PREACHING BY PROXY

It probably means little or nothing to most all of you, but it means very much to me…maybe I’m weird.  When I was 12 years old my folks moved from Canton, Ohio, to Jacksonville, Florida.  I decided to go with them lest they get lost along the way.  The year was 1957, you can do the math.  For Mom and Dad it was a tremendous economic challenge which they met with a great effort.  To a punk kid like me it was from Earth to Mars.  Dad signed me up to start public junior high school in a school named Terry Parker.  Mr. Parker was the landowner who donated the land for the school.  After about 3 days of painful orientation, I was skipping about the strange campus from class to class.  I rode the school bus in those early years and the area on campus where you met your bus was directly across from a small strip of land not large enough to build anything as it was the “Y” in three converging roads.  School rules disallowed smoking on the property of the school, so the “bad boys” hung in that Y, small-wooded area and smoked and adjusted their collars and duck tails. I watched those rebels and allowed their wicked attitude to influence my simple life.  I wanted to be one of them and I found myself heading in that direction.  My schoolwork sluffed and my report card showed this.  My mother who was working to help the family economy told my dad she had to quit because their son needed her at home.  My mother stood at the crossroads of my life and directed traffic.  I am what I am today because a mom decided to stay home…thanks mom.

I did not get saved until after I graduated from high school, so I missed out on being a witness for my Saviour to my classmates.  Since becoming a witness I have tried to make up for that.  I have tried to contact the members of my class of 1963 either by phone or email or even paper letter giving them my testimony and the simple plan of salvation.  Several replied with their own testimony of salvation by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but the majority went unanswered.

My haunting memory through the years has been that small, wooded area where the bad boys met to encourage themselves in their sin.  They are still there.  Yes, the same spot is there, and some bad guys STILL hang there.  I have dreamed of going to that spot and preaching to this present generation if for no other reason but to offer an alternative which I never took advantage of.  Circumstances never allowed that for one reason or ten, but it seemed like a dangling dream or wish, or an incomplete accomplishment, and it bugged me.

Well, I heard that some longtime street preaching friends, Jack and his wife Sandy of the Dream Team for Christ, were wintering in Jacksonville and doing publick ministry there.    They travel and preach like Robin and I did for so many years.  I asked Jack if he would consider fulfilling this leftover duty for me by proxy.  He agreed and preached and held banners and passed tracts in that exact same spot 65 years after the evil influence affected me.  He took a 5- minute video of that event and you can enjoy this ministry if you so desire.  I know this means much more to me than it ever will to anyone else, but I wanted to include you in my accomplishment by proxy.

Truly we all preach by proxy for the Lord.  The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and He would have preached in all the world if that were the perfect will of the Lord.  The good Lord could have arranged the clouds to spell out the gospel every morning and the stars every night, but He chose to command us to preach for Him by proxy.

We preach by proxy for all sincere ministers of the gospel.  I am certain the Jack and Sandy would love to preach on the streets in Philippines but they can’t, so we preach for them here…by proxy.  Thanks Jack and Sandy.  If you would like to watch this 5-minute dangling-ministry fulfillment just click on the link below or copy and paste into your browser.

Thanks for a few moments of your time…Gerald Sutek and the SWAT TEAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy1esfF9n1w