DRIVE-BY PRAYER VIGIL

Thursday, October 2, 2008 - Author: Pastor A. Thomas Hill

They're dying in the threshold of life choices

Young Chris Ingram attempts to leave the scene of an argument with his live-in girlfriend, armed with a plastic bag of personal belongings and a kitchen knife.  He doesn't even make it through the door, when 24 year-old Joseph Fields meets him at the entrance of the apartment with a shotgun, leaving him dead in the doorway with a gunshot to the head.  Chris Ingram is left lifeless with a few personal possessions and a weapon that proved useless in a place of decisions.  The doorway represents a place of choices every one of us makes on a daily basis.  We decide to come or to go; to leave or to stay.  Once we cross that threshold, our decision has been made and our choice is clear.  However, on September 2nd, Chris Ingram was left to die in a place of choices.  He had made up his mind to leave without the knowledge of someone else making a decision to come; a meeting at the same doorway, the same threshold, the same place of decision.  One succeeded, another failed.  For Chris Ingram, it was one choice too late.  He crossed that same threshold on many days, each time given a choice as to what direction he would go and what road of destiny he would choose.  Unfortunately, his life was taken in the place of one final choice.  Not that he had made that choice, but rather, it was made for him.  The news read that morning, "Police found Chris Ingram, 30, dead in the doorway to his apartment."

Why do we continue Drive-by Prayers?  Because too many of our young men are losing their lives stuck in the place of choices.  They're stuck In the doorways of life, gambling with the chance of coming and going and threatened by a silent avenger who will meet them at the door and rob them of their future hope of becoming all that God has destined for their lives.  We've got to meet them at the door with an offer of life before they meet the next unexpected guest of doom, just waiting for an opportunity to silence the right choices that lie within them if we could only reach them in time.

"Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." But the people said nothing."  1 Kings 18:21

It's time to break the silence!  It's time to say something!  The wavering place in between is a deadly place.  Don't get caught in the doorway.  Make a choice; the right choice, and join the Drive-by Prayer Vigil team this Saturday, October 4, 2008 as we meet them at the threshold of critical life decisions.