I never weary of sharing this true account and I am compelled to do it yet again here today:
A worldly fellow working in a profession that offered little room for employee sentiment found himself caught in the middle of a job action.
On one side, there were bosses and their underlings demanding that their workers get rid of their union representation.
On the other side were the workers who mostly believed that if they gave up their union protection, they’d be used like slaves by the bosses.
And in the middle, seemingly all alone, was the worldly fellow.
You see, his skin was black and this event was playing out in the midst of an era in which bigotry ruled.
So his individual rights, worries and cares meant very little or nothing at all to most folks on either side of the strife.
The worldly fellow saw reminders of that constantly and no matter how much either side tried to mask the truth, it eventually struck home to him through a voice in his head:
“Hey son, you are all alone in this struggle as usual – nobody’s looking out for you, you’ve got to look out for yourself.”
The inner voice opened the fellow’s eyes which, for all of his life until then, were closed to the word of God.
But he now remembered how he’d attended a church service just to appease a Christian and it turned out to be enjoyable – edifying even.
In fact, he even found himself going back and wanting to go back to more and more worship services.
Now as he felt himself backed up, all alone, against a wall, with all those uplifting memories of the church flashing in his mind, the inner voice slammed home:
“Hey (son) you’ve tried everything else in your life – now try God.”
In the middle of that work day, the fellow dropped everything that he was doing.
He called the Christian and said he thought he needed to be baptized.
Then the next thing he knew, he was at the church building, coming up from the water in the baptistery after affirming his belief that Jesus is the Son of God.
The rise from the water to him too felt like a slow motion scene in a movie, where he could see the individual water drops pop off him.
And with every inch of his rising, he actually felt the sensation of a huge weight being steadily lifted from his shoulders.
“You are saved (old boy). The world can’t hurt you anymore,” the fellow’s inner voice declared.
Tears rolled freely down the fellow’s cheeks as he turned to the preacher who’d just baptized him and he blurted:
“Is this all I had to do, man – is this all I had to do?”
That was 32 years ago and to this day that former worldly fellow remains a most happy Christian who keeps learning, day by day, to love Jesus and lean more and more on the Holy Spirit.
And all of this I know firsthand because, you see, I am that former worldly fellow.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1).
Ozzie Roberts
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