An Interesting Conversation

Last night I worked at TGIF trying to help train a new trainee. I was kind of tired, so I don’t think I did a very good job, but I think the trainee is learning. Anyway, we had just closed and I was just waiting for a right to the parking lot where my car was (not a good idea to walk there on my own at midnight).

While I was waiting, one of the bartenders was sitting nearby and asked for me to talk with him for a bit. It turns out he is going through some interesting situations and (I thought) he wanted my input. I asked him questions and such to try and be a wall he could bounce ideas off of to help him understand his situation better.

I thought we were mostly done, and my ride was ready for me, so we started walking toward the front door. At the front door, we kept on talking for a bit, and he kept saying how it was “so weird” that he was praying now. He had told me that, since the development of his interesting situation, some very good things were falling into place for him, and so he couldn’t understand his urge to be praying – usually people pray when things are going bad.

(What follows is a summary and gist of the conversation)
Somehow, in the course of the conversation, I explained to him how we all long for some kind of fulfillment, but because we are sinners, we look for that fulfillment selfishly in something created in this world (like wealth or something). I told him these longings weren’t bad because God created us to be like Him with the promise to become more like God. If we insist on clinging to something in this world, our understanding (of an intersting situation, for example) and our ability to function will be skewed.

I also explained how when we pray to God we may actually be asking God to fulfill us by giving us something created (like money). I told him that Jesus was the only answer, and that I had felt the freedom that comes form believing in Jesus — this is whay I was telling him everything I had told him: I wanted him to be able to pray in the freedom of Jesus.

I think the bartender understood what I was saying and (whether in courtesy or genuineness) he listened and seemed intersted in what I had to say. At this point, the bartender drove me to my car, I said I would be praying for him, and asked if he wanted to pray right then for the intersting situation he was in. He said that would be great, so I prayed for him. I encouraged him to keep praying, and he said he would, because he found such soothing and freedom in prayer.

I’m praying that God will use my feeble words of the good news of Jesus together with the circumstances the bartender is in to draw him closer to God. I can’t wait to see what God does!!!