Faking It
“My ship, the West Virginia, docked at Pearl Harbor on the evening of Dec. 6, 1941. A couple of the fellows and I left the ship that night and attended a Bible study. About fifteen sailors sat in a circle on the floor. The leader asked each of us to recite our favorite Scripture verse. In turn, each sailor shared a verse and briefly commented on it.”
“I sat there in terror. I couldn’t recall a single verse. Finally, I remembered one verse: John 3:16. I silently rehearsed it in my mind.”
“The spotlight of attention grew closer as each sailor took his turn. It was up to the fellow next to me. He recited John 3:16. He took my verse! As he commented on it, I sat there in stunned humiliation. In a few moments, everyone would know that I couldn’t recall from memory even a single verse.”
“Later that night, I went to bed thinking, ‘Robertson, you’re a fake!’”
“At 7:55 the next morning, I was awakened by the ship alarm, ordering us to battle stations. 360 planes of the Japanese Imperial Fleet were attacking our ship and the other military installations. My men and I raced to our machine-gun emplacement, but all we had was practice ammunition.”
“So for the first 15 minutes of the two hour battle, we only fired blanks, hoping to scare the Japanese airplanes.”
“As I stood there firing false ammunition, I thought, ‘Robertson, this is how your whole life has been—firing blanks for Christ.’”
“I made up my mind as Japanese bullets slammed into our ship, ‘If I escape with my life, I will get serious about following Jesus.’”
(Signed) “Roy Robertson”
Underneath this article in the church bulletin where I first saw this story 20 years ago, were these words: “Roy went on to help Dawson Trotman found the Navigators. He led the follow-up ministry for the 1990 Billy Graham Crusade in Hong Kong. That crusade saw more people hearing the gospel at one time than ay other meeting in history.”
Roy Robertson spent all his adult life after the war heading up the Navigators ministry throughout Asia. I’d call that “getting serious” about Jesus.
The story is a powerful illustration of lives that are “blanks” or “fakes.” As with Roy’s “false ammunition,” they do no harm to the enemy and no good to their side.
In the last days, Paul said to Timothy, so many of the Lord’s people will have a form of godliness but will deny its power. (II Timothy 3:5) We’ll leave the reader to apply this to your own life and situation as the Holy Spirit leads you, but we would all do well to consider the following questions:
1) Do you see signs of powerlessness in your own life today? In the church where you belong? In the Christian movement as you are acquainted with it?
2) What is it that makes us powerless? Not, “what are the symptoms” but “what is the root cause?”
3) What gives a believer’s life real power, making it a threat to the enemy and a real asset to the Kingdom?
4) Can you think of stories and teaching in Scripture that clearly illustrate both the power of the faithful and the powerlessness of the unfaithful? (My mind keeps coming back to the sons of Sceva in Acts 19 who were unable to cast a demon out of a poor fellow. The demon said to the seven sons, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” Powerlessness makes us a laughingstock even to the demons!)
Are you truly living for Jesus, or are you just faking it?
Joe McKeever