The Hood

I live in the downtown section of the city, a smack dab in the hood, night and day. I hear the sirens of police cars or an ambulance and the only comparison I can make, friends, is when I lived in downtown Hollywood in the 1970s and I would hear a gunshot and a person cry out in the throes of death. Like I said, I live in the hood, right across the street from a gay bar that flies a rainbow flag above its door and its parking lot is crowded night and day.

I see the underside of life every day. I encounter at least a dozen homeless people every day. They are all around me.

Maybe some of you live in a better section of town, but God and His sovereignty has me where people are hurting. They're helpless and hopeless and heartless. It's a tough place for a preacher with the gospel of the cross.

I've known pastors of big churches who live in gated communities. They belong to a country club. They drive nice new cars, wear expensive suits, play tennis at their club in their leisure.

The only difficulty they encounter during the week is from a disgruntled elder that needs some hand-holding. A lot of pastors have a soft life like that. It's more common than you realize, friends.

Rich folks like to hire a man in ministry who can soothe their guilty conscience, make them forget about hell and eternity, and keep them satiated, happy while they're here on earth enjoying themselves. But I live in the hood. I see yellow police tapes drawn across front lawns of broken down homes where a homicide just happened.

I see the pain in the faces of poor people who are taken advantage of by society. Because when you're poor, you're the victim of every loan shark out there. Every high credit rate you have to pay because you have no credit.

So people take advantage of you. They charge you more because they can get away with it. I see the pain and misery of life in my community of bread lines for the hungry and bus stop benches with homeless persons stretched out on it for the night with their metal shopping cart beside them, jam-packed and crammed with all their worldly possessions.

These people need Jesus. These people need salvation in Christ. I hand them a gospel tract.

I'll do what I can to reach them before death removes them out of this world. I was at a gas station and a homeless man in a wheelchair asked me if I would go in and buy him a bottle of booze. He handed me a ten-dollar bill and pleaded with me to go buy that booze for him.

I looked down at his twisted legs in that wheelchair and I shook my head no. But he said, Mr., I can't fit through the door with my wheelchair. I have the money here.

Here's ten bucks. Won't you go buy it for me? I said okay. I'll be right back.

And this Baptist preacher bought a bottle of booze for the first time in forty years. I went back outside and I handed it to him with his change, and I looked him in the eye and I said, Now, I just did something for you. Will you do something for me? He said, Sure.

I handed him a gospel tract, and as I gave it to him I said, This will help you, but you have to read it for it to do any good. Will you give me your word that you will read it? I knew that man had nothing left in the world but his word. He gave me his word that he would read the Word of God.

Jesus said, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. I live in the hood, and I hand out tracts to the lost, and I pray, and I weep, and I ask God to touch somebody, and awaken them out of their spiritual darkness, and to bring them into light and life. It's hard out here in the hood, but hell's a lot worse, and I don't want people to go there.