Having written about the loss of my friend, Joe Zickafoose, I want to share one of my favorite stories. Joe and I were leading worship during a XA meeting at the University of Louisville. There was a new student there that night—whom I will refer to as Tad. There was a pause between songs and Tad began to call down the judgment fires of heaven on every sinner on campus. He listed all the possible sins of college students and screamed out, “O God, let them burn in hell! LET THEM BURN!!!”I interrupted and said, “Let’s break into groups of three and pray for one another.”
Joe and I ran to Tad. He looked at us and said, “Hey, I know where I’ve seen you guys before! It was in my vision. You guys were on the right and left side of Jesus.”
Joe and I looked at each other, then blurted out at the same time, “Which side was I on?”
Tad’s head bobbed like a person who had just gotten off of a corkscrew rollercoaster. He was struggling to focus and said, “Uh….uh…you were on the right and you were on the left.” We looked at each other and, again, blurted out together, “Your right or Jesus’ right?!”
Tad now looked like a guy who got off the rollercoaster and was about to barf. He said, in highly nervous tones, “Uh, uh, I don’t know!”
So, if there’s any doubt about where Joe is, I have good reason to believe that he’s at Jesus’ side.
(A couple of months after this encounter, I saw Tad again. He said that he felt God calling him to XA because the people in the group were misfits and social outcasts who needed his help. Thankfully, he was apparently called to help another group and never came back.)
Thanks to Marc Cauthon (http://deliriousjayhawk.blogspot.com/2008/08/joe-zickafoose.html) for the photo.
2 comments:
Bill, that's hilarious! Gotta love those crazy ministry stories. Thanks, too for the fun story about Joe. It helps so much to remember him for who he was and not what we have lost.
Hope you and the family are well!
--Jen Godzwa
This is a great story.
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