Mike Wagers was suspicious of the couple as soon as they slipped into his cab on Aug. 11. It wasn’t how they looked, or what they said. It was what they didn’t say.
Wagers picked up George and Jennifer Hyatte in Erlanger, Ky., and transported them to a hotel in Columbus, Ohio. The Hyattes were wanted in Tennessee for murder, a crime that occurred while Jennifer was helping her husband escape from custody the previous Tuesday.
Wagers called the police later because he didn’t believe their story. When they asked him to drive them to Ohio, they said they were going to an Amway convention. The problem, Wagers said, was that they just didn’t behave like Amway representatives.
“Amway people are all about Amway,” he asserted. “And when they didn’t try any conversation further about it, that’s when I pretty much thought, ‘Well, they’re not doing Amway.'”
What if you had climbed into Mr. Wagers’ cab (not as a felon, of course)? What would you have talked about? When the ride was over, how would he have assessed your passion?
Maybe we struggle to answer that question. But Peter and John didn’t. When arrested and threatened “not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus,” they answered bluntly: “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:18-20).
Their neighbors came to identify them as the people who wouldn’t shut up about Jesus. You can hear the wagon drivers now: “Yeah, those guys, they’re all about Jesus. If someone says they’re a Chris-tian and leaves it at that, and doesn’t talk about Jesus, well, forget it! They’re not for real.”
Usually we’re the opposite. We dodge the subject of Jesus with casual fillers about sports, weather, or anything else that comes to mind. “Me? Uh, yeah, I’m a Christian. So, how ’bout them Tigers?”
So tomorrow, measure your passion. When the day is over and the dishes are dried and you think of all the people you talked to during the day, how many walked away saying, without hesitation, that you’re “all about Jesus”?