Question

I was wondering what your opinion was on the sovereignty of God concerning picking up hitch-hikers or keeping a gun in your house. Do you believe that you need to take a step out in faith when taking risks like that?

Answer

I believe in the sovereignty of God, right, but I don’t lay in the freeway and say, “Oh, God, I know you’re sovereign. I think God has given us, in his sovereignty, the sense to do things that are wise and intelligent and he gives us, I think, direction by the Spirit. I have picked up hitch-hikers, but I’m in a different position than you are.

I’m just saying in general,  I’m trying to make the point is that there might be a time and a place and a person to pick up a hitch-hiker under certain circumstances. There might be a time and a place for a person NOT to do that, under other circumstances. One great consideration is whether you are a somewhat large man or a somewhat vulnerable woman, so, I know what you are saying, because I have many times felt guilty driving past a hitch-hiker and wondered if God hadn’t wanted me to take that person somewhere, so that I could witness to them. I mean, I feel that way every time I go by a guy on the freeway who is changing a flat, but I’m by him before I knew what was going on and then my wife always says to me, “You know if you were spiritual you would have stopped and told that guy the Gospel” (not really). But anyway, I know what you are saying. I really don’t think we need to feel guilty about that. I think we need to use great discretion and wisdom in regard to who we pick up and I think we need to realize that God will lead us to the people that he wants us to communicate the Gospel to and it doesn’t have to be something that we instantaneously grab in a sort of a furious moment and wonder if we’ve failed God because that moment never came to fruition. So I do believe that you need to use your own sense and your own discretion and be cautious about that. If God wants to use you, I believe he will make it possible and you don’t need to feel guilty for that.

In regard to a gun, I can only tell you that personally I think that’s a decision you have to make yourself. Nothing in the Bible indicates that you should or you should not defend yourself with a certain weapon. I mean, obviously you have every right to self-defense. If some man comes to attack you, and I know everybody is sort of nervous about that because of the stalker, the guy that’s going around killing all of these people and rightly so. You know, have the sense to lock your doors and do all of that.

I can tell you that there was a guy at our house one time and he was trying to kidnap Melinda. He was an escaped mental patient and he knew about the church and all this stuff and all these various things and so I warned the family about him. They put him in the mental institution and he escaped and the mental institution people had the foresight to call me at the church, because they knew he had this aberration toward me and my family and he may well have been demonic and he may have been an agent of the enemy. So they called and they said we fear he’ll go to your house because he knew where we lived. And so I quickly called home and at the very time I called home, the doorbell had rung and Melinda was on her way to the door to open the door, and it was him and he had a big butcher knife. So, I told Patricia as fast as I could and she ran and kept the door locked and they got the police and they finally got him and put him back in the institution and so forth. 

On another occasion, he came to my house in the middle of the night, it was about 4 o’clock in the morning and he threatened, he was screaming and the kids, of course, were frightened, they were younger, and so I went downstairs and he said, “I’m going to come through this window and I’m going to kill you,” and the only thing I had was a baseball bat. Now, I played a lot of baseball and I can hit the ball pretty hard, so I just simply said to him, “You come through the door and you’re going to find your head in Encino.” That’s exactly what I said! (laughter and applause), which wasn’t a bad line when you are under pressure, right? And I would have done that, I mean, self-defense and the defense of my own family I think is a reasonable, rational thing. I mean I’m willing to die for the Gospel, but I’m not going to lay down for a maniac. So, I do think that, you know, you do have to make the decision yourself, as to how you defend yourself.