Jesus Does What?

Last night, as Ginny and I drove home from the grocery store, I prayed about a temptation I’m struggling with.

Yes, that one.

I’ve alternately wallowed in or relished this thing for years and years and years.

As I prayed, the watermelon we’d bought bumped around in the back of the car as we crossed the railroad tracks to our house. I know how that watermelon feels – Headed home but getting jostled and bumped on the way. And likely to bust wide open.

I wondered why Jesus doesn’t deliver me from temptation? He’s the Savior, why doesn’t He swoop down in a burst of light and a mighty “Shazam!” and save me from all the things that bug me?

But He doesn’t.

Or at least He hasn’t so far.

I have a bone to pick with Him – That’s what they call prayer.

Anyhow, my questions reminded me of Neal, an Australian guy I haven’t thought about in years.

Back in the 1970s I ran across Neal as I was doing some sort of volunteer social thing for the Salvation Army; I forget just why I was there, soup kitchen work or something of the sort. Not important.

But at the time I felt more religious zeal than I do now and I was – can you believe it – interested in street preaching.

What a hoot.

I am the shyest, most retiring, most timid, guy you’d ever want to meet.

I can speak to the public in a tightly controlled environment (I memorize every word I’m going to say beforehand) but to speak to strangers !!! It would take an act of God for me to venture something like that.

That’s where Neal came in.

It just so happened what while I was at Army Headquarters this guy from Australia shows up to train Salvation Army staff members in an unusual technique for street preaching. Neal represented an Australian evangelistic group called Open Air Campaigners .

I have no association with the Salvation Army beyond occasionally washing dishes at their mission, but an officer invited me to sit in on the training session.

Neal’s gimmick was to set up an artist’s easel in a park and begin to paint pictures that illustrated Bible stories; as folks gathered around to watch him paint, he would tell the story.

I only saw him do this once because he was only staying in Jacksonville for a day or two. But the concept of what he did clicked with me and eventually I tacked together an easel of my own and used stick-figure drawings as a crutch to talk to people who watched me paint. Did that as a hobby for several years…

That’s another story.

Oh, I should also say that I have no association with Open Air Campaigners either; Neal was the only one of these folks I ever met.

What made me think of Neal as I prayed about my temptations was what he told me about how he was delivered from being a roaring drunk to becoming a Christian.

He and some drinking buddies in Australia, I forget which city, saw this guy painting a picture in a park. They realized the guy was a do-gooder of some kind and decided to heckle the preacher.

Neal told his buddies, “Watch this. When that guy says that ‘Jesus saves’, then I’m going to yell, ‘Saves From What’. And when he says, ‘He’ll save you from the bottle’, I’m going to yell, ‘He can’t save me from this one, cause it’s empty’. And I’ll turn it up to drain the last drop, then throw the bottle at his head. That’ll teach him!”.

Sure enough , in the midst of the preacher’s message, he shouted the magic phrase, “Halleluiah, Jesus Saves”.

Neal yelled, “Saves From What”?

And the preacher yelled back, “He’ll save you from whatever’s got you licked”.

Neal’s bottle never got thrown.