One Sunday, though, he stayed through the final hymn and came through the line to introduce himself. He was Don\u2014just Don. That was the Sunday he heard me say in my sermon on Luke 3:7\u201318 that we need to die. I didn\u2019t tell them they needed to change. I told them, \u201cThe old sinner we are, the old Adam and Eve, needs to die.\u201d But the Holy Spirit filtered out the qualifiers. All Don heard was \u201cYou need to die.\u201d And he knew it was the truth.<\/p>\n
Some months before, Don had walked out on his wife of more than 20 years. He stretched thin the bonds of their marriage with a string of affairs. He had two daughters\u2014one in high school, the other just finishing college. He walked out on them, too.<\/p>\n
His older daughter was planning her wedding, and she called him. She wanted him to walk her down the aisle. She \u00addidn\u2019t ask for money. She only wanted him to be part of the wedding. She wanted him in her life. That brought him back in proximity to the church. Not a physical proximity to the church to which he be\u00adlonged. He couldn\u2019t walk back into that place. But picturing the wedding in the church where he and his family had worshiped all those years got him thinking about the songs and words and the kind of man he had hoped to be. His daughter\u2019s call and her wedding brought him back in conversation with his wife.<\/p>\n
In one of those conversations, she said to him, \u201cCome home, Don. Just come home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The effect this had on him\u2014his daughter\u2019s kindness and his wife\u2019s invitation\u2014forced him to look at the kind of man he had become. He was disgusted with what he saw. That disgust was the means the Holy Spirit used to get him to cross town to hear this comfortably middle-class pastor (who didn\u2019t even know he was impersonating John the Baptist that day). Don was already in the wilderness. When he heard me say \u201cYou need to die,\u201d he knew it was the truth. And so, he died with Christ.<\/p>\n
That offer was in my next breath. After saying \u201cYou need to die,\u201d I said, \u201cCome die with Christ and rise with him forgiven and changed.\u201d<\/p>\n