Pizza with Promise

As I try to remember the many golden lessons I’ve learned from the Bible, I cannot recall a verse that mentions pizza. I would totally relate to a chapter where the disciples could kick back, relax, and take a break over a slice of pizza. After all, they had quite a steep learning curve and traveled often. They even had to watch out for their very lives. The closest I can find in the Scriptures, though, to doing God’s work while eating pizza is in Luke 24:30, where Jesus broke bread, gave thanks, then passed it out to his disciples. Maybe it had sauce on it! So when I was asked to go out for pizza, I was expecting to let my guard down, and I got caught!

As a result of helping transport kids to school, a friend wanted to thank me by taking my son and me to Pizza Hut with her and her boys. While there, my friend waited to eat, and asked if I wanted to pray first. Surprised, I said yes.

I apologized for my surprise, and asked her about her beliefs in God. She said she didn’t know. So I asked her if she believed in a Higher Power. She said yes she does. Then she said, “Do you?” I told my friend almost all my story about meeting Jesus, documenting it in a prayer journal, and why I believe as I do. I laughed and said, “Wow! I didn’t mean to completely unload on you!” She laughed. My friend then asked where she could get a Bible. I told her it would be an honor to give her mine along with a copy of my prayer journal! She accepted!

After supper we went to listen to the Christian men’s quartet, The Armouraires. She loved it! What an awesome God we serve! My friend has since said she’s been reading the prayer journal and Bible I sent her! She’s enjoying them. She asked me how I started praying, and we had a great conversation on the recent earthquakes in Nebraska…all seven of them! I showed her in Matthew 24:7 where Jesus says there will be many earthquakes. We didn’t talk in depth about the end times, but I was able to tell her I once was afraid, and now I’m not.

I tell these stories of my life because the Bible says they glorify God, and they encourage his children to have faith, believe big, and keep hoping in him. In Psalm 66:16, the writer says, Come and hear, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he’s done for me. When we tell stories of what our Father has done in the past, it rekindles the fire of his power in our hearts and minds. More than that, though. If we are followers of Jesus, we have been given orders to spread the news of what our Lord is capable of, as documented in Acts 1:8, and 22:15. I hope I would never be so bold as to say your salvation depends on my storytelling. If I don’t obey, God will find another way to reach out to you, but I’d be in trouble. Still, I have been encouraged by other people’s stories, so I share, and I hope my stories encourage you! Our heavenly Father really is wonderful, and the only one worth talking about!

He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. John 1:7-8