Tuesday, May 16, 2023 Adventures of A Young Christian Part 8

Well, the great day came when I finally graduated from the dietetic internship. I got a temporary job right away at St. Mary’s Hospital covering for the menu planning and food purchasing dietitian during her pregnancy leave, which meant I was going to be staying in Rochester for a time. A few friends had gotten a 2 bedroom apartment nearby and graciously allowed me to be the fourth roommate. I had been so busy during the internship that I hadn’t had a lot of time to do anything else for God and the church, so I made an expansive promise to the Lord that I would say “yes” to everything that came my way. This is the kind of promise that immature and undiscerning Christians make and I was to learn that the hard way.

I was still interested in doing a Bible study with the dietetic interns, so I invited a group of them over to our apartment to give it a try. I still didn’t really know what I was doing, but I’d been around long enough to hear the adage “God is more interested in availability than He is in ability.” So there! A few of the interns took me up on my invitation, which was exciting. I have absolutely no memory of what Bible study we did, but what did get seared into my brain at the first gathering was something one of the interns said during the discussion. She told us she wasn’t a Christian, but “when someone tells me they are a Christian, I watch them especially closely to see if how they live matches up with their claims.” Gulp. She had a way of staring at you that added to the whole feeling of being scrutinized. It was a bracing statement, but not an outrageous one. I have never forgotten that when I identify with Christ, I had better not take His name in vain by speaking or living in a way that dishonors Him.

Next up: a Petra concert was coming into town and various churches were looking for volunteers to help on the day of the concert. I found out that the band, Petra, wouldn’t come to a town unless they knew they had the prayer and support of local churches and they always made their concerts an evangelism opportunity. Look no further – my hand went up and I said “Yes.” I met with the group before the concert and discovered that volunteers were expected to be available to counsel, pray with and keep in touch with anybody who responded to “altar call” at the end of the concert. Gulp. Really? I was tremendously nervous about this. We were given information on what kinds of things to say and pray and then were sent on our way (I’m liking the rhyme scheme in that sentence, by the way).

On the day of the concert, we met in a separate room to pray before the concert started. The band started playing while we still in the room – it was so loud that I could feel the music and drums reverberating in my chest. What had I gotten myself into? That was my inward thought, but outwardly, I was pretty cool about the whole thing. We went into the auditorium and fanned out so as to sit in different places throughout. To be honest, I was kind of dreading the end of the concert at this point, the whole altar call and my part, which was still a little fuzzy in my mind. Time doesn’t stand still for hesitant people, however, and after the last song, one of the band members gave a short gospel presentation, followed by an invitation to come forward. Kids started making their way up front and I was paralyzed in my seat. One of the other volunteers, Myla, was made of better stuff than I – she went by, saw me sitting still and exhorted me, “C’mon – go grab one!” I got caught up in the forward motion and found a couple high school girls waiting up front for someone, so I prayed for courage and “grabbed” them. They were very earnest in their desire to follow Christ and after speaking briefly to them, I helped them through some sort of prayer, or maybe I prayed for them. We exchanged contact information and I found out they both lived in Wisconsin. I felt pretty exhilarated after the experience – my first time helping someone come to Christ!! But in my follow up calls (which I also dreaded), I discovered that there was big difference between the emotional moment of the altar call experience and the follow through after some time went by. Both of the girls were fairly lukewarm by the time I talked to them a week later and seemed embarrassed to be contacted by me. After a couple awkward phone conversations, it was clear they really didn’t want to pursue this new “faith” that they’d claimed to have. I quit calling. That was a big learning experience for me in many ways, but I still hadn’t learned to be a little more discerning about what I volunteered for. More stories to come!

I volunteer to delete this in the morning.

If you want to start at the beginning of this series, here you go:
Adventures Part 1
If you want to go to the next installment:
Adventures Part 9