That Time We Went Swimming
God has a sense of humor. I know this for a fact.
On Tuesday, Abby and Jayda and I hit up Bangla in the afternoon to go prayer walking. We just walk down the street and pray and ask God to prepare it for whatever His plan is for us to do that night. Sometimes His plan starts with the prayer walk. This was one of those days.
We sat in Starbucks for about 45 minutes to journal and pray before heading out to the road. By the time we were done we figured we'd make a quick lap around Bangla, stop by the grocery store, and catch the 5 o'clock bus. That was our plan, God had a different one.
As we head down the right side of the road, we passed a large group of bars in one building. The place is called Tiger Live. We were walking past it when all of a sudden a bar girl in a green dress comes sprinting out of the building with the biggest smile on her face. She hugs all of us and starts a conversation.
We have never seen this girl before.
We talk to her for a minute or two until she says,
"You're going swimming!"
Weird. We laugh and say "Nope, not today. We're just walking and praying."
We wrap up our conversation and keep walking down the road. Shortly after we pass a man sitting outside a bar, we just say hi.
"Hi! I'm drunk!"
More laughter. "I see that."
"Hey, are you going swimming today?"
That was even more weird than the first time. So Abby says,
"Should we go swimming today?"
"Yeah! You should go swimming!"
Huh. Alright then. Keep walking.
When we get across the road from WOW bar Abby looks over and sees one of her girls sitting in the completely empty bar alone. So we cross the street to go say hi to her. As soon as we get there she lifts up Abby's shirt and says,
"Where is your swimsuit? You're going swimming!"
What. The. Heck.
Ok fine, I guess we're going swimming.
Patong beach is right at the end of Bangla Road. So we head that direction, at this point we didn't think we were actually going swimming, we just thought that maybe we were supposed to talk to someone on the beach.
As we get closer I felt like we just needed to walk along the water. I said "Which way?" And Abby instantly pointed right. So we start walking.
We walked for about fifteen minutes down the coast of the beach. The entire time God kept saying, "Are you going to listen? Are you going to do it?" Over and over until it cumulated to the point of
"Do I have to send a fish Nikki?"
(If you didn't catch that joke go read the story of Jonah)
I finally got to the point where I said
"Ok God, if you want me to go swimming with all my clothes on at this beach I'll go swimming. But you need to tell me where."
"Stop. Turn around."
So we start walking back the other direction. As soon as we turned around Abby says
"I think I know where we need to go swimming now. There was this kid with floaties…"
"The little boy with the red floaties swimming alone? Yeah, I saw him too."
So we walk all the way back down the beach to the kid with the floaties and handed Jayda, who God kindly told did not have to go swimming, our bags and jumped in. With all of our clothes on.
"Ok God. We're swimming."
"Thanks. Now wait here."
Turns out the little boy was simply a spot-marker. So we stayed in the same spot in the water and waited. And waited. And waited.
For twenty minutes.
At one point God told Abby that someone was going to come to us. A man starts walking toward us and Abby says "Hi!" then she turns to me and says "That man is going to talk to us." Right after she finished that sentence I hear,
"Where are you from?"
You see, Jesus told us to go swimming so that we could meet Ramin.
Ramin is from Iran. He manages a company there and believes in the existence of God "because in school you have to." He says he is Muslim but really does not know much about it. He doesn't like it, he doesn't agree with it.
When he noticed our clothes he looked at us funny and I said,
"We didn't plan on coming swimming today. God told us to come."
Silence.
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
"No. Why would I think you're crazy?"
"Some people do."
"Some people are crazy."
I liked this guy. He told us about the Islam god. An angry god, impossible to please. We told him about our God and let me tell you, his face lit up.
"Your God loves? God loves?"
Yes He does. Let me tell you just how much.
I never saw how absolutely incredible it was that God loves us. He really just loves us. We talked to Ramin in the ocean for about an hour. Talked to him about heaven and how we get there. Told him that, unlike in the Muslim faith, your deeds on earth are not weighed on a scale. You do not have to measure up, because Jesus already balanced the scale for you, He already made sure that the good outweighed the bad. Our God forgives. Our God loves. And our God has a plan.
"Can you get a Bible in Iran?"
"I don't know. I don't know all of this, I'm learning all of this just now. God loves."
I had brought an extra Bible on this trip. We scheduled a time to meet that night so I could give it to him. I have never seen anyone so hungry for Jesus, so enthralled with the notion of a loving God, a God that wants peace, a God that wants justice. And then he said
"God told you to come swimming so you could meet me. Because God loves. See? I'm learning."
This guy gets it.
God loves. He gives choices. He isn't trying to force anyone to worship Him, to talk to Him, to do good deeds. He just loves.
I rediscovered how amazing that is, how amazing the gospel is, how much hope is in Jesus through Ramin's eyes. Because as we answered all his questions at the beach and in Starbucks that night what we were saying could always be summed up in the response he'd give at the end of our explanations:
"That makes sense, because God loves."
I have no doubt in my mind that Ramin will read that Bible. I have no doubt that he will become a Christian. I have no doubt because he understands the magnitude of what a lot of people forget:
once you pass rules and regulations, once you move past the law, once you drop denominations and religion, once you move on and just look at Jesus, you see it
God loves.
