Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

Chapter 20

Wanted: “Dirty Christianity”

L ate one evening, I heard a Christian talk show host recounting images he had recently seen on television depicting Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and around the world. HIS LOFTY COMMENTS STIRRED MY SOUL! Commentator: “I saw images on CNN of Mardi Gras celebrations around the world… people in various states of drunkenness and nudity… taking their clothes off in public… Thank God I’m a Christian and I don’t have to do these things. Now that the Lenten season is here, I can spend the next forty days concentrating on the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, a word from our sponsor…” I screamed at the radio, “THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST WAS FOR SINNERS! Jesus laid down His life on a bloody cross at Calvary for the unrighteous…FOR THE LOST ON BOURBON STREET…for a wretch like me.” The radio commentator’s condemning comments smelled of Ivory Tower Christianity. As Christians, when we see the heathen living perversely, why do our hearts not break within us? Jesus wept when He saw the “sheep with no Shepherd.” WHY DO WE ISOLATE OURSELVES FROM “DIRTY PEOPLE” … rather than insulate ourselves with The Holy Ghost, taking Jesus to the highways and hedges, compelling them to come to Christ? How can they hear without a preacher? How can they hear without “one who proclaims?”

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