I remember it like it was yesterday. Three years ago, I went to the church really late one night because I really wanted to pray and get into God’s presence. I was a youth pastor at the time and we had a pretty succcesful youth ministry going on for a church our size. Things were going pretty good…more kids were coming every week, everyone seemed to like my preaching and I just got a raise. I should have felt fulfilled and satisfied but I didn’t. For some reason, an overwhelming sense of emptiness and sadness gripped my soul…so, I figured it was time to pray.
I remember walking around the dark sanctuary, praying my usual prayers when I just stopped in the middle of the aisle. Standing there for a few minutes, I suddenly felt a dam break inside of me and I began to weep. It was one of those moments of understanding…self awareness. It began to dawn on me why I felt so empty and sad…I was “doing” ministry out of a sense of duty and calling but I lacked true compassion. So, remembering a prayer that I read in a book, I knelt down right there and prayed “God, please break my heart with what breaks yours…please give me a heart of compassion for the lost!” I don’t know what it was but after I prayed that, I felt a release in my spirit…so, I got up, drove home and went to sleep.
I couldn’t wait to get up the next morning! I just imagined that I would wake up, stop at 7-11 for my daily coffee and the “lost” would begin to have some sort of aura around them. Even if they weren’t glowing, I figured that I would have this new “compassion detector” activated in my spirit and I would just be able to tell who needed help and I would stop, set my coffee down and lay hands on them, right there in the middle of 7-11. Well, that didn’t happen. I waited and waited, prayed some more, awkwardly tried to “witness” to some people that looked sad or depressed but it just didn’t seem right for some reason.
Fast forward about a year. After much prayer and fasting, we decided to resign our position at the church we were on staff at. I wasn’t 100% sure why we were doing it but I just knew that it was the right thing to do at the time. Once again, my imagination went into overdrive: I pictured me walking out of the church for that last time, getting into my car and driving home and all of a sudden, I get a phone call from someone who wants to join up with us to reach the lost for Jesus! If nothing else, I figured that God would lead me to that 1 person that I could “convert” and could be my Barnabas (and of course, I would be the Apostle Paul!!). Well, that didn’t happen. What did happen was the sudden realization that I needed to get a job. So, I went to Monster.com and the 1st job I saw was at Comcast working in the call center. So, I applied and got the job about a week later. I was thankful that I got a job because I needed money for our family but I just knew that this would be very temporary…I mean, God had ‘called’ me to reach the lost, surely He wasn’t going to leave me at Comcast!
Well, days dragged into weeks and weeks dragged into months and God was REALLY starting to tick me off! Here I went and obeyed His leading, quit my well paying ministry job and stepped out in faith and I was still stuck at sucky Comcast. Why wasn’t I back in “ministry”? Where were all those people that told me that if I ever started a church, they would be right there with me? Where was God??? But a funny thing happened. Slowly but surely (and in spite of my bitterness and anger), I began to form relationships with the people that sat around me taking calls from irate Comcast customers. I began to listen in on conversations that ranged from distraught parents of drug addicted kids to girlfriends getting beat up by their boyfriends to people that just had no hope. And before I knew it, my heart began to break for them!
Then it hit me. These were the “lost” that I preached about a million times! These were the people that were going to split hell wide open. These were the people that I wanted our church members to invite to church so we could pad our numbers and build a bigger building. But, I saw them SO differently now. I didn’t see them as “lost” anymore. No longer did I see them as “sinners” and certainly not the “unchurched”. I now saw them as friends. I now see them as human beings, made in the image of God who have had the priviledge of knowing their creator ripped away from them by an unseen enemy. I see generous, kind, loving people that are trying to raise families and live life without the love of Christ in their lives. And this breaks my heart! I thought that compassion was a feeling or an emotion that God could magically implant in my spirit but I am finding out that it is more like an infection. You cannot get compassion until you are so close to the people far away from God that their sickness becomes your sickness, their tragedy becomes your tragedy and their life becomes twisted up in your own. I’m finding that what breaks God’s heart is heart broken people and if I want to know Him then I must help those that have no hope.
Unfortunately, it took banishing me to Comcast-land for me to find this out but I am forever grateful that God heard my prayer that night and answered it (even though I wouldn’t have done it quite like this! 
I still feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of what compassion truly is but I’m glad the infection is spreading!
Troy,
That was awesome. Thanks for sharing your story.
first of your blogs that i read. thx!