Sometimes after I work out at the gym I love to sit in the sauna to enjoy the heat and the release it provides my body. Last Wednesday I went in late to work out and then hit the sauna. There were two other people in the sauna when I entered. Right after I sat down an older woman walked in and observed a man across from us reading a book. She blurted out, “What are you reading?”
At first, he didn’t respond and then after some thought he told her it was a book about management. She then told him that he should humble himself and read the Bible. Cringe!
He told her that he tried to read it one time and it gave him a headache.
She then proceeded to talk about heaven and hell, humbling oneself, and his need to get saved!
That got his attention and he yelled at her, “There is no God!”
Now he got my attention. As I asked God in my mind, “What should I do?” He impressed upon me that it wasn’t my conversation and that if I did speak it would be out of a place of emotion and not love. I must admit I was hot! And not in the physical appearance sense or because I was in a sauna, I wanted to introduce that guy to my fist!
A few minutes later I left and when I began to drive home God the Holy Spirit began to remind me of passages to give me understanding. He reminded me that at one time I was “dead in my trespasses and sin,” and that my “understanding was darkened.” That I was alienated from God because of my sin and that I “loved darkness rather than light.”
It was this diagnosis that eventually brought me to receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. My “blindness” and “darkness” were indicative of my ignorance of the truth.
There is nothing like a lesson from God the Holy Spirit to humble a person. Okay, I get it. Rather than hate this man my heart probably should be breaking for him and crying out that he’d “come to a knowledge of the truth.”
I got home and knelt down by my bed and asked God to forgive me for my anger and hate towards this man. I asked God to give me a greater capacity to love and prayed for the nameless man in the sauna at the 24 Hour Fitness in Sunnyvale. Now that I think about it perhaps I should’ve prayed for our sister whose style of evangelism might need a tinge more grace.