Interactions with God #53
I think it was in early 1991 when I left AT&T and started working for a company called 786 Services. The owner of the company was an Iranian Muslim named Sam. I had not really worked with anyone who was Muslim before, so I didn’t know what to expect. He talked about God in similar terms to biblical Christianity. Of course, he didn’t believe that Jesus was God, so though it was a problem for him from an eternal perspective, it didn’t mean I couldn’t work for him. I did expect him to be a decent, honest guy due to his faith’s requirements though. That, unfortunately ended up to be wrong.
Sam, had only a few employees and he paid them all on a contract basis. No insurance and no taxes taken out. The company was a bicycle assembly service. Basically, he built bikes for toy stores. One of his big customers was Toys R Us. A person would go in and pay $10 to have a bike built. Sam was paid $8 and gave $6 to his contractor. Bikes could take 20 minutes to an hour to build depending on the bike. My job was to sell, on commission only, this service while building bikes to survive.
Since the stores were all over the place, this required a bit of driving. I brought in a rather large New England store chain called Stuarts. They had stores from Maine to Connecticut. Sam had promised that he had the capital to hire new contractors as needed. Sadly, he lied. I ended up building most all of the bikes for Stuarts. This didn’t leave me much time to do any additional sales.
Around this time, I also attended a Bill Gothard Seminar. Now, I would not recommend Bill Gothard to anyone. He was an extremely legalistic, cause and effect kind of guy. The only decent thing I really got out of the seminar was a vow to read the bible 5 minutes every day. I have kept that vow, only missing 3 maybe 4 nights since 1991. On one night, during my 5 minutes, I found myself in the passage where Jesus was asleep in the boat.
I read the passage through, not really giving it a great deal of thought. Yet, something had always bothered me about that passage. I had never really considered it until the Holy Spirit spoke to me when I finished. “What is bothering you about the passage?” “I don’t know.” “Read it again.” I read it again. “Read it again”. I read it again. “Read it again”. I did so…again. This went on, no joke, at least 7 or 8 times. I eventually got frustrated and when done reading and re-reading this one passage, put the book down and went to sleep.
The next day, I had to drive from Nashua, NH to Worcester, MA in order to build bikes for Stuarts. It was a three and a half hour drive if I remember right. Well into the drive, the Holy Spirit spoke again. “What do you think about that passage?” Ugh. So I considered it for a minute. Then it hit me what was bothering me with it. You see, in the passage, it clearly says that the men were in great danger. It says they woke Jesus concerned that they would probably drown. He got mad at them and scolded them for their lack of faith. What bugged me was that He got mad at them. I realized, that because they were in danger, I would also have been a wee bit panicked, thus I also would have received the rebuke. Why did He get mad?
I told God what bothered me. He responded with a simple question, “Who was Jesus?” I replied. “God”. Then it hit me. It hit me why He was mad, it hit me why they were so pathetic with their faith. It also hit me why I was as well. Jesus was God. GOD. THE GOD. God who controls the weather. God who gives life and takes it away. God who makes everything happen or not. God, was in the boat with them, and asleep or not, He was still GOD. Yet, they didn’t know who He really was! After all the miracles, after all the teaching, they STILL didn’t realize Jesus WAS God. They should not have been afraid, no, not even a little bit.
Of course, as with all of these interactions, it came back to me. How much did I really believe that Jesus is God? How much did I REALLY believe that God was in my “boat” with me? Though He seems to be asleep at times, HE is still GOD. He is still in control. Do I REALLY trust Him?
My answer was no. Sadly, just like the panicking disciples, I also had very little faith.