her self or sleeping on the bench. As I drove back home I sat with tears in my eyes begging God to intervene like I have done it hundreds of times. I have seen so many people die since I came to Orlando to start the church on the trail. Like life has no value. The people we work with here seem to have a death wish over their lives.
Let me give you an example. A few days ago a man came running, swearing and cursing. He was not drunk or high just so filled with rage and anger, he banged his fists into the wall and turned around looking at me with fiery eyes, screaming “Today I am going to kill somebody, I wanna leave this world and die, I swear today somebody is going to die”. I was sitting outside but right there I saw Satan in his eyes, no doubt that it was a demon that was working hard to finish his life and the life of others as well.
Later on, I had another conversation with a man I have not met before. He was a widower and he told me that God had killed his wife with cancer. He was very bitter, and he believed that God would kill him as well. I was really surprised by his beliefs and asked him where the devil was in his worldview. If God was to be blamed, at least the devil should have some as well, I suggested. Then I asked him if he had ever done anything wrong if he had no faults in the failures of his life, and slowly but surely the truth started shining and I was able to pray with him.
None of us can blame anybody for the outcome of our lives. You can’t live your whole life without God and then suddenly blame him for what you should have done a long time ago. We all have to live with the consequences of the choices we make. We are the ones who make decisions, and we all harvest what we sow. The wages of sin is death, but Jesus paid the price for us so that we have the option to live in freedom from sin, surrendering our lives to Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Rom 3:23 For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Joh 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me”.
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