His name was “Flanders the Odd.” He was so named because he was a faithful born-again believer living for Christ Jesus. This was odd in the eyes of the world. And indeed did he most gladly glorify the Lord thus with his life. Today was Saturday night in the winter, and he was doing his Saturday night devotions in his living room with the lights on and with the darkness outside. He had on his Christian radio station on his tape recorder/radio which was on top of his TV. He was sitting upon his living room sofa in front of the radio. He had his King James Bible and his Feature devotional and his pencil sharpener and his pile of pencils on a chair that served as a table to his right. And he had his cup of Earl Grey tea and his sugar cubes and his Realime juice and his Realemon juice and his favorite spoon on another chair to his left which also served as a table. This night of devotions, as all Saturday nights for him, he would study from his devotional book and write magic marker signs that thanked God in words of praise and tape them to the wall and listen to WRVM’s radio shows and record good songs onto his black cassette tape from WRVM and drink his tea and think good thoughts with God.
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He went on to read a great Feature commentary on the sin of being unequally yoked together with an unsaved girlfriend, and he heartily praised this doctrine with an “Amen!” He then heard a great carol called, “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” and he excitedly pushed the record button on his radio/cassette player. Then he wrote a poster sign in red magic marker that read, “Thank You, God, for ‘Greensleeves,’ The hymnbook calls it ‘What Child Is This?’” He then fell upon a reflection about
Christmas in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. He sipped tea. He then heard the radio drama “Unshackled.” Then he listened to “Science, Scripture, and Salvation.” Then he listened to good preaching from Russel Tillman. Then he heard the hymn, “What Will You Do With Jesus?” This was a hymn near and dear to him. To him it was about Jodi. This girl was coming over tonight after some years away, and he was not sure how it would turn out. When he first talked with her at Wells Park real close to his apartment, he believed that he was talking to a great Christian woman. Later on, on the phone, he could see red at all churches in her heart in her words and tone. He believed then that she was tragically a backslidden believer. Later still on the phone she told him how she loved the world—including going to the theater and going to the bars. He then believed that maybe she was not even saved to begin with. Mighty in God, slid back, or utterly lost, she was in his prayers once again this night. She was surely a pretty woman. As he listened to this hymn on the radio, he remembered that day he had first met her, himself twenty-five years old and herself twenty-one years old. She had come up to De Pere from Orland Park in a little silver car. She was his roommate’s church friend at one time.
That day for Flanders was the day that the silver fox got away. A ravishing woman customer, who looked to be maybe fifty years old, had turned him down for a date. And after work he went to this park by Hardee’s to think upon things. He was still lost in his sins at the time. And there at the little park was Jodi, the woman with the brown eyes and long straight brown hair. And they talked. In fact they talked about theology. Bold in her Christ, Jodi went on to say to him that salvation was only by grace through faith. Heedless of his words, Flanders went on to say to her, “Heaven can be earned.”
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She believed in her Saviour. He believed in himself. And she was trying to help him. And he was filling up with pride that comes from dialogue. She had something to say that he needed to listen to. He instead went on talking and was not convicted of the truth of Christ. Then she wrote down her phone number and address on a piece of paper and gave it to him and then gave him a good Christian hug in both arms. Indeed this woman had pretty brown eyes and pretty long straight brown hair. Now he had a crush on this woman believer. And the next day she returned to her apartment in Illinois. And he was with his roommate Proffery in their apartment in Wisconsin. This was Jodi the Brown.
Here in his devotions on the sofa, Flanders the Odd looked up the verses Proverbs 31:29-30, and he did read out loud to himself and to God, “Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” In these few years past, a couple of unsaved years since that first “date,” and a couple of saved years into his walk with Christ to this day, this passage of Scripture had for him become “Jodi’s verse.” This verse spoke of the beauty within of a woman Christian, and this most surely was his Jodi. And though this verse also spoke of how vain physical beauty is in comparison to spiritual beauty, Flanders chose to claim this verse as a testimony also of Jodi’s physical attraction as well. She was godly and comely both at once. Thus she became among women for him, “the Most Worthy.” And she was his most worthy because she was the only girl important to him who had the Holy Spirit indwelling her. (All born-again Christians are endowed with the Holy Ghost’s indwelling.) This woman was extra special.
And most comely of Jodi the Brown’s comeliness was her voice. When Jodi spoke sentences, it sounded more like stanzas. Her speaking voice was like a singing voice. And her spoken words were like songs. Then Jodi’s song on Suring Christian radio ended. Jodi the Brown was going to be here very soon now. Was she still very pretty? Would she want to talk about God in sweet fellowship?
Where did she stand now with Christ? What was she going to say? What should he say? Was he still handsome in her eyes these few years later? And was she still bold in the Lord in giving out the truth
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of Jesus?
From up here in his second-floor apartment he heard the door at the bottom of the stairs outside his apartment door open up and close. He listened and heard footsteps. He counted them as they climbed the stairs, “One, two, three,…twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.” And the footsteps stopped in front of his door. He could “see” the red carpet of this hallway under her feet. He could envision a pretty lass of a young woman looking upon his number “5” on his door and about to knock.
He could “feel” the heat of the radiator keeping the visitor warm out there. He knew the ceiling light that lit up this cozy hallway here between two flights of steps going down front and back. The guest hesitated. The host did not. Flanders the Odd leaped up and off of his sofa and ran to his apartment door and pulled it open. Behold, Jodi the Brown, back after years away!
“Flanders,” she sang out in her melodious tones.
“Jodi!” he said in elation.
Her pretty eyes of brown were still pretty. And her brown hair was different now—now it had long gentle curves all around her head—yet it was even prettier now than it was when it was straight. And what Jodi the Brown had dressed herself in just for this “rendezvous” with Flanders: she was dressed now as a girl in brown. She had covering her female form this night a very real cheerleader uniform of brown and white. In her brown hair were brown ribbons. Over her top half she had on a brown and white cheerleader’s vest with the chenille emblem reading, “Jodi” in big block letters. Over her lower half she had on a box-pleated brown cheerleader’s skirt with white contrasting pleats, eight pleats of brown reaching nearly to her knees. And she had on brown and white knee socks and brown and white sneakers. She spun in place before his apartment door, and she asked, “How do I look, Flanders the Odd?”
And he said, “You look great! Whoa, O Jodi the Brown!”
“Do you approve?” she asked.
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“Oh, yes! I do!” he avouched most fervidly. “Yes, yes, yes!” And the girl in brown and the man who admired her came into his apartment and sat down together at opposite ends of his living room sofa where his worship had been tonight. He noticed how she tucked her lustrous pleats under herself as she sat down. He stared there upon her pleats. She saw him staring. And she liked it.
About her cheerleader uniform she said, “I special ordered it just for our get-together tonight,”
“Where did you buy it from?” he asked.
“I got it from a cheerleader uniform supply company in the mail,” she said. “It is called, ‘Cheerzone.’”
“I like Cheerzone now, Jodi the Brown,” he said.
“I was hoping that you liked it,” she did say.
“Shall we fellowship in the Lord now, Jodi?” he asked tentatively, not fully reassured of her reasons for coming here from way far away.
And she said, “I would like that, Flanders.”
“Let’s open up our Bibles,” he said. Then he said, “Where’s yours?” He was surprised.
“Oh, I left it in the car,” she said. She ran back down the stairs, and she ran back up the stairs. And the cheerleader in brown and white now had her King James Bible in her hands.
“Now you look like the complete cheerleader, Jodi the Brown. You’ve got the Good Book in your hands now,” praised Flanders.
She moved the Holy Bible about in her hands as if she had forgotten how to hold it in her fingers. Then she sat back down on the sofa, put the Bible upon her lap, and opened it to just any place. This time she had not tucked her cheerleader pleats under herself where she sat. The cheerleader skirt pleats were in disarray all about herself upon the cushion. But the King James Bible was assuredly stable upon her lap. A moment of silence came upon the two. And she shuffled awkwardly through the Good Book with no place now to go to therein.
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Then he spoke and said, “Jodi, I once used to call you ‘the Daughter of Zion.’”
She thought for a moment, then said, “I like it.” Then she said, “How come?”
“Because of a Bible verse,” he said. Then he said, “Jeremiah 6:2.”
She attempted to find it in her Bible in order to read it out loud for him. But she could not find the book of Jeremiah. In conviction she said, “Would you read it for me, Flanders?”
And Flanders the Odd recited this verse to her, “I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman.”
“I’m comely,” she said in great praise. “Am I delicate, too?” she asked in skepticism.
He said nothing, but he grinned at her. And she grinned back at him.
And she said, “You’ve been thinking about me in our years away—even when you read the Bible, Flanders.”
Then he dared ask a very hard question to ask her: “Jodi, could you not find the book of Jeremiah?”
Suddenly she snapped in a tone most unlike a song, saying, “Pastor asked me the same thing that day in my Bible study with him and his wife!”
“I’m sorry, Jodi,” said Flanders the Odd.
“If Pastor’s God is anything like Pastor, then cursed be the Lord!” yelled Jodi the Brown up to Heaven.
“Jodi, Jodi, what happened?” asked Flanders in dismay. “What went wrong here suddenly?”
Quieter, but not without the bitterness, Jodi the Brown said, “I ask you not to mention church again for the rest of this night, if you wouldn’t, Flanders the Odd.”
“All right,” he said in conciliation.
“Sorry. Forgive me. I won’t do that again,” said Jodi the Brown. And she now seemed okay now with him once again. But now Jodi the Brown was not so pretty amid all of her brownness.
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He at once thought secretly inside of a Bible verse he well knew that now seemed to be more appropriate to him as “Jodi’s verse,” this verse most starkly negative. It was I Corinthians 12:3
which said, “Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” This girl in brown had just cursed Jesus; she was not speaking according to the Holy Spirit Who indwelt any and all who were truly born again.
Then Jodi the Brown went on to apologize further, yet most errantly, saying to him, “I do not see Jesus the way you do. Who really knows if Christ is God?” Behold, the second half of his new verse about Jodi: No one can say that Christ is God unless he has the Holy Ghost. And when Jodi the brown had just said what she said, Flanders the Odd instantly realized that she doubted the deity of her Saviour, thus proving that she had not the Holy Spirit within her. Double-whammy! Jodi the cheerleader today in brown and white was hardly truly saved. Jodi the Brown was lost in her sins.
The bold witness-warrior who tried to preach Jesus to him at the park that first day; what had become of her now some years later? Whatever it was, it happened at her church in Orland Park. But it was not just church. He could tell. It was all about the Good Lord now. Whatever started at church had spread across all other of her means of worship in her happier days till all she were now was a bitter young lady with a pretty face and a love for the color brown. Tonight suddenly even her voice now sounded not at all melodic to him. The accord in her tone now had a discord of damnation to it
when she spoke.
“Flanders, you’re not looking at me. Your face is turned away,” said Jodi the Brown.
“I was thinking about things very terrible to think about,” said Flanders the Odd.
“Do they bother you very much?” she asked.
“It is the worst thing to happen to me since I myself got saved,” he said.
“Tell me what’s bothering you, Flanders the Odd,” she said in petition.
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“God is telling me that you are lost in your sins and going to Hell, Jodi the Brown,” he said, forcing a swallow down his throat in hate at what he had to say to her.
“No no, Flanders,” she said. “I am saved from my sins and going to Heaven! Remember? I told you at the park that one day, ‘Salvation is by grace through faith.’ I said that. And I meant that.
And I believed that. I am saved by grace through faith, just as you are when you got born again in our years away. Remember?”
“If you really are saved, Jodi the Brown, tell me now right here in the honesty of your heart, what you did to get saved?” challenged Flanders.
“Why, I got born again,” she said.
“The right answer, but the wrong meaning,” he said in astute understanding.
“Flanders, you speak to me in hard riddles,” she said.
Still seeking the truth of her born-again conversion that she so professed, he sought to put his query to her another way, “Could you give me a testimony of your salvation the best way you know how, O Jodi?”
“Oh. You mean, ‘How did I become a Christian?’” she asked.
“Yes. How did you find Christ as personal Saviour?” he asked.
“That I can tell you easily and sincerely and truthfully,” said Jodi the Brown. And she told him of her conversion to Christ: “I have Regal Royal to thank for that–’Sir Regal Royal,’ I should say, Flanders. We were both thirteen years old, and we discovered each other on our first day of the teen Sunday School class at our little country church. He instantly had a crush on me, and I instantly had a crush on him. Wouldn’t you know it, before that first class, he never looked at girls, and I never looked at boys, But now he and I spent the whole Sunday School classes looking at each other there at our good little church. He had a black patch over his right eye, and his two front teeth were missing since infancy, and he was a good six feet tall! What a boy for a girl like myself! Everybody at church very
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quickly found out how fond that Regal and I were of each other in our first year as teenagers. Mom and Dad approved of him for me. And his mom and dad approved of me for him. And we got together for our first date. Our parents let Regal and I get together at the family picnic table in the apple orchard out in my backyard. My mom and dad provided the food—Fritos and Doritos and Cheetos. And his mom and dad provided the beverages—tonic water and seltzer water and club soda. I said, ‘I wish we had Tostitos, too.’ And Regal said, ‘I wish we had ginger ale, too,’ But we had a great time alone and unsupervised there at the picnic table.
And then I said, ‘Sir, let’s finish off our date with something wild and crazy!’ He taught me to call him ‘Sir,’ and never ‘Regal.’ That was his demand upon me ever since our first day in Sunday School. And so I was already accustomed to calling him ‘Sir.’ for weeks before this first real date came upon us here in the orchard.
‘This wild and crazy thing, Jodi—it’s not a hug, is it?’ he asked.
‘No way, Sir!’ I said.
“I hope that it is not a kiss,’ he said.
‘No way, Sir!’ I said.
‘What is it then?’ he asked.
‘Let us go and get born again!’ I dared him and myself.
‘You mean like both of us becoming Christians, Jodi?’ Sir asked me.
‘Yep! That’s what I mean,’ I said in the immature spirit of game of something that is no game at all.
‘Only born again believers get to go to Heaven,’ Sir said.
‘That’s what Pastor always preaches,’ I said.
“Let’s go and do that, Jodi,’ he said.
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“How do we go about to do such a thing, Sir?’ I asked.
‘I think that we pray,’ he said to me.
‘What should we pray that would make us born again?’ I asked.
And Sir said, ‘I would think that we need to pray to God and promise to dedicate the rest of our lives down here to Him. We can say to the Lord, “I hereby give You all of my life, Jesus.” And when we do that, Jodi—you and me doing it together at the same time—then we become saved.’ Then Sir asked me, ‘Does that sound right to you?’
‘It sounds good to me if it sounds good to you, O Sir.’ I said.
‘Let’s do that then,’ he urged me and himself.
And Regal Royal and I got down on our knees outside there in the tall grass amid the fruitful apple trees, and we both prayed and promised the Lord that we would forever after live for Him.
That was how I became a born-again believer in Christ, Flanders the Odd,” said Jodi the Brown here with him on the sofa of his living room.
Then she said, “But then Sir and his family moved away out of town. We lost touch with each other. And then we broke up in a letter. Bummer! What a bummer!”
“That is the testimony of your salvation, Jodi the Brown?” asked Flanders.
“And I was only thirteen when it happened, Flanders the Odd,” bragged the girl in brown.
Flanders the Odd went on to say, “But it is all wrong, Jodi! You’ve got the way to salvation all wrong! One is supposed to pray and ask for salvation! One is not supposed to pray and give his life to the Lord for salvation!”
In indignation and hurt feelings, Jodi the Brown replied, “You have your way, Flanders the Odd, and Sir and I have our way!”
“God has only one way to salvation, Jodi, and you went along with the wrong boy and came up with your own way to salvation,” cried out Flanders.
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“If my way to Christ is so evil, and your way to Christ is so good, then tell me how you did it,
Flanders the Odd,” said the cheerleader in brown and white.
“You’re asking me how I got saved?” asked Flanders the Odd.
“Yes. Tell me how you got born again, Flanders the Odd,” said Jodi.
And Flanders the Odd went on now to give the brown-eyed girl a testimony of his salvation:
“As the old man of sin my own way to Heaven was predicated upon the words that I spoke in my mouth throughout the days of my life. I knew that there were good words to say that glorified God, and
I knew that there were bad words to say that glorified the Devil. I knew that praising and thanking and glorifying God for good things that came into my life was good. And I knew that murmuring and complaining and blaming God for bad things that came into my life was evil. And I innately understood the difference between using the Lord’s name in holiness and using the Lord’s name in unholiness. And I had sought to earn my way to Heaven by tipping a balance scale in my favor, the good words that I did say outweighing and outnumbering the bad words that I did say. And some days
I was earning Heaven, and some days I was earning Hell. Scary doctrine—this balance scale theory.
But I did believe in it with all of my heart. And I fought great and terrible battles with myself in my
hopes for Heaven and in my fears for Hell.”
Flanders the Odd continued his born-again true tale: “Meanwhile Proffery the Just, my Christian roommate of the time, saw me going through all of my struggles to earn Heaven. And he preached Christ to me all the time. And I did not like that. I was not sure after all of his preaching whether I still liked him as roommate. But, praise God, Proffery the Just kept praying and witnessing to me until he got what he wanted—myself truly coming to Christ for salvation. I wonder what he and you wrote about in your letters back and forth of those days—probably prayer requests for myself.” Jodi nodded here at the sofa. He went on: “Then one day Proffery showed me two passages of Scripture in the Old Testament of three verses each. Both Bible passages told about miracles that the
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Almighty God had wrought upon the sun for His glory and for the good of His man. The first Bible
verses that I had memorized as a new man in Christ were these two passages. The first one was Joshua 10:12-14: ‘Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before
the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.’”
Flanders the Odd at the sofa with Jodi went on to say, “God Almighty went and stopped Earth from its rotating and its revolving and He stopped the moon also where it rested in the universe just to give Joshua his field martial more hours of daylight in which to continue his battle and defeat to the uttermost the enemies of Israel. Then Proffery the Just said to me, ‘Flanders, can you do what God can do? Can you stop the sun over Gibeon? Can you stop the moon over Ajalon?’
I said, ‘No! Not me! Not at all, Proffery.’
And Proffery the Just then asked me, ‘Then how can you think to earn Heaven, Flanders?’ And I had first doubts about my doctrine of works.
Then Proffery the Just shared with me that other trio of Bible verses. This passage was II Kings
20:9-11: ‘And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? And Hezekiah answered, It is a light thing for the shadow to go forward ten degrees: nay, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees. And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz.’ The all-powerful God went and brought day back perhaps twenty minutes just to prove to good King Hezekiah that He meant what He said when He had told him, ‘I will add unto thy days fifteen years.’ And to this my Christian roommate
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asked me, ‘Flanders, can you move the sun to ten degrees earlier in the day? Can you move the sun to ten degrees later in the day? Are you God?’
I said in great humbleness, ‘No. I am not the Lord, Proffery.’
And he said, ‘Then how can you expect to be so good as to earn Heaven, Flanders?’
And I came upon last thoughts about my doctrine of works. ‘Proffery the Just,’ I said in stammering at all of this enlightening wisdom of God coming into my heart, “I can’t earn Heaven. Can I?’
And he said, ‘No, you cannot. Only the Saviour can give you a future Up There.’
‘The Saviour Who did those two miracles with the sun, Proffery,’ I said.
“Yes, the Good Lord Jesus Christ,’ said Proffery the Just. “Only He can save your soul. O Flanders.’
“I believe now,’ I said. ‘Jodi was right all along. It is by only grace through faith. And right there and right then he led me line-by-line through a prayer wherein I accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour.’”
On his sofa in the living room, having heard him give his testimony of salvation, Jodi the Brown said, “Then that is how you became a born-again believer.”
“Yes. It is, Jodi the Brown,” he said.
“It sounds more like the right way to get saved than does mine and Sir’s, Flanders the Odd,” confessed the woman in brown.
“All I did was to accept Christ’s free gift of eternal life,” he said.
“You make it sound like my own way of giving my life to Jesus in order to get saved was instead the works-salvation that I was preaching against all of my early church life, Flanders,” said Jodi, her understanding edified by his testimony.
“Just as my old way was before I came around and found Christ,” he said. “Works-salvation.”
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“I preached one thing and lived the other thing,” she said in spiritual revelation. “And I did not even know that I was doing that.”
“The Devil is wiser and stronger and trickier than we are,” said Flanders the Odd.
“He does his work very well, I hate to say,” she said. “He sure fooled me.”
“Jodi the Brown, as long as you are still lost in your sins, this Devil is your father, and the Lord is your Enemy,” he said in gentleness and compassion.
“I need to make Satan my enemy; and God, my Father,” she confessed. “I need to get saved now, after all.”
“You first saw things going wrong at church, Jodi,” said Flanders the Odd.
“The church was the first thing that went out of my life,” she said. “Then everything else I did in worship followed suit, and I lost everything not long after that.”
“The local New Testament church,” he said. “’…, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.’ I Timothy 3:15.”
“I was wrong when I quit going to that church in the country,” she said.
“’Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.’ Hebrews 10:25,” he recited to her.
“I remember that day that I got baptized and joined that good church,” said Jodi the cheerleader in brown and white. “I promised Pastor and the two deacons that I would never leave this church no matter what. And, further, I said to them, ‘And if I do ever get those kinds of thoughts, guys, promise me that you will not let that happen—even if you three have to drag me back.’ And the three made that promise to me.”
“You told me that after you quit church in your life, that you also had to give up everything else that was worship in your life?” he asked.
“Yes. They all got boring to me—praying to God, reading my King James Bible, telling others
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about Christ as I did you, even singing my old church hymns around the house,” she said.
“You quit singing, with a voice like yours, O Jodi?” he asked.
“All of my worship activities all faded away for ever,” she said dolefully. “Do you think that that might be because I was never saved all along as I thought I was?”
“I think that it was, Jodi,” he said. “I got saved a few years ago, and I still thrive and prosper in all of my worship, and my Saviour is the farthest One from fading away out of my heart.”
“A girl like myself with my life is liable to think that God had left her,” said the pretty young brunette.
“God promises never to leave His children, Jodi the Brown,” said Flanders. “It is written, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?’ Romans 8:35.”
“Those are wonderful words, Flanders the Odd,” said Jodi humbly. “It sounds to me that I was all wrong lately in thinking that Jesus can save a woman for only so long before it runs out,”
“Christ’s gift of eternal life is eternal, Jodi,” he said. “It is written, ‘Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.’ Hebrews 7:25.”
“Such good news!” she said. “Does the Good Book tell a woman like myself why I had gotten bored with reading it all the time?”
“It is written, Jodi the Brown, ‘Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;’ John 8:31,” recited Flanders her answer. And the girl in brown understood: a truly saved person will never get bored with God’s Word; but a truly lost person, though she may be excited about God’s Word at first, will after a while lose her fire for God’s Word and drift away from it.
The pretty brunette cheerleader searching for God now then asked Flanders the Odd, “Does the
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Holy Bible have the same thing to say somewhere about a girl and her prayer life that goes bad on her?”
“That it does, Jodi,” said Flanders the Odd. “It is written, ‘For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.’ I Peter 3:12.”
“That verse is saying that God hears the prayers only of His believers. And it is saying that He does not hear when unsaved people pray to Him,” said Jodi the Brown in understanding. “So all along none of my prayers got to Heaven all those years, did they?”
“None, Jodi,” he said.
“No wonder I got bored with prayer after a while,” she said.
“The only prayer of a lost person that God hears in Heaven is when the lost person prays to get saved,” said Flanders the Odd.
“And here I thought that I lost my Saviour,” said Jodi the Brown. “lock, stock, and barrel.”
“It is written, ’For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Romans 8:38-39, fair Jodi.”
“The blessed Lord never abandons His children,” said Jodi the Brown. “Now I know that God had never forsaken me, Flanders. How can a girl lose a Saviour Whom she never had?”
“Are you ready now to pray and accept the free gift of everlasting life by way of God’s grace through faith, O Jodi?” asked Flanders.
“I can say now to you and to God, Flanders the Odd, that Sir and I were wrong when we thought to have become born again by making Him the Lord of our lives,” confessed the woman in brown.
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“It is good and godly for a person to dedicate his or her life to God, but first of all in order to do that he or she has to already be a born again Christian,” said Flanders the Odd.
“I want to become a born again Christian right now, Flanders,” called out the cheerleader in brown and white.
The time had come. Jodi was fruit ready for the picking to the glory of God. The work that God had called Flanders the Odd to do for his Jodi the Brown was awaiting its completion. This so comely cheerleader this day was about to become a true believer like himself. And now he would have Jodi with him and Jesus in Heaven in the life to come. He said, “Shall I lead you through the prayer line-by-line, or would you like to pray and get saved with your own words, Jodi?”
“I would like to pray with my own words,” she said.
Just then a frightening screeching of brakes on tires came in upon this apartment of God from outside these three living room windows. And suddenly quiet. Then there arose a number of voices giving hoots and hollers out there. And all quiet ended here in Flanders the Odd’s evening with Jodi at the worst possible time of their lives together. To top it off, Jodi said, “I think that I know them, Flanders!” and she jumped up from the sofa and ran to his middle window of the three and looked out.
He jumped up and went to her and looked out as well. Now, outside of his second-floor apartment just outside of this living room was a one-story shop’s roof that extended out a little way. This roof hid the commotion out there from their eyes, but not from their ears.
A strange voice said, “Pastor, this is her silver car. I swear it.”
A second strange voice said, “Pastor, she said that she was going north to see an old boyfriend.
She said his name was ‘Flanders.’”
And a third strange voice said back to them, “Brothers, we must find her and warn her.”
Jodi, frightened, whispered in Flanders’s ear, “It is my pastor and the two deacons from my church down south.”
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Flanders the Odd asked her, “What are they doing here out back of my apartment for like this?”
“Remember that promise I made them keep when I was still with them in Orland Park,” apologized Jodi the Brown. “They’re coming to drag me back.”
Then one of the deacons asked out there, “Which of these two doors should we go through, Pastor?”
And the other deacon said, “The white door or the glass door?”
Flanders knew that the white door led up to the four apartments in the building right up against his. The glass door led up to the five apartments in his building where he was with Jodi.
Pastor answered his two deacons, saying, “We parked closer to the glass one that we did the white one, my brethren. God has led us to the glass one. Let us go in through the glass one.”
“Shall we separate, Pastor?” asked one deacon, plotting strategy.
The other deacon, picking up on what he meant said, “Yes, Pastor. You can get there from this back door here in this alley, and we two deacons can get there from the front door out by the street.”
“Nay, my brethren. Let us not do so foolish a thing. Remember the words of our Lord, how He said, ‘A kingdom divided against itself shall not stand,’” said Pastor.
“We three shall find Jodi the Brown,” said one deacon.
“We three shall rescue Jodi the Brown,” said the other deacon.
“We three shall save Jodi the Brown,” said Pastor.
Immediately after that there arose a clamor of stampede up the many carpeted stairs. Not thinking straight, Jodi went to the door to open it. She then changed her mind and locked it. Then she turned to Flanders. Flanders said gently, “I have a place where I can hide you from your enemies, Jodi.” She knew that she could trust Flanders the Odd in this dire occasion. And she submitted her safety to this man of God who knew his apartment here most well.
From the hallway out there between two staircases going down a deacon asked, “Pastor, there
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are five apartments up here, three on the north side and two on the south side. And there are numbers on all of their doors.”
“One, two, three, four, five,” said the other deacon reading the numbers on the doors. “Should we knock on them all?”
Pastor said, “We must get the right apartment on our first try, my good deacons,”
Flanders’s apartment was number five, the apartment facing the back along the north wall of this hallway, the first one the three church men got to on the side with the three apartments.
Pastor then said, “Jesus said, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’”
“We are hunters of men, Pastor,” said one deacon.
“We are hunters of a woman, brother,” said the other deacon.
“Nay, you vain men,” said Pastor. “We are shepherds in search for a lost sheep.”
“Should we try this one to knock on first?” asked one of the deacons.
“It is apartment five,” said the other deacon.
“Yes. I feel Holy Spirit leading us to this door,” said the pastor.
“How come?” asked a deacon.
“Because this apartment right this moment is the most quiet,” said Pastor. “Someone in there has something to hide from us.”
“You mean someone to hide,” said a deacon.
“Jodi the Brown, who is betraying our good church,” said the other deacon.
“We will go in, and we will look around, and we will leave not one thing in there not turned over.” said Pastor. “The Lord do to me and more also if we do not find her in there wherever she may be hiding in there this moment.”
“Amen, Pastor!” cheered one deacon.
“Amen to that!” cheered the other deacon.
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“To God be the glory,” praised the pastor. “Let us go and inquire in apartment five.”
“Let me break down the door with a kick, Pastor,” said one deacon.
“Let me break down the door, Pastor,” said the other deacon. “I can throw my body into it.”
“Solomon said, my brothers, ‘Pride goeth before destruction,’” said Pastor. “I shall knock.”
“Great thinking, Pastor,” said a deacon.
“Good idea,” said the other deacon.
And the leader of the three knocked on Flanders’s apartment door. With a quick silent word of prayer, Flanders the Odd now finally opened the door. Behold three very tall men, each between six and a half feet tall and seven feet tall, two of them young, and one of them older. The two young men looked at the old man and said, “Pastor, the door is opened now.”
And the Pastor said. “It is closed off to us no longer.” The deacons were the tall young men, and the pastor was the tall older man.
And Flanders the Odd asked them in feigned ignorance, “Can I help you three with anything?”
And Pastor asked him, “Are you the man Flanders the Odd?”
“I am he,” said Flanders.
And Pastor said, “We three seek Jodi the Brown.”
And with clever words and nonetheless true statement, Flanders the Odd said, “You three will not find Jodi the Brown here in my apartment.”
But the three thin giants nevertheless marched right in, knocking down Flanders where he stood in their zeal directed for their God and for their church. And Flanders got back to his feet to watch their most thorough search throughout his whole apartment, his own thoughts knowing where it was that he had Jodi the Brown most cleverly hidden, and his spirit praying to his Heavenly Father for her safety and for his this moment of this evening. This fierce and wild and reckless search lasted for almost fifteen minutes. And when the three were done, his apartment looked trashed. But in the end, this
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wild band had to concede to Flanders. They could not find Jodi their prey. Pastor and his two deacons stood there, all three pairs of arms upward to their sides in gesture of capitulation. Pastor then said, “Flanders, we cannot find Jodi the Brown in your apartment.”
“She is not in here,” said the two deacons.
And then the pastor said, “Brother Right, Brother Left, let us now go east. Maybe we can find her in Kalamazoo. Or let us go west. Maybe we can find her in Albuquerque. Let us go north. Maybe we can find her in Sault Saint Marie. Let us go south. Maybe we can find her in Little Rock.”
And without any more words, the three towering vigilantes left Flanders, went outside, and drove away with another squealing of tires on the pavement, this time in acceleration.
He then ran toward his middle living room window, and he opened it, and he poked his head outside to where he had hidden Jodi the Brown. “Are you still there, Jodi?”
“Yes, I am, Flanders,” she called up from out there just below the window.
“They could not find you in my apartment,” he said, laughing.
“That’s because I was outside of your apartment, Flanders,” she said back in glad laughter.
He saw her there, her pretty head out there below where his feet stood in here, herself standing upon a long sturdy metal pipe that ran perpendicularly from this wall outward and that ran some two feet above the lower roof below, Jodi’s arms pressed against the brick wall in balancing of herself.
“How are you doing out there?” he asked.
“I’m about to fall off of this pipe,” she said.
He stretched out both of his arms down toward her and said, “Grab my hands, Jodi the Brown.”
She grabbed his hands with her hands. And he lifted her back up into his apartment.
Once back inside, she said, “Thank you! Thank you, Flanders! What a hiding place you suddenly found for me just when I needed it most.”
“They’re gone now,” said Flanders the Odd.
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“I could hear,” she said about their departure.
“Are they ever going to come back?” he asked.
“No. Time will go by, and they will soon forget all about me,” she said.
“What about that promise you made them to vow?” he said.
“They have broken promises they have made to the flock,” said Jodi the Brown. “Right now they are on their way back home to Orland Park.”
Then Jodi the Brown looked about Flanders’s apartment that was rummaged over in thorough and meticulous search for her by the three interlopers.
Flanders the Odd said just what she was thinking, “I know. It looks like a tornado went through here, Jodi the Brown.”
“Then I shall go and clean it all up for you, Flanders,” she said. “My old friends did this; and I shall fix it all back up again.”
“But first we have to do our business with your yet-lost eternal soul, Jodi the Brown,” he did say.
“Yes! Let’s get me saved now,” she said. “I must become born again now.”
“Let’s go and do that back on the sofa,” he said. They looked around this living room again, and, lo, the sofa was upside-down, and the cushions were all tossed about it where it lay. He said now instead, “Let’s go and do that on the cushions that are on the floor. Jodi.”
“Let’s, Flanders,” said the girl in brown. And without further delay or interruption, Jodi the Brown and Flanders sat down near each other upon a couple of the sofa cushions, and Jodi prayed the sinner’s prayer in her words and in her thoughts and in her feelings: “Dear God Up There in Heaven:
Here I am, looking for my own Saviour. That is You. The first time I tried this, I did it all wrong.
I cannot get saved by dedicating my life to You. This is now the second time I am trying this. And this time I am doing it all right. I can only get saved by asking You to save me. And this is the way I am
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seeking salvation this time. Only Jesus saves! I know that I have done lots of bad things for lots of years. I am sorry for all of that. I ask You to forgive me and to cleanse me from all of those bad sins.
The Good Lord Jesus died on the cross for me because I am so bad. And this same God then rose again three days later. I ask You now, O Christ, to become my own personal Saviour and to give me everlasting life in Heaven to come. Thank You! In Jesus’s name I pray all of this. Amen!”
Thus did Jodi the Brown now become a born-again Christian.
She and Flanders now looked up from her sinner’s prayer. “I did it. Didn’t I, Flanders?” she asked.
“Yes. You did, fair Jodi,” said Flanders the Odd. Never before had Flanders been happier with his woman in brown than he was right now. He rejoiced in the Lord. She rejoiced in the Lord. The saints in Heaven looking down upon them now rejoiced in the Lord. And the Good Lord rejoiced over her with joy.
It was midnight now this moment of her salvation. But both Flanders and Jodi were too excited in the Holy Spirit to quit their fellowship for the day. Flanders wanted more Earl Grey tea. And Jodi asked if she could try a cup of Earl Grey tea for her first time. And he and the cheerleader new convert had their teas as they sat upon the cushions on the floor and continued their most enjoyable fellowship in the Lord.
Jodi the Brown said, “This is real good tea, Flanders. What makes Earl Gray tea? Why is it called that?”
“Because it has a unique ingredient to it, Jodi the Brown,” he said.
“What ingredient is that?” she asked.
“Something called ‘oil of bergamot.’” he said to her.
“What’s ‘bergamot?’” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But that’s what’s in it.”
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A moment of silence came upon their conversation. Then she said, “My old church friends this night acted like a bunch of vigilantes. Didn’t they, Flanders?”
“Yeah. That they did, Jodi,” he said.
“They were only doing that for me,” she said. “When I made them promise to make me come back to church were I to quit their church, I never knew that all this tonight would have come from that.”
“They were sincere, Jodi, though very strict,” he said.
“I came from a strict church,” she said.
“God is a strict God,” he praised the Lord.
“My old church did teach and preach and live good Biblical doctrine, Flanders,” she said. “And, yes, I was still wrong when I did leave that good church.”
“Jodi,” he said. “What got you so mad at that church in the first place?”
“My own pride got me in trouble with Pastor and our two deacons, Flanders the Odd,” she said.
“It was your fault then?” he asked.
“It was not their fault,” she confessed.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I came up to Pastor and asked if I could fill the pulpit someday,” said Jodi the Brown.
“You asked if you could preach a sermon from the pulpit to a real flock of God, Jodi?” he asked.
“Yep! That I did,” said Jodi the Brown. “And Pastor shook his head and said, ‘No.’”
“God has not ordained women to be pastors,” said wise Flanders the Odd.
“Really?” asked the cheerleader in brown and white.
“Yes, Jodi,” he said. “God says in I Corinthians 14:34-35 ‘Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak: but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a
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shame for women to speak in the church.’”
“Does that mean that I am not supposed to say anything at church, Flanders the Odd?” asked Jodi in humbleness.
“No. God is not saying that you cannot say anything in church, Jodi,” said Flanders. “What God is saying in those two verses is that God has given the ministry of preaching to men and not to women. God’s Word says that pastors are to be the husbands of one wife. That cannot be you,”
“Then can I still raise my hand at church and ask questions in appropriate circumstances as one of the flock?” asked Jodi the Brown.
“Yes, You can, Jodi. And you can be a valuable member of the flock of God as a woman doing women’s ministries and still glorify God as a woman,” said Flanders. “Men and women of God are equal in the eyes of Jesus, but their ministries as servants to the church are different the one from the other.”
“Women’s ministries are different from men’s ministries in the church, but both are equally important in the eyes of God. Aren’t they, Flanders?” she said, enlightened about these things after all of these years.
“Yes, O Jodi the Brown,” said Flanders the Odd.
“Then I was all wrong when I got mad at Pastor,” confessed the girl in brown.
“Also it says in I Timothy 2:11-12, pretty Jodi, ‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection, But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.’” Flanders the Odd shared with her more of the same.
“I can see now what this is all about,” said Jodi the Brown. “I can teach a Sunday School class to the teens or to the younger children. But I cannot teach the adult Sunday School class. And I can take care of the nursery. And I can go to the nursing homes with the other women of the church. And I can be the church clerk or the church treasurer. But I cannot be a deacon. I can go on visitation with
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the ladies as we knock on doors and visit the others of our flock. I can cook some for the fellowship dinners. And I can pray daily for all of us at the church in my quiet time alone with God at home.
And I can play a musical instrument when we sing hymns at church. And I can join the church choir and ‘make a joyful noise unto the Lord,’ as the Bible says. Why, Flanders the Odd, there are lots of things I can do for the Lord at church. Why would I need to go and fill the pulpit like I so wanted to do for no good Bible reason? Boy, was I ever wrong when I got mad at church like that, Flanders!”
“Are you thinking about going back to that church, Jodi the Brown?” asked Flanders.
“I don’t know. I’ll pray about it,” she said. “What happened tonight shows me that they all still care about me down there in my old church.”
“I will pray about it for you, too, Jodi,” said Flanders the Odd. Then he said, “And if God does not send you back to your church, maybe you could move up here to De Pere, and you could start coming to my good church, if you wanted.”
“If God wills it, Flanders the Odd,” she said in spiritual discernment.
“We can both pray about that,” he said.
“I just thought of something that I need to do now that I really am saved this time,” said Jodi the Brown.
“What is it?” asked Flanders the Odd.
“Something that every believer ought to do early in their walk with Christ, and something no
unbeliever should go and do,” said Jodi the Brown.
“What might that be, Jodi the Brown?” asked Flanders.
“Listen to what I have to say to God in prayer right now, and you will find your answer,” said Jodi the woman in a brown cheerleader’s uniform. He paused and listened. And Jodi his girlfriend-in-Christ now went and prayed thus to the Lord, “God, I hereby dedicate the rest of my life to You.”
Amen and amen!
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