The Holy Spirit changed me when I was 13.   On a missions trip to Mexico, I received what our denomination called the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.

It changed me.  Before I was unable to change.  I was constantly going up to the alter and promising God I would change the next day.  But I never changed.  Afterwards, I was a radical believer, fully in love with Jesus and wanting to see my friends come to know the same power of God that I had experienced.

Before School started the next year, I went down to my school and climbed up the roof, I later found out that wasn’t ok, and prayed for God to do something in my school.  I was listening to Russ Taff on my walkman

Well I’ve seen my chances come and go

and come back round again

But every time they took me by surprise

And there was a day I used to want

the things i did not have

But its never better on the other side.

The first step in my radical witness was to wear a Christian t-shirt.  On the first day back from school I wore a shirt that said “don’t be caught dead without jesus” over a the soles of a dead persons shoes.  It was cartoon and not nearly as sinister as it sounds.

The next step in my radical witness was to start a prayer and bible study after school.  I was in 8th grade at the time and nothing like it was going on at my middle school.  Christian t-shirts weren’t enough.  God wanted me to do more.  I gathered friends who were believers and every couple days after school we gather in the library and just hang out.  There wasn’t a lot of prayer and there wasn’t a lot of bible study.  But hey God new why were there.  We were gathered together because we were believers in him.

But soon I felt God wanted me to do more.  I began to pray for an opportunity to witness to a gathering of students.  I didn’t know how such a gathering would materialize.  I envisioned my own talents somehow drawing the masses.  I was into rap at the time, DC Talk, and I thought my best friend, Jason Wakefield, and I could draw others on the playground with an amazing rap song that we created.

The exchange would go something like this.  We would just start rapping and then suddenly people would come from everywhere to listen to our amazing rap song.  They would say wow you’re so cool.  How did you get to be so talented… and good looking?   Well maybe not expressly the good looking part but that was always somewhere in the back of my mind.  But at that moment I would stand before them and tell them what Jesus did for me.  How he hand changed me.  Despite the apparent self-centered description above it was truly more about Jesus than anything I could do.

For months I prayed God give me an opportunity to speak.  God I want to tell them what you did in my life.  No talent appeared.  I wasn’t suddenly gifted with the ability to sing or rap.  But the desire to share Jesus stayed with me.

Late in the school year, I went to a Wednesday night service and heard Dustin Froeber share a song by the Gather vocal band.

Beyond the open door

there’s a new and fresh anointing

Here the Spirit calling

You to Go

Walk on through the door

And the Lord will go before you

Into that greater power

that you’ve never known before

The song kept playing in my head.  I sang it over and over again.

I learned that night as well that the national day of prayer was going to be held the next day.  It was sometime in may, I think.  I heard that people would be gathering around the flag pole to pray at schools.  These were the days before “See You at the Pole.”  I was excited.  This is exactly what our schools, I thought.

The next day I arrived at school more than two hours early.  No I didn’t have to wake up that early.  It was a late start day.  I thought for sure my Christian friends would arrive early.  They didn’t.  There I was alone walking the school again.  Praying for those who had not come to know the love of Jesus.

One by one the buses arrived.  My fellow Christians started to arrive.  We began to talk about the national day of prayer.  Maybe we could get some prayer in before school.  We decided because not everyone was there we would push it back to lunch time.  So everyone could be a part.  I just kept praying.

By the time lunch arrived we decided to move the prayer meeting from the pole to the table because it was surrounded by tall bushes.  It wasn’t conducive to praying around.  At lunch time I ran around and told all my Christian friends to meet us by the concrete tables by the 8th grade commons.

At the tables, the few Christians started to gather.  It just so happened at the time however a big planned fight was about to erupt on the football field.  It was about 100 yards away on the football, in plain sight of our small gathering.  Several of those who had come our prayer and bible study group after school, decided that show would be a bit more interesting.  The crowd around the fight began to grow.

Though I was disappointed, we just started asking if there was any prayer requests.

The crowd around the fight began to get so big that a lunch aid went out to investigate.  She broke the fight up and sent the larger crowd looking for something to do.  The next best gathering was our little prayer meeting at the tables by the 8th grade commons.  The crowd began to move.

Suddenly and without seeking it our little gathering became a group of more than thirty – nonbelievers.  I saw it instantly as the opportunity I had been praying for.  I stood on the bench told them about how I’d changed and asked if they would like to receive Christ to.

The hands began to raise.

But some from our prayer and Bible study thought other things were important.

I recently read some articles on the importance of image in credibility.

Good design equals perceived credibility.  

Churches need to pay attention to how they look to outsiders. image express. You need to be slick. You need to be good looking. You need to be cutting edge in order to make the claims of the gospel more relevant, more palatable to the people your trying to reach.

I know its true.  The taller and more handsome you are the more people trust you.  The shorter you are the less handsome you are the more suspect people are of you.  You’ve heard of little man syndrome right.

I must admit I’m a fan of good design. I find myself following the thing that looks best. I like to see nice things and surround myself with nice things. Images speak to me. Good craft. Good image. I want to see my church successful in this area. I want to see us catering to this need in our society.

But I have to wonder.  How much does God care for beliefs about image? How much does he care that I care about image?

I ask this question because of Jesus. I’m thinking about what Isaiah says about Him. “There was nothing in his appearance that would attack us to him.” Jesus didn’t come as a successful military general. He wasn’t an Alexander the Great or a Julius Ceasar. He was country jew from the nowhere town of Nazareth. And God intentionally made it so.

Why?

I have the sinking suspicious that he is somehow opposed to our obsession with image. This is the God who told his people to not make images to represent him. Something we seem to have altogether abandoned. There something in Christianity which say we need to abandon the notion of what the world thinks as good design and instead seek the counter, opposite and be the salt and light in this world.

In our rush to be perceived as credible are we selling the lie that God cares about such things.  That God cares about how good we look.

If God didn’t care to send us a physically attractive person.  What makes us think he cares about our desire to be attractive.  Maybe the message of Jesus is that the power of God works inspite and not because of Good design.

Man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart.