Two weeks ago we had the privilege of having one of our neighbors over for dinner. His name is Don. He is an 80 year old man whose wife passed away about 5 years ago. I remember when we first sought to build a relationship with this man and his wife. We had only one child at the time and we went to their house during the 2000 Christmas season to share some Christmas cookies in the hopes of building a relationship with them. He and his wife were so appreciative. And to top it off my 2 year old daughter at the time sang three Christmas carols that was piercing to the ear, but they loved it and it melted their heart. Since then we have continued to build a relationship with Don and have had the opportunity on different occasions to share the gospel with him. But he is a skeptical man. He reads his Bible as a literature book and with a critical eye. Since his wife passed away our family would have him over for dinner on a regular basis. And during the course of dinner our conversation would lead towards a discussion about the Scriptures. He would usually raise a question about the character of God, namely in how God is seen in the Old Testament. And I, in turn, would eventually take our discussion to the story of the gospel. At this moment is when he would get most critical and condescending. My children would listen to him (with eyes wide open) sentence by sentence mock the story of Christ. In their minds they were probably thinking, “How could this man say such things about something we hold on to so dearly?”
We have been gone for nearly 2 ½ years while I was attending The Master’s Seminary in Southern California, and had lost contact with Don. However, during the Snow Storm 2008, I had the privilege of rekindling our relationship with him as we were both shoveling our driveways. As we stood at his newly shoveled driveway, I asked him, how he was doing. And the first thing he said was, “I haven’t had a regular meal with meat and potatoes in a long time.” Sadly, my thoughts initially didn’t go towards asking Don to come over for dinner. I actually started thinking about how I didn’t want to have him sit at our dinner table because he would probably mock the story of the gospel. And then my heart was suddenly convicted, that’s exactly why we need to have him over for dinner. So I asked him if he would like to come over that week and he said yes. I told my family that I had invited Don for dinner, and we all took a deep sigh (even the kids). As we anticipated sitting with Don at the dinner table this actually drove us as a family to our knees to pray for him. That week, we prayed that our aim would be to show him the love of Christ through our hospitality. We didn’t want to get in some kind of debate over something we hashed through in the past. We simply wanted to give him the best meat and potatoes meal so that he would sense that we genuinely loved him with the love of Christ. LaNae and the kids made a great meal, and we actually had an enjoyable time with him. We found out that he is a Civil War buff. In fact, this sparked Cade’s interest because he is taking a class right now on the Civil War. He invited Cade and me to come over his house some time to look at his Civil War collection, which we plan to do some time. He made an attempt to bring the Bible into our conversation during the course of dinner in a rather skeptical way, but I had resolved to simply display the love of Christ to him through our actions. He heard the gospel before on many occasions, and we realized that it wasn’t going to be more information that would penetrate the heart of this man, but rather more actions.
We have been gone for nearly 2 ½ years while I was attending The Master’s Seminary in Southern California, and had lost contact with Don. However, during the Snow Storm 2008, I had the privilege of rekindling our relationship with him as we were both shoveling our driveways. As we stood at his newly shoveled driveway, I asked him, how he was doing. And the first thing he said was, “I haven’t had a regular meal with meat and potatoes in a long time.” Sadly, my thoughts initially didn’t go towards asking Don to come over for dinner. I actually started thinking about how I didn’t want to have him sit at our dinner table because he would probably mock the story of the gospel. And then my heart was suddenly convicted, that’s exactly why we need to have him over for dinner. So I asked him if he would like to come over that week and he said yes. I told my family that I had invited Don for dinner, and we all took a deep sigh (even the kids). As we anticipated sitting with Don at the dinner table this actually drove us as a family to our knees to pray for him. That week, we prayed that our aim would be to show him the love of Christ through our hospitality. We didn’t want to get in some kind of debate over something we hashed through in the past. We simply wanted to give him the best meat and potatoes meal so that he would sense that we genuinely loved him with the love of Christ. LaNae and the kids made a great meal, and we actually had an enjoyable time with him. We found out that he is a Civil War buff. In fact, this sparked Cade’s interest because he is taking a class right now on the Civil War. He invited Cade and me to come over his house some time to look at his Civil War collection, which we plan to do some time. He made an attempt to bring the Bible into our conversation during the course of dinner in a rather skeptical way, but I had resolved to simply display the love of Christ to him through our actions. He heard the gospel before on many occasions, and we realized that it wasn’t going to be more information that would penetrate the heart of this man, but rather more actions.
The evening ended and we felt like not much had changed with regards to Don’s heart towards spiritual things, but we were ok with that. We know that in the Lord’s time He will work on Don’s heart. We will continue to pray for him and continue to have him over regularly for meals.
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