What’s the Difference Between a Preacher and a Prostitute?

The difference between a preacher and a prostitute is simply in the way they dress…right?  No…?

 

 

Well…the difference between a preacher and prostitute is their friends…right?  Sure…!  Their friends have to be the main difference!  But…you say NO…that’s not the difference. 

 

 

OK…OK…!  Let me try one more time.

 

 

The difference between a preacher and a prostitute is the side of town they live on.  After all, the preacher is a distinguished member of the community.  He lives on the “good” side of town where respectable people live.  The prostitute, on the other hand, lives on the “wrong” side of town.  So…surely geographical location MUST be the difference between a preacher and a prostitute.  But…the answer is still a resounding NO!!

 

 

What is the difference?  Let me explain with a story.

 

 

Imagine a young girl entering the drug culture in highschool.  She is incredibly gifted, creative, and personable.  At one point, after she graduates high school, she is offered a job in her industry to travel — as a single young woman — all over the country as a representative.  At that point, she is fairly deep into dependency on heroine and can not maintain the discipline to travel on a schedule that way.

 

She attempts, for years, to get cleaned up.  She suddenly leaves her hometown, because of an arrest warrant out on her.   It is all about the substance at that point, and she will do most ANYTHING to get the money to buy the drugs.  There are times where she may even prostitute herself to get money for the drugs.

 

Years later the warrant is dropped, but the damage has been done in her hometown.  She can never return there.

 

Some years later she is married, and it seems, getting her life straight.  But, it is just a façade. 

 

She has several precious children and, all the while, she continues battling a heroine addiction.  It s an unstoppable demon to her.

 

After two decades of this life, when it finally seems she is getting herself cleaned up, doctors find a terminal illness.  In six months she is dead.  People have spoken to her about Christ, salvation, and eternal life, yet no one really knows if she ever fully embraced it. 

 

The life of the young woman just described seems a million years and miles away from a preacher who preaches the Gospel, has a wife who loves him, children who are great, and a church full of people who love him.  Yet, in reality, the difference between the prostitute and the preacher is not what you may think.

 

In fact, the preacher and prostitute could even be related.  They could be blood relatives…brother and sister.  So, what is the difference?

 

Here is the difference.  One day, as a young boy, the future preacher’s friend invits him to a youth lock-in.  From that lock-in, the young boy (who will be the preacher) attends Sunday school.  In that class, he learns what it means to be born again and is embraced in a group where he fiddles around with the things of God through junior high and high school.  Later on, in that youth group there is a youth pastor who presses the boy about his salvation.  Finally, the boy is gloriously saved by God’s grace as a teenager. 

 

There it is.  There is the difference.  There is no difference between a preacher and a prostitute except for the Grace of God.

 

 

Here is the question:  What would have happened to the prostitute if, when she was 19, 20, or 21, in some apartments she was living in, some crazy lady started a Bible study where many older teens, college aged students, and young singles showed up?  What would have happened if she found her way into that Bible study with all her addictions and rough friends with piercings, tattoos, smelly odors, and crazy hairdos?  And, what if she found herself accepted and loved in that Bible study to the point where she was saved?  Could it have radically changed her life?  Would she have flourished in the industry that offered her that great job?  Would her precious children have avoided much pain?  Only God knows. 

 

But…I know this.  There is only one difference between a preacher and a prostitute.  THAT DIFFERENCE?  God’s Grace. 

Who knows how many families, children, marriages, businesses, communities, and lives are being saved because some off beat, tattooed, non-traditional young people come in to churches, Bible studies or Sunday schools.  In that context, they sense the love of God and come to Christ because of it. 

 

If you are reading this blog, I cannot begin to explain to you how badly I want to see God move in this area, this city, this county, and this region and see a work of His done.  I do not care what the people look like, smell like, talk like, dress like, or wear their hair like.  Once they get saved, and begin walking with God, we will have an opportunity to mentor and teach them about what it means to God — in life, business, and career — to have discretion and modesty in the way they look, dress, smell, etc.  But…right now…we need to reach them.  And…in many ways, we are saving our own lives because of it.  But, that’s not why we do it. 

 

 

 

We do it, because the only difference between a preacher and a prostitute, a Sunday school teacher and a thief, or a deacon and a hardened criminal is the grace of God. 

 

The difference between Judas and Peter was the grace of God. 

 

The difference between King Saul – who turned from God and killed himself — and Saul (who would become the Apostle Paul) is the magnificent, saving, redeeming grace of God.

 

The only difference between David — a man after God’s own heart — and Absolam — his wicked son who died an awful, violent death — is the far reaching grace of God.

 

With tears I think of the opportunity to reach precious young people — not with media, video games, Rave Parties, hip hop, or flash – but just with love, a meal, encouragement, and God’s Word taught by the power of His Holy Spirit. 

I write this with tears welling up thinking about the possibility of seeing some young people saved from the kind of life prostitutes, criminals, or business men with empty lives live.  Being there to be a part of a church and a local body that reaches the desperately lost is a privilege…not a pain.  It is an honor and not a nuisance. 

 

Because, you see, the ONLY difference between a preacher and a prostitute is the grace of God.