Compelled To Be The Reason You Say No

There is something embedded into the very fabric of our being.  A sense of direction.  A definition, perhaps, of what feels right, and what doesn’t feel right.  Like some out-of-this-world entity has been woven into the very make-up of our DNA, allowing us to experience guilt and shame–emotions alarming us that whatever just happened, didn’t quite happen exactly the way we’d planned.  It’s a sense of desperation for something far greater than ourselves.

Someone, somewhere is talking to us through our own misguided attempts at humanity.  Call it God’s voice, call it a conscience, call it schizophrenia, or call it aliens if you’re wearing a tinfoil hat to hold in all your thoughts while reading this.  It doesn’t change the fact that we were built to feel compelled.  That something within us moves, and shakes, and demands that we listen to it.  But we continue to blaze our own trails like a better path has never been cut.  Our GPS has given us driving directions we follow without question even though we could have sworn we knew a better way.

On Sunday I was attending church.  The pastor started talking about a “big day.”  The idea here is that everyone who attends our church is encouraged to bring a friend on a particular day.  Or an enemy.  And then your enemy will become your friend.  Or at least someone you can tolerate from a distance.  Preferably from across the street.

Me, I’m not big on inviting people to church.  In fact, I can count on one hand, maybe, if I concentrate really hard, the number of people I have actually invited to church.  More than them saying no, I fear them saying yes out of obligation.  We hate saying “no” just as much as we hate hearing it.  I tell myself I don’t want to make it awkward for them, but is it really them I am protecting?

I grew up in a home where we went to church every Sunday.  Then I turned seventeen and my mother did something miraculously unexpected.  She told me I no longer had to go.  She would still be attending, and would love for me to join her, but I was an adult now.  She no longer could “force” me to attend.  I was presented options, given a choice.

Looking back on that moment, I recognize the power and faith in letting someone choose.  My mother couldn’t force me to go to church and love God.  And God can’t force me to love Him.  It had to be my decision.  As a result, I have never held any hostile anger or resentment toward church, God, or religion.  But I dropped the idea of church altogether when I moved out a year later and went to art school.  I faded in and out of religious circles and ideas.  My roommate was a Jehovah’s Witness, my best friend an Atheist,  and I’m pretty sure the guy down the hall believed he shared a soul with Matt Damon.

And on just another routine weekend, a fellow student in my building died at the age of nineteen.  He had been complaining about his knee hurting the night before, and drove himself to the emergency room.  The doctors took some x-rays, found a blood clot, and scheduled him for surgery.   While he waited for the operation, confident everything was going to be okay, the clot dislodged, and went right for his lungs.  Killing him instantly.  The following Sunday, my friends and I all went to church together. We’d never done anything like that before.  And we had no trouble inviting anyone we crossed paths with.  It was so easy.  In fact, we wanted people to know.  Maybe we were all suddenly acutely aware of our own mortality.  Whatever compelled us to go, it was so much easier for me as a drunken, unbelieving college punk to invite someone to church in the wake of death than it is now to invite someone to church in the wake of life as a functioning adult who now believes in a Savior.  I’m not going to church to mourn, but to celebrate.  Not because of death, but because of life.  All of which is infinitely more attractive and appealing.

What did I have back then that I am lacking now?

So when my pastor encouraged us to invite someone to church, God placed a someone on my heart.

I replied, “No. No way. Absolutely not. There is no way I can invite him.”

This guy, I don’t even know his name. How can invite someone I’ve never even introduced myself to? Let’s call him Derek here. He looks like a Derek. I am sure Derek gets invited to church all the time. This has much to do with the fact that he works at the coffee shop two block away from my church. He doesn’t want to hear it from me too.  I am the one guy who chats with him and laughs with him while he’s at work and doesn’t invite him.  And now God wants me to invite him?

I made a deal with God. I’d invite him, but God would have to bring him to me. I wasn’t going to go seeking out Derek.

Church ends. I walk outside. Who do I run into, of all the people in all the world out for a Sunday stroll, but Derek.

Right before we made eye contact, I cursed the idea of making a deal with God. We exchanged pleasantries at the crosswalk in the middle of the intersection. Derek was on his break from work.  We don’t ever have much to chat about apart from coffee.  So I’m thinking I’m off the hook. There will be a better time to invite this guy. I’ll never find a window of opportunity here. Then he hits me with this:

“So what are you up to? Are you coming from church?”

Damn him.

Yeah, man. Just got out of service. Grabbing a cup of coffee before I head out.

“Well, good to see you.”

Yeah. You too.

We shook hands.

He said, “Nice handshake.”

Thanks. My mother gave it to me.

What did that even mean? Have you ever made small talk so small you can’t even identify what you’re talking about?

“Okay, well, see you around.”

I was so disappointed that I could sit at the comfort of a keyboard and declare myself a man who follows Christ, but the moment I run into Derek, I try to pretend God doesn’t exist at all because I don’t want to make him feel awkward. Let’s get serious. I was the one who didn’t want to feel awkward. I was afraid to listen to the voice inside my heart because I knew it was right, but I convinced myself I knew better.

I told this story to my friend Chad, and he responded only with this: “You’re letting your relationship with Derek get in the way of the relationship God wants to have with him.”

So to make up for my lack of courage, I confidently strolled into the coffee shop ready to show God I was still on His side. I can’t explain it, but I knew I was supposed to buy a cup of coffee for whoever was in line behind me.

I blew this opportunity too. Turned out the person in line behind me was a stunning and beautiful woman in a red and yellow sundress, her dirty blonde hair falling all over her bare shoulders. Things got awkward. How do you buy a beautiful woman in a red and yellow sundress a cup of coffee without implying that you’re interested in dating her? And it wasn’t that I was not interested, but I am in the middle of what you could call a “90 Day Dating Sabbatical” (another story for another blog), so when we made eye contact, I did what came naturally: laying down the smoothest rap I know:

“Uh…hey.”

What would have happened if I’d bought her that cup of coffee in line? Would it have made her day? Would she have paid it forward? Gone on to bless someone else in a way I could never imagine and will never know? And what of Derek? Would he have felt loved if I’d invited him to church? Cared for? Even if he didn’t want to go, he could have said no and the world–I’m 87% certain–would not have exploded, but maybe he’d have gone home that day with just a little more wind in his sails. Instead, in both interactions, I couldn’t see beyond myself.

How often do you ignore the people in your path, fighting a voice in your head that says you should give that homeless man a buck or buy him lunch? The feeling in your gut that urges you to say hello to the woman in line behind you, but you’re in no mood for conversation?

Listen up. That voice is something greater than you. It is a plan God set in motion from the beginning of time, and you’re feeling that way because you’re supposed to talk to that person, but you haven’t yet.

And even if you don’t believe in God, or haven’t been to church since high school, I’m willing to bet you still hear that voice, feel that nudge, no matter how slight the tug is on your heart.

Allow yourself to be compelled.

It might just change the world.

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