Urban Reformation

The story of “Ivan Keith Meynard” – I met Ivan several weeks ago on an outreach on Independence Avenue. Ivan waved us over and asked us to see my bible. He said wanted to read it.

Ivan is a hard core street guy. He makes money as a pimp primarily, and he also buys and sells drugs. However he himself is so incapacitated due to his own addictions. I met Ivan that night he asked for my bible(HowTightIsYourGrip).

I’ve had several more encounters with Ivan since this time. One evening I was driving home from work and I saw him on the way home. I stopped and we had a conversation. It was then that I found out he had been taken to Jail for a time, and had given my bible in a bag that he carried to one of his prostitutes. I ordered a new bible and it was amazing the return of my bible at a later encounter with Ivan.

There have been several times when speaking to Ivan, it’s like he’s drowning in his own sin but he comes up for air just for a moment to ask help, and in the next minute he’s back under swimming in his own sin, and like a fish unaware that there is another way.  For fish there may not be another way unless they are transformed into a new creature.   Water is all the fish knows in the same way that sin is all Ivan knows.  I see him often on the road, always double talking, hustling people trying to get something off of someone.

There are times on the streets when I am short for words, I do not know the things to say, actually this is often the case, but even more at times when people are rambling about their addictions, or the woes of their life.  At each encounter I attempt to point out the truth to Ivan, and it makes him angry inside. He kept saying last night how he wanted to beat me up, take me on, he kept saying he knows that these encounters with Angels, as he calls us, are not a coincidence, yet in the next moment he’s making a drug deal.

There was a time a few weeks ago that my wife and I took Ivan to detox, he seemed desperate so we found a place for him to dry out. See this day I met him, he told me he has gout so bad that he can’t walk anymore, and he continues to drink alcohol which always makes it worse.  A church from Blue Springs, MO… brought Ivan a wheel chair because Ivan was getting around by leaning on a shopping cart.

From To

We got him his blood pressure medicine, from Walgreens that day, he had a script written from Truman medical center.  He spoke to us, told us about his wife that he married, and how drugs and life tore them apart.  It is amazing to me at times that people can be physically beat down, tired, hung over, and still be so full of pride.  He boasted of so many things.  His wife had a degree, he said he had no children out of wedlock, he was seemingly proud that he had “married the mother of his children.”   He’s told us about his football glory days, how he used to steal cars and strip them out and sell them in California, his favorite quote is “Behind every good man is a good woman” and who knows if that’s because of the loss/divorce of his wife or if there is some other significance to his saying but when confronted with Christ, Ivan plays games.  I took the opportunity to talk to Ivan about the rich man in Mark 10:17-25. You might think it funny to tell the story of a Rich man to a poor man, however, Ivan still sees himself as rich.  Rich in so much of his own experiences and the things he used to accomplish.  Rich beyond Christ, in the sense that all these things he has done in his life give him value.  Blinded so much by the drugs, the deceitfulness of sin, and pride that he can not see the insignificance of his life, or the pearl of great price in Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven.  If only he could see Christ being the only eternal and real value.

But yet, this is the purpose of the sharing the Gospel with the lost is it not?

I told him that his addictions must be least, in comparison to Jesus Christ.  That Christ paid the debt for sin on the cross and rose again, and we no longer have to be a slave to sin.  I stressed that he must trust Christ, Ivan has not.  Oh he said he already knows all that, he’s already done all.  I am reminded of the sermon, that Pastor Tim preached on Sunday.  (The Means to the End) I pray that God is using all of these circumstances to change me, and to change Ivan.  I pray that even those who have been inoculated with a dead gospel or a false gospel,  may still yet be exhorted to hope & trust in Christ.  While there is still breath in anyone there is hope in Christ, that he may call them, and remove the veil so that they may see, the riches of His glory and His living hope.

After our discussion in the van ride over,  we finally got him into this detox center at KCCC.   We found him out on the street again the next day, detox was supposed to last 3 to 5 days.

Tonight he mentioned he had (only been doing crack) and that he hadn’t done heroin in 16 months. I do not know if this was true, but he was probably the worst I’ve seen him thus far. He showed us his veins where he had shot heroin just recently. He said that he’s been trying to OD but he hasn’t been able to do so.

Ivan is so far in self-deception that it would take a supernatural miracle to cause Ivan to be quickened and awakened to His sin.

Ivan is one of the many hardened by sin on the streets.  These are the forgotten people, the ones who actually demonstrate outwardly what all of us carry inside, as a picture of our own slavery to sin, and sinfulness.  It is precisely these reasons at times I believe people are afraid to reach out, much like the law is a mirror of our how far we are from a Holy God, the people in the street are a mirror in the opposite direction giving a clearer perception to what sin looks like inside of us, only this is outwardly.   There is no difference when God sees the heart.  While so many are able to hide sin within, it is no less putrid, it is no less the offense to our Holy God, and it shows me glimpses of who I am in sin.  But greater yet, it shows me my desperate need for my redeemer Jesus Christ.

Please lift Ivan up in prayer.  I know it seems impossible for someone like him to come to Christ, it does for me, however I know that God is greater than Man and I believe that unless Christians Hope in Christ for the salvation of lost people, we can not be pleasing to God by having so much unbelief.

I thank God, that God was pleased to crush his own son for lost men and women so that he could bring about the ministry of reconciliation!  He is a good God.

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