Knowing and Knowing

[headheart]

Living testimonies were the ones that made the most impact.

Today Mark preaches the gospel near London, but when I first met him he was 18, proud and strong He would snore so loudly that he would wake up the deepest sleeper, but one day he stopped snoring and instead if you listened in the quietness of the early morning you could hear him singing.

'Supersonic jets are flying, spaceships streak across the sky
Down below a man is dying but the roaring drowns his cry...'

Mark was an Apple Athlete and an excellent guitarist, and I learned many new chords from watching him play. Like most of us, he was not really interested in the gospel and kept his distance.

One Saturday morning as I was leaving my room, on my way to have breakfast, there he stood in the doorway with a box filled with his records. Mark was a lover of Classical Music, and would torment us with the droning of it. We wanted Bowie, Young and Sabbath, but he had a very cultured taste in everything.

I looked at him holding his box of records and asked casually, 'What are you doing?'

He put the box down and began explaining to me how he had gone to Church with some friends and asked Jesus to be his Lord, and then he explained he was going to sell his records. It was fascinating, the change. He was not a drug addict, or and alcoholic, he was the guy next door, who had it all together.

Well, later in the day he returned with is box, and I remember peeping in and he then beckoned me to come and look at his purchases. He had a box filled with books, and began explaining to me what they were.

He said, 'These are commentaries...' They were dark blue with golden trimmings, and he had others that were pink, by an author called Pink. (Arthur Worthington Pink) and the others were by Barclay. I seldom forget and album cover or a book cover, and so these have remained in my memory for 35 years.

My Dad bought me a commentary when I was 19, and I still have it. It's pages are brown now. If he had bought it for me when I was 17, it might have ended up in the rubbish bin, but when you have a relationship with the author, the Bible is no longer a dead book, and commentaries are interesting.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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