RRR_discipling_Red
Stay seated, if you got up and walk round in between these pages, go back and sit down. Because while my first entry about recertifying and serving had to do with conflict in a general; but a funny sense; about what's the worst thing that could happen to you. Now, I'm going to share something with you that is , I consider; it is vastly stranger.
But a great learning lesson, there was an elder in our church who was just a magnificent dude. I mean, he's, he's so cool that it's hard to explain how deep his faith was. I'm gonna call him Red. Now here's the thing, I went on a mission trip.
I was brand new I was going to seminary. I basically had only been a Christian for maybe 3 years, we went to a mission trip out in New Mexico. It was a mountain top of mountain top experiences and some day, I'll share with you about the prison visitation and going out, and witnessing on the streets of New Mexico I think Albuquerque out there.
It was astonishing.
But we get back to Central, and we're having a men's meeting a men's dinner, and I sit down at the men's dinner to eat my meal. And some folks asked me how was it out in Mexico and
away I went man.
I was telling them about witnessing the people in how it was, and how I couldn't believe that more men hadn't gotten involved in things like that, and what was happening with men where they were, they becoming less than you know, less than spirit filled and less than involved in less than caring were they becoming apathetic, would Jesus spit them out of his mouth?
Red was sitting across from me, and looked at me and he said, "Young man, I think you need to calm down," I said, "calm down, get serious man, I think you need to get fired up."
And a way we went. Now, he didn't take all of my statements about being fired up and saying I'm so glad that you said that to me, because iron sharpens iron. No, he kept telling me that I needed to quiet down, and be still to realise who I was, we got into it.
And after that men's meeting and I'm telling you, this is real; for a month when we passed each other in the halls, I'd walk on one side he'd walk on the other and we didn't speak to each other. There was, shall we say little love between us; that's terrible.
But that's what went down. This is real.
So we had a men's meeting scheduled for the brotherhood in Minden Louisiana. I'll never forget it.
Because the professor that was my professor of preaching, his co-author was the man who was delivering the message that night. Harold Bryson and so I told my boss in Shreveport, that I needed to be sure that I would be able to get to this meeting. He said that was no problem so long as I had my work covered, I could go.
I left Shreveport at exactly 4 o'clock and I arrived at Central Baptist, at exactly 5 o'clock. We had a big old bus, the golden goose was sitting out there.
And check this out, it was packed with men all of them except for one seat, and you know; next to who? Red.
Well, I went over and begrudgingly sat down next to him, and I'm sure he was thrilled that I was there, and we silently rode to Minden.
That night, Harold Bryson preached on the importance of men of faith being able to forgive one another; and to strengthen the brotherhood, and to understand that as men of Christ, we needed to love one another. Be forgiving of one another and to forgive each other, even if the other person didn't feel like they needed forgiveness.
We needed to forgive each other because there's nothing more important than brotherhood and unity in the body of Christ. And it doesn't have anything to do with brotherhood, were all members of the body of Christ, and I mean, Harold Bryson, let loose on forgiveness to the point where my feet were so bloody that I couldn't even hardly walk you know. We go back to the bus and again now I'm looking sitting next to Red and he looks over at me and starts to say "I will hope that you can forg..." before you got forgive out his mouth.
I said "Red please forgive me." And we re-established our relationship with one another, and it was as solid relationship as you could ever want.
One month later, Red died.
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