I have been evangelizing for many years here at the Sinners Pulpit. But sometimes I get frustrated with the “amens” from the crowd—strangers and friends alike—because I can’t shake the feeling that I want to get the lost to Jesus, not just preach to the choir.

 Jesus came for the lost! 

So one day, out of that frustration, I prayed: “Lord, send me somebody who’s lost… somebody who really needs You.” And I reminded myself of something: a blood-bought, born-again believer has the Holy Spirit to guide and keep them. 

That very evening, I sat at the river shore watching “Jesus paint” (another writing about my grandkids). And that’s when it happened—a boat I’d never seen came down the river at a high rate of speed and stopped abruptly at the pier. So abruptly, in fact, I thought it might damage the moorings.

The man seemed cordial, but slightly inebriated—like he wasn’t just stopping by… he was kind of passing through life on cruise control.

“How are things in this ole river?” he asked.

“Things are quiet—at least they were, I thought.”

“I like to come up here and just check it out now and then. Haven’t been up here in a while.”

We exchanged pleasantries, and he told me he was from a familiar town a considerable distance down the river. I shared with him that I’d lived here for seven decades and had never seen him.

He said, “Actually, I’ve never come up this far. I just felt like riding this evening.”

Then he took a toke of something from an aluminum can. I was enjoying a libation as well, and we toasted to the beautiful evening as the sun disappeared and a bright moon lit the sky above him.

“Seventy years, huh?” he said. “I was always told to take advice from someone who’s lived longer than I. Can you give me some?”

“Wow,” I thought. I usually give advice without being asked. I contemplated maybe ten seconds and said, “Well… a man will do well to know the Lord.”

His anticipation turned immediately into disgust. He finished what he had and went to his cooler for another.

He said, “Oh no—don’t go there. I’m not one of those church people. I don’t believe any of that stuff.”

I said, “Well, I’m not one of those either. I don’t go to a building, but we’re at church right here.”

That seemed to comfort him. I wasn’t condemning him. I wasn’t trying to win an argument. I was simply present—and enjoying the moment.

Then he said, “First you have to tell me who this Lord, God is. Don’t you dare go and use the Bible, because I don’t believe any of it. It was written by men.”

“Yes,” I said—The Holy Spirit gave them utterance. 

He started ranting that his God was in the bottom of that cooler, like the box of ice was some kind of throne.

So I asked him something simple: “Does your god come and go? Do you feel different in the morning when the buzz wears off—or when it runs out?”

He bristled, but then he cooled down and apologized. That’s the strange thing about honest questions—sometimes they don’t let people hide.

I said, “Look…  you’re a waterman. You just watched the sun go down and the moon light up the sky. And while you’re out here on this river, you’re not just floating around—you’re sitting on a planet that’s rotating, and the earth is moving through the universe at a speed that makes your head spin, like… a thousand miles an hour and you aren’t being flung into the abyss.”

I kept going, because it was like the conversation had stopped being about religion and started being about reality.

“Did you know this planet is fine-tuned? The distance from the sun, 93,000,000 miles isn’t random. That’s why we don’t fry or freeze. And there’s protection around the earth—shielding things that would kill us in an instant.”

Then I leaned into the part people usually avoid: “And here’s the wildest part—you and I can reason.”

“A gorilla can’t build a boat,” I said. “A bird can’t engineer an engine. A fish can’t fuel a motor and plan a route. And nothing in the animal world sits around thinking, discussing, and doubting the meaning of life.”

He scoffed, and said animals were smarter than people.

I smiled and said, “Good point. But animals are made differently than humans. They struggle. They get eaten. They freeze. They starve. They don’t improvise a life-plan and debate whether the universe has a mind behind it.”

Then I gave him a thought experiment:
“You could give the keys to your boat to the smartest animal you know—a crow, a chimp, a pig—and tell it there’s food down the river. What does it do? It jumps out in panic… or it drowns. Because animals run on design they didn’t choose.”

“And you keep insisting there’s no Creator, no mind behind it” I added. “But nature doesn’t point away from God. It points toward Him. Science doesn’t remove God—science shows order. Evidence.”

He rejected it all. Then I shared thermodynamics with him in plain language: “Energy doesn’t disappear. It changes forms.” And then I asked him the question that made him pause: “Do you really think your mind and emotions are just the same as your body—when your body fails, your thoughts don’t just… end.

Can anybody find a mind on an operating table”? 

He said, “Hogwash, it all fades to black.”

“Do you know anything about quantum physics—how particles behave in ways that don’t match the way we expect the world to work?”

“A particle fifty miles in space reacts to a particle here where we are sitting. It’s called entanglement.”

“He said he didn’t know any of it.”

“Can you explain consciousness or gravity?”

“Can you define energy?” I asked.

He said, “yeah it holds us down here on earth!” But “what” is it and where did it come from?  

In frustration he yelled, “man, I don’t know”!

“And you want to sit there and tell me there’s no superior being?” 

“And sir, I haven’t mentioned the Bible.”

He answered, “Well… I haven’t seen it. I want evidence.”

“Have you seen the air in your lungs or the love you have for your family”, I asked. 

“You want evidence?” I said.

Then I left him with this—no pressure, just a challenge:
“When you leave this dock, look up ⬆️ at that night sky. Because I suspect your god in that cooler has left you. And you ask the One, the mind, power and presence who spoke that universe into existence who He is.” 

Then I shared the Good News (the Gospel) with him—plain and direct:

That superior intelligence, power, and presence loved him enough to become one of us in the person of Jesus Christ. A real man born to a virgin, all God and all man. He loved us so much that he died on a cross- shed His perfect blood to pay our sin debt, arise to life the third day. And is seated in heaven right now—waiting for you to call.

“I’m praying to Him right now that you do, because sir, I love you too and don’t want you to miss what He has for you.” 

 “Good night.”

That’s the last I’ve seen of “Charlie.”