Scammed by a Shoe Shinner

I'm sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco. Today I had a meeting with the CSM folks.  They are the organization we are working with on our mission trip this summer (www.csm.org).  After the meeting my wife and I headed for an afternoon at Fisherman's Warf.  It was a blast.  The street performers were great.  The dancers, spray painters, and musicians were great.  There were two particular guys who really stood out.  Guy #1 you see in the picture to the left.  We'll call him Scare Tactics Guy.  His basic method for making money was scaring everyone who walked by.  He got both Christa (my wife)  and I.  You might look at the picture and think, "how could he scare people sitting on a bucket with just a few branches in front of him?"  I thought the same thing, but my wife and I sat and watched him scare person after person.  Ninety percent of the people who walked by didn't notice him until he grawled at them and moved the branches.  We watched and laughed as this guy scared person after person.  He provided us some great entertainment, so we tipped him.  He also taught me a lesson.  It is amazing what can sneak up on you if your paying attention to the wrong things!!

This isn't just about people on the streets, this is true in our spiritual lives as well.  Beliefes that are unbiblical often sneak up on us when we are focusing on good things, but not really focusing on God and His word.  We might be looking right over the top of some dangerous lies about God, us, or His word.  If we are not careful Satan will sneak up on us and we will not recognize those lies until it is too late.  The thing about Satan is this, he doesn't want to just scare us, he will bite and destroy us if he gets the chance.

There was another guy, this shoe shine guy.  He was pretty slick.  As we walked by he offered to shine my shoes.  I of course said no.  He then told me, "Let me see your shoes and I can tell you where you got your shoes."  I was intrigued.  The conversation went on and after a minute he was bending over to look closer and as he put his shoe shine liquid on my shoes he said, "you got your shoes on the bottom of your feet."  of course he was right and I had been taken.  I let him finish shinning my shoes and listened to him lecture me about not listening to my mom when she told me not to talk to strangers.  I then gave him five bucks and laughed at myself (my wife laughed at me too) for about an hour.  There is another spiritual lesson in this, don't get sucked in by smooth talkers.  He didn't have good grammer (actually it was terrible), but he has learned some tricks regarding working people.  This guy was a fun guy to talk to, and I would love to be his friend.  He is not evil in any way, he is just trying to make some money.  

Still Satan works in a similar way some times.  He will use people who can deliver a message in an attractive way and lower peoples defenses to decieve us.  Keep your gaurd up, don't recieve spiritual advice from people who are not strong in their Christian faith.  Always consider the source.  You wouldn't take advice about relationships from a person who has always had bad relationships, so don't take advice about morality, life decisions, or spiritual things from a person who does not know and understand God's word.