The Zealous Hitchhiker

SEPTEMBER 1973

On one of my many trips from Charleston to Jacksonville I picked up a hitchhiker somewhere outside of Savannah, GA. I was in a bad mood and picked him up out of duty more than any desire to witness or make a new friend. In fact, I think that day I decided I didn't even want to talk about Jesus.

So the guy obviously saw my racing stripe that said "Jesus is the Way" and he saw all the stickers on my car saying "Honk if you love Jesus," and who knows what else they said about Jesus, but I had a bunch on my car. While the guy gets into the car he starts getting all excited, "This is the third car in a row that picked me up with a Christian driver, we're going to have a revival today!"

Turns out the guy was a backslidden Christian and God was definately doing something about that the day he hitchiked. I didn't even want to talk to the guy and here he is getting all excited about getting right with God. I spent the whole ride talking to him about what kind of church he should get involved in. I believe we ended up on some Baptist church he knew about.

I never knew how most people turned out after I left them. I was a hit and run evangelist. All I could do is encourage new believers to get into a Bible teaching church (people usually knew of one and it didn't matter much about denominations), read their Bible regularly, and pray.

By this time in my life I had discovered the need for church, Bible study and prayer. When any of these lacked, the Christian life was difficult, shallow and distant. When I was doing all 3 life in Christ was much more natural.