Joe and the Unbelievable Lady

MARCH 1973

I moved to a lot of different cities and visited a lot of different churches during my 4 years in the Coast Guard and in many of them, after church services I seemed to gravitate toward older ladies, probably because they reminded me of my Grandmother in ways. The ones I liked were sweet, wise, spiritual and most of the time, prayer warriors.

In 1975 I talked a lot to Sister Sarah who was a lady bound to her wheel chair, but I was sure had a direct line with God. I brought up prayer requests with her on many occasions. In Baltimore, there was one lady who was simply awesome. I don't know how I found these people, but I did.

The Setup

There were two churches I visited in Baltimore. The first was a Pentecostal Church that was very anti-Charismatic and the second was a Charismatic church. The Pentecostal one had a pair of children's crutches on the wall to commemorate the healing of one of their kids. The Charismatic church had nothing special in it except one older lady who was very gifted - genuinely gifted. Oh yes, and there was another weird lady who hung out there, but that's another story entirely.

Joe

Besides being odd, Joe was the kind of guy who was Christian one day and partier/drunk the next. He just couldn't make up his mind which direction to go. All of the Christians on board the ship had tried to help him but gave up on him, eventually I too gave up - Joe was hopeless.

One night I was going to go to a Bible Study headed by this awesome older lady, but while I was preparing to go I was facing an internal struggle. I felt that I should take Joe to the Bible Study but I didn't want to. The feeling was very strong so I finally gave in and asked Joe to go with me.

For the next 45 minutes in the car Joe told me that he had his whole life planned out - finding a woman to marry, settle down, be happy and not be strong Christian but not a bad one either. During those 45 minutes I said nothing- I was disgusted.

We walked into the Study and the older lady started talking about seeing many visions of heaven and hell. She said heaven was marvelous, but she wouldn't wish her worst enemy to go to hell, but the bible says that God would rather us be hot or cold, not lukewarm for if we are lukewarm Jesus will spit us out of his mouth. She then addressed every issue Joe brought up in the car. She did not miss one issue that Joe brought up - she brought up the fact that life isn't a bed of roses where you find the perfect wife and you live happily ever after. She mentioned everything Joe talked about and mentioned nothing more. It was just like she was there listening to us.

After she had been talking about 10 minutes Joe spoke up, "I guess I've been lukewarm." We prayed for him that night and several days later I was transfered to Peteluma, CA, where a whole new chapter of my life began. I never saw Joe again.