Pastor John,
I would like to share an experience I had today. My mom and I were in Budapest, as she had to go to the eye hospital for a minor procedure (which then did not happen, since the doctor who was supposed to do the procedure was not there, so we will have to go back again – but that’s a different story).
The train from Dunaújváros to Budapest now terminates at a different railway station than it used to, which is part of a larger transport hub (with the train station, a bus station and a metro station in it), and I’m not completely familiar with it. After Mom’s appointment, we had lunch at a nearby mall, and then headed back to the train station, but I miscalculated how much time we would need to get there in time, so we ended up missing the train. Thankfully the next one was leaving in an hour, but we still needed to figure out how to get to the railway tracks, because it really is not that simple, if you’re not traveling through there regularly. Once I realized that we had missed the earlier train, I had a passing thought of “I wonder if God has a reason for us spending an hour here with nothing to do” – but I quickly brushed it off thinking, not every single event has to have a “mystical” divine reason behind it.
As we were walking through this hallway, looking at the signs, trying to find out which way the railway tracks were, we walked past a young man who was standing to the side, playing his guitar, singing a song about God; and then we walked past him again, until finally I asked a man for directions to the railway tracks. I now knew which way we had to go, but we still had about 45 minutes before departure, and that moment I started feeling the tug of the Spirit to walk up to the young man with the guitar and engage in a conversation with him. So I did, and we ended up talking for about 15 minutes. As I found out, he belonged to the biggest charismatic church in Hungary, and when I asked him if he had received the baptism of the holy Ghost, he said he had. He asked me what congregation I belonged to, and I told him I belonged to the body of Christ, and that God had called me out of Christianity. Then he started talking about the importance of the church, how God gives the anointing exclusively to the church… and this part of our conversation gave me one of the big takeaways. Namely, how the way this young man (who I believe is our brother) talked about the church was hardly any different from the way Catholics talk about the Catholic Church. At one point he even called his congregation “my holy mother church” that he would never leave. I think I had never seen for myself, so clearly, how much the spirit of Christianity (regardless of which branch we’re looking at) is really the spirit of Catholicism.
I had the feeling that the young man felt something from the Spirit, and his reaction to it was that he just kept talking, not really wanting to hear what I had to say. I didn’t want to argue with him, I mostly just listened to what he had to say, even praying for him in my heart, but I felt that it would still be good to drop a few seeds of truth, if I had the opportunity. So, I ended up mentioning to him 1 Corinthians 12:13, Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about the new birth and the sound of the wind, and Revelation 18. In fact, I only had to refer to Revelation 18, because he knew immediately what I was trying to say. When I mentioned the Bible reference, he interjected saying “Oh that’s old news, that’s old news” – meaning he had already heard the interpretation of that scripture that I was going to tell him. I ended up giving him a card with the quote “You must be born again” on one side, and links to websites on the other side where he can find gospel tracts, short videos and longer teaching videos translated into Hungarian – which he accepted.
My other big takeaway from our conversation was that the truth “works”. You don’t have to add anything to it, or take away from it (nor should you) for it to have an effect. The truth (when Jesus is the one sending you to share it) is going to do its job, whether you’re an eloquent speaker, or not, or whether you feel like you did a good job explaining it, or not. You just need to obey the Spirit and open your mouth, and God will do the rest. I knew in my heart that me walking up to this young man was not in vain, because the Spirit spoke to him through those few sentences that I was able to say – not because of me, but because I got out of the way, and let the truth speak for itself.
Even though on the surface nothing major happened, I still know that our encounter was an extraordinary event, because the Spirit of truth touched this young man. Maybe months or years from now, he will remember the feelings he felt while talking to me, or he will remember the truth that he heard about the new birth, and he will start digging. I hope he will, but regardless of his response, I know that God did something for him today.
Zoli
