Love is Patient
I'm here with Brian in the studio as he's sharing stories from his new book, God's Love Stories. Thanks, Brian.
We're going through 1 Corinthians chapter 13, and it starts by saying, "Love is patient." And I'm so grateful for the people that have shown God's patience to me. The very first youth group that I was involved in was down in Cape Town, in Wynberg, at a little Baptist church. And when I left school, they came and asked me to run the youth group for the young people in the church.
Building a Youth Group
So we got all the young people together—four of them—and I soon realized you can't run a youth group with four young people only. So we started going out onto the streets. We started doing outreach events. We were probably the first youth group in the country to run a coffee bar with fishnets, coloured lights, folk music—all of that kind of stuff. And people started coming in. We were near a cinema, and we would stand outside at 10:00 on a Friday night, invite people to come in, and run a coffee bar till midnight.
It wasn't long before the youth group was packed out. Sunday night services had 110 people—100 young people—and God was saving people. But the young people coming were not your normal Christians who sang choruses and understood the Bible or understood church. They were foreign. They were saved off the streets, and God was doing something amazing in their lives.
A Lesson in Patience: Jeff’s Story
Let me tell you about Jeff. Jeff was one of the guys who came to the coffee bar. He came to me afterward and said, "I want to become a Christian." It was very obvious that Jeff had drunk too much or smoked too much; he wasn’t that compos mentis, but I prayed with him. I went through the Bible verses, and then the next day, as I always did, I jumped into my VW Beetle—covered in Charlie Brown and Snoopy paintings all over it—to go visit Jeff, to discover he’d given me a false address.
I waited. School went back, and then I phoned his school and actually got his address from the school. I went to go visit him, knocked on the door, and Jeff opened the door. His eyes just blew up. He turned around, ran down the passage, through the kitchen, out the back door, over the back fence!
Well, I wasn’t sure if I’d used too much underarm or whatever, but his mother came and said, "He’s gone." The next day, I went to visit Jeff again. Same thing happened! He ran away. The third time, his mother came to the door and said, "He’s in the kitchen." I stood where he couldn’t get out, and so began a three-year journey as I visited him on a regular basis. He obviously wasn’t saved, but he became more and more interested—even as he got himself into more and more trouble with the law: stealing, smoking grass. There were times when I sat in my VW Beetle and prayed, "God, I don’t want to go see Jeff again. I’m finished. I’ve had enough." And God said, "Go back, go back, go back."
So I went back. Eventually, one day after about three years, his mother came to the door and said, "Jeff’s in prison. Third offense, facing jail time." I went to go visit him in jail, and he, with a big smile on his face, said, "Brian, don’t worry, I’ve become a Christian."
God’s Patience and Love
I worried! I worried badly. He was facing jail time, his girlfriend was pregnant—it was a mess. And I thought, "Why couldn’t he have become a Christian earlier?" I arranged his defense, had to pay a bit of money. I was his only defense as I talked about this three-year journey to the judge and how Jeff had become a Christian. And the judge looked at me with pity in his eyes—not for Jeff, but for me. But he gave him a suspended sentence.
Jeff’s life was turned around, but Jeff taught me so much about God's love—God's love that is patient, God's love that just never gives in. Ordinary people are valuable to God, and the people around you and I, the people in our church, in our neighborhood, in our families, are valuable. And God's calling us to not give up on them, to show patience, to keep loving, keep loving, keep loving until that love breaks through.
