“Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”” Acts 2:38-42……
I was kneeling down on a New York City sidewalk beside a homeless man sharing with him the Gospel message that we are all sinners headed for eternity in hell apart from God who can have a forever relationship with God almighty instead by turning away from our sins, and lifestyle of sin, and placing our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord who died for us and our sins and sin penalty and was raised from the dead, truly dedicating our lives to God and His ways, to living for Christ instead of for ourselves, this world, and the devil. I had spoken to the man before in passing, having had a brief conversation with him a time or two as I had walked by, but this time was serious. This time I was telling him about the Lord Jesus Christ. I hadn’t planned it. But I had been so compelled to kneel down right then and there to share with him that I don’t believe I could have done anything but be right there, right then, doing what I was doing. Rest assured he heard the message, despite the fact as I discovered he was drunk, but apparently where he would spend eternity, and how he would spend the rest of his life on earth, was not his highest priority.
“Will we go to heaven together?” he asked me.
My response was blunt. We likely wouldn’t die at the same time, but unless he repented and surrendered his life to the Lord Jesus Christ, he wouldn’t be going to heaven at all.
Our little conversation ensued. I made sure to share the Gospel with him clearly. So he would hear clearly. But clearly he wasn’t in the least concerned with the fact he was headed for an eternity of torment in hell and the lake of fire.
I knew when I was done. The Spirit of God leads Christ’s followers in sharing the Gospel. It was time to go.
The homeless man had something to say first, however. He didn’t hesitate to take a copy of my Gospel tract with a photo of me and my wheelchair dogs on the front. But still, the tract wasn’t a priority. Apparently he had something else on his mind.
“May I have a kiss?” he asked.
“Pardon me?” I said. Perhaps I hadn’t heard correctly. Hadn’t I just finished telling him the only way to heaven and a forever relationship with God is through Jesus the Christ?
“May I have a kiss?”
The Lord has given me a way to respond to all sorts of things I face in my streets ministry work. I don’t plan ahead what I will say at times like these. He just gives me the courage, and the words, and the discernment about when to speak to people, and when to walk away, and how to respond in all sorts of scenarios.
“My kisses are for the Lord Jesus Christ,” I said.
Off I went.
Friend, this isn’t a funny story, though on the surface it may appear that way. Nor is it simply a tragic story about a drunken homeless man who needs to repent and turn to Christ or face eternity in torment
It’s a story about EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING ALL OF WHOM ARE SINNERS FACING ETERNITY IN FIERY TORMENT unless we acknowledge we are sinners against God, seek His forgiveness, and place our trust IN JESUS CHRIST AS LORD OF OUR LIVES, genuinely giving over our hearts and lives to Him, turning away from our wickedness and turning genuinely to God and His ways.
The man asked for a kiss because in his mind there are more important matters on earth than Jesus Christ. Too many of us are caught up in the kisses of life, in the everyday desires of our flesh, in thinking the pleasures of this life are more important than the Lord Jesus Christ, in believing we can put off eternal matters for later, in thinking we can live self-centered lives and do good deeds every so often and earn our way to heaven, or some such thing, instead of realizing that this very breath we are taking could be our very last, and ALL OF US will either end up in a FOREVER RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD IN EVERLASTING JOY AND BLISS IN GOD’S FOREVER GLORIOUS PRESENCE or in forever torment away from and apart from Him forevermore.
That drunken homeless man on the sidewalk who asked for a kiss is not unique, you know. For any of us refusing to repent and turn away from our sins and turn over our lives to the Lord God almighty through faith in Jesus Christ, we are more interested in the temporary fleeting pleasures of this life like a kiss than we are with the most important question we face in the universe.
Where, and with whom, will we spend eternity?
Turn to the Lord, friend, turn! Be genuinely sorry for your sins and place your heart and hands in the forever hands of almighty God through Christ, AMEN!
Later that day, dear friend, I walked by the same sidewalk and saw my face on the sidewalk. Yes, my face. For the Gospel tract lay on the sidewalk, my tract called Finding the Light. Nothing else lay around the tract. The homeless man had taken all his belongings with him. He had walked away into the darkness, leaving behind the little tract about finding Christ’s forever light.
There is only one everlasting light. The Lord. Are you His forever follower?