An Honest Question
Stan Telchin studied the Bible ferociously to try to prove to his daughter that Jesus was not the Messiah. The more he read it, the more he saw that it couldn’t be denied – and yet he did deny it. He couldn’t bring himself to take that step in faith and admit it.
He did, however, begin attending Jewish Christian gatherings. And at one of these, he was walking along and noticed an older lady struggling to walk and so he offered to help her. As they chatted on their walk, she said to him “Tell me Stan, for how long have you been a believer?” “I’m not a believer,” he replied, “an inquirer, perhaps, but absolutely not a believer.”
Encounter with Truth
The older lady, Lillian, stopped and sat down on a nearby bench and pulled out a Bible. She told Stan to open it to Exodus 20, and asked him to read the first few verses, which said “I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Lillian looked at Stan and said “tell me: who is your God?” And Stan was stunned. What a question, for a staunch Jew! But she pressed him. “Just think about it”, she said. “Who is your God? Whom do you worship? Money? Family? Home? Job? Or do you worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who delivered our ancestors from the land of Egypt?”
Stan couldn’t quite answer. He stayed silent and ended up pondering the question as he climbed into bed, and eventually just before midnight he asked his roommate to pray for him. His friend asked God to bring him peace and resolve his inner conflict.
The next morning at the breakfast table, Stan was asked to pray for the food! He was startled by this, but closed his eyes and began to pray, and to his own surprise, he prayed these words: “Praised be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe. I thank You for the fellowship and friendship at this table. I thank You for what we have learned at this meeting. I ask You now to bless this food, and I do so in the name of Jesus, the Messiah.”
The whole table erupted in joy as they realized that Stan was a believer! Tears of joy came flowing, and Stan’s life was changed forever.
True Worship Question
That simple question was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Stan: who do you worship? When he started to truly think about that, it shook him, and God seemed to use that inner wrestling to reveal himself to Stan in a special way.
So perhaps you want to think on that question yourself today. Who do you worship? Is it truly the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and His Son the Messiah, Jesus Christ? Or are they simply little add-ons to your life, when your deepest allegiance is to your money, your family, your success, your health, yourself?
Only when you put God on the throne as your highest pleasure and deepest delight, will peace come. It certainly did for Stan Telchin, and it will for you too.
