The Everyday Club

4/18/12 Bernard, 19
"Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God". (Romans 3:19) Today I saw the truth of this verse in action. At a neighborhood park I heard three teens approaching me, spewing a string of obscenities so bad I thought surely they'd soon break out fighting. I looked to see what it was all about and they were only smoking, drinking, and trash-talking, but instead of mixing a little trash in with a lot of talk, they were mixing only a little talk in with all their trash! They were very obviously caught up in the drama of their street gang life. How to get their attention? I asked them if I could run some interesting questions by them, and when I started with some questions about eternity their course jokes and profanity suddenly stopped. They looked like deer caught in the headlights. We went on to a good discussion about eternal things and their accountability to God. One of them, Bernard, the most thuggish of the three, seemed genuinely concerned and stayed behind after his friends left. "You've really got me thinking" he said quietly, after hearing about both the law and grace of the Gospel. Please pray that the authority of God's law will help keep his mouth silenced long enough to realize his accountability to God, and to understand God's grace.