I walked around the back of the house and I saw the man sitting on some out-house doorsteps stirring a tin of paint with an electric drill. As he looked up at me I said to him, “You need Jesus Christ.” He quickly responded by saying, “I’ve been looking for Him.”
He introduced himself as Gary and as the conversation progressed he shared how his life of thirty-six years had been one big mess in that time. Gary began by saying that at as a very young child he regularly awoke to the sound of his parents screaming and shouting at one another which caused him to lay shivering and cowering in bed. He said he was embarrassed by his home life, was often verbally abused and insulted by his school teachers and beaten up by his school mates. He would not cry in front of them however, but go and do that, “alone in the school toilets.”
Gary dreaded attending school. He carries a mental scar from having to wear ill-fitting clothes and shoes for up to three years as a growing child. He has another scar from being regularly told both by teachers and pupils alike that he was dumb and stupid. Then he said, “I believe this to be true today.” He dropped out of school at the age of fourteen and worked various jobs but was unable to find stability in any one of them.
A defacto relationship produced three children, but as a family they had long ceased to be, although his children visited from time to time. He’d been out of work for years and was on welfare payments. As a result, with much time on his hands and hopelessness in his thinking, Gary had become a heavy drinker. In his own words, “I’m running scared and I’m full of guilt and worry.”
Recently he had come into contact with some “born-again Christians” who told him to give all his (welfare) money away by, “trusting in God and living on faith.” He took their advice, but nothing happened other than leaving him with no money and no faith. Soon they went out of his life too.
I was then invited inside for a coffee while Gary drank cheap wine out of a cracked cup with a broken handle. The stench in the room was beyond all description. He opened his fridge at one point and the filth in it was beyond description also, other than to say the rotten food was growing with mould. The cup containing my coffee was cracked and broken but I drank from it regardless, as I asked God to bless it to my body. It was not the first dirty cup I had drank from in people’s homes and it was by no means the last.
We sat down on a couch and Gary began asking me questions about the type of Christianity that I believed in, saying I was different from his former acquaintances. As he spoke, I saw mice running from various directions. They came from under one door to run under another, plus under the fridge and other pieces of furniture. So many mice were there, that a couple ran close to my feet to hide under that couch.
My eyes were also drawn to a fish tank about four feet long and two feet wide. Inside the tank were an over-quantity of the largest goldfish I have ever seen, swimming in the filthiest water, with three or four lying dead at the bottom. Due to lack of money, Gary told me he fed those fish on Weetbix breakfast cereal. The bulk of his food and drink came from milk-bar, restaurant and supermarket rubbish bins, plus from following others who would be eating and then, “throw the rest into a bin.”
Unlike some whom I have met who were on welfare payments, Gary had a desire to work. He scrounged paint, “left lying about” and took it home to mix up enough for a well-filled tin. Then with brush in hand he went door knocking, offering to paint people’s gates and fences etc. He also got work pruning plants and gardening. Many people took advantage of him he said, paying him $10 for three hours work, with no offer of food or a drink whilst engaged in it.
He appeared to genuinely want to get his life together, but after such a dreadful history of the worst experiences for him, this was never going to be an easy task for Gary. On that first day I began to draw distinctions for him on the biblical Jesus versus the “religious” Jesus. Like multitudes of people who are products of biblical distortions and perversions, Gary’s insights into the Bible were just that – distorted and perverted. He could quote Scripture, but very little of it in context.
The Bible declares that Satan the devil is the architect of all distortions, perversions, half-truths, lies, and doctrinal errors. Jesus calls him the, “father of lies” and he works hardest against all who are searching to embrace and live biblical truth. The reality of this truth was quickly demonstrated that day. The day I called on this man was a Wednesday. Gary told me that on that Monday night he prayed, “Jesus help me.” When he awoke the next morning he did so again, “Jesus help me.” He said he saw that his prayer was being answered by my visit and in the gospel being shared, so at this point he wanted further prayer.
I opened the prayer and then encouraged Gary to ask the Lord Jesus to come into his life and begin to reveal His reality and power to him. The moment he did so, those mice began to squeal and run out from under the couch and the furniture etc. One mouse was earlier chewing on an ice cream container full of flour, which was placed on a low shelf. This time when I looked it had gone, but flour was scattered on the floor.
That was the first of many long visits for ministry and counseling with Gary. We did numerous foundational Bible studies together for the purposes of helping him to get his life on track and he came to the church services a few times. But his self-esteem was extremely low. He had many struggles with his faith and walk in Christ and he slipped back often. One day I kept an appointment to do a study with him but he wasn’t home.
As I was leaving, Gary and a friend came down the driveway pushing a supermarket trolley containing full, unopened casks of white wine – twelve of them! They said they found these on the side of the street, they seemed to be abandoned, so together they pushed the trolley to Gary’s home.
Even though he continued to drink alcohol, he told me he was experiencing the reality of Christ’s help every day. I was also able to help him fill out government forms for various applications and go with him as a back-up spokesman. He once temporarily lost his identification papers and as such the Social Security Department refused to help with money or advise him. So I obtained a statuary declaration form, helped him fill it out, got it signed by a Justice of the Peace and then we went back and spoke to the decision makers and Gary got his money.
Within a year of meeting him, Gary decided to relocate to an outer suburb to be closer to his children. I had no further contact with him. “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” Psalm 50:15.