That’s how a conversation started for one of our Street Pastors teams at 3am a couple of weekends ago. Three great guys who had served with the British Army in Iraq were very upset at some of the horrors they’d seen, including some of their mates being blown up right in front of their eyes. The words “Street Pastor” on the back of our jackets were like a red flag to a bull for somebody looking for answers to some pretty big questions and looking for something bigger than mankind to blame for mankind’s atrocities.

I was part of the team that night and I remember thinking to myself “what would the incarnate Jesus do in this situation?” and “what is the resurrected Jesus wanting to do in this situation?”. I decided to listen. Jesus doesn’t need us to defend him, but people need someone who will listen. So we listened. And we listened. And we listened.

After more than half an hour or so we started to see something changing deep in the eyes of these young men. “I can’t believe you’re listening to me” remarked one “nobody ever listens to me about this stuff … nobody understands … aren’t you supposed to be here to preach to me or something?”. I explained that I wasn’t there to preach, that this stuff was difficult and I didn’t fully understand, but that Jesus is the only man I know who is totally dependable all the time, that he had been listening too, and that he went through stuff which means that he does understand. Their demeanour changed. Two of the guys accepted an offer from others in the team to pray with them: that Jesus would help them get through the trauma of their experiences and they’d come to know him.

Jesus is solid as a rock, the friend and role model of men, the only one who really knows what these guys experienced, and he wants to restore what has been broken. They’re not local so we’ll probably never see them again, but we’ll keep on praying for them to be healed from the consequences of the horrors of war, to meet other people who know this rock-solid Jesus, and to find their own way to knowing and trusting him.