When A Person Who Loves God Says Something Uncomfortable To You About Him, It’s Probably A Good Time To Pay Attention
Welcome to the next daily installment of this true story, which you can find posted here each afternoon until it comes to an end.
Chapter 87: After The Worship Service
Tonight, after the worship service, I believe I realized for the first time that there are people like me who are not pastors and who have relationships with God in which they believe they can discern God’s voice in their lives. Rose and Robert looked like anyone else. The three of us boarded this train independent of each other, yet here we were together and telling some very similar stories.
I know nothing about them that they have not told me. After the others left and once the three of us were alone, we started talking about God and our experiences and those experiences, again, had a lot of similarity. Maybe that is something I should have realized sooner, but that was not what happened. For the first time tonight, that became clear to me.
After those two left, I sat and thanked God. There was one more person left in our portion of the lounge car. It was Kathy. Kathy had hovered around our prayer services a few times over the past days, but kept her distance.
God said to go pray for her. I went to Kathy and asked what I could be praying for her for. She didn’t know what she wanted prayer for. We prayed.
Then I cleaned up the surroundings of the car a little bit and grabbed a seat off on my own on the observation car to write this.
Chapter 88: My Former Hobby
I am realizing something, and this has taken some time to realize from that conversation with Robert and Rose. Every Christian can have access to God. But there are only a small number of people who actually reach out to God in a meaningful way, who really become desperate for Him.
And it is not just desperate in a crisis that I am talking about, but desperate for Him long after the crisis ends. I do not know a single human dependency that is good for you lifelong. No other human is good for you to need.
God is different. God is a very good dependency. We should not confuse the qualities of man with the qualities of God. There are similarities, but they are not often much more than similarities. You become many times “greater” than what you ever could have been when you develop a dependency on God. There is no good reason to want anything else. There are only excuses. I know. I had them all. It was my hobby to cultivate them.
What a collection I had. One by one, I had to shed light on each one of those excuses I had. And once I looked at them honestly, I was left with no other choice than to live in denial or to tear down those excuses. So, I tore them down.
God’s real. He wants a relationship with us. The sooner you can get busy on building that relationship, the better everything else becomes.
Chapter 89: Near Death Experience
Had I known then what I knew now, I would have spent even more time listening to Robert. The truth is, He kind of freaked me out. What is this near death experience talk? Is it even Christian? Why did he seem to want to share his story with me so badly? I repent for not paying more careful attention that night and getting everything I could have out of my time with Robert.
Robert flatlined, went to heaven, met with Christ, and came back down. Now he wants to tell people. And some guy on a train “by chance” walked up to him and invited him to come pray. So yes, Robert understands that it is no chance happening, and that he has a story to tell me. I know the man was ready to collect a harvest and to blow my mind and my preconceived notions wide open.
Is that not what we all want to do to some extent? Do we not all want to see someone deeply moved by a few words that come from our mouths? Would that not be amazing, no matter who you are, to be able to move someone with a few words and to see life transformation take place right in front of your eyes?
And how much cooler if it is your own personal harrowing experience that you get to share that helps break the shackles off someone? What if it is your painful experience that helps another person understand, and that makes what you went through all the more worth it?
I believe Robert wanted that. But that night it wasn't happening. Today, as this book goes to press, it could. I was just not ready that night. But what Robert was able to do, was to plant a few seeds, seeds that I am already watching grow. And Rose too did the same for me. Thank you God for bringing Robert and Rose into my life that night.
-Allan Stevo
This is a selection from my forthcoming book, “The Amtrak Vignettes.” A neat story began with the writing of “The Amtrak Vignettes” in October 2023. Every day until that story comes to an end, I intend to share a part of it here. It is a part of my faith journey as a Christian, a faith journey that has been deepened since the Ides of March 2020. Some of it gets pretty wild and nothing that a “reasonable” person would find himself in the midst of. Few will be scared off by it. Instead, many will grow deeper in their faith. I know that, because I know my readers well, and I know that few come here expecting me to give a milquetoast version of anything. Come here to be challenged. Stay here to have your life changed. That, I believe, is what will come of this work. You can support that work by signing up below.