Jesus and Apple products

A few weeks ago I met with one of my mentors (Jim Stern and you can find his blog here) and we were talking about how God brings situations into our lives that will give us the opportunity to share Jesus with people.
Example.
Jim was walking out of a coffee shop and his iPhone hits the ground and it shatters.
2 reactions can happen:
1. Be really angry and try to fix the problem.
2. Realize that there must be an iPhone repair person that needs to hear about Jesus.

When he took his iPhone to get worked on he shared the gospel with the repair guy who happened to be Muslim. He wasn't converted to Christianity but Jim did have the opportunity to talk to him about Jesus and that was huge.

Fast forward to last Monday.
Jim and I were having a conversation about how God brings people into our lives at different "relational intersections".

Meaning, God is working in the lives of people around us (and in our lives) so that when we "run into" people it is no accident, it serves a purpose.
We need to ask the Holy Spirit what that purpose is and respond to it.

That night I was sitting in Starbucks getting ready to type up what I thought was supposed to be a very important message to a friend of mine.

I go to turn on my laptop (a Mac) and behold, nothing came up on my screen.

My screen was out.

At this point I realized I had two choices:
1. Be really angry and mad about the situation and go home.
2. Realize that God has a reason for this happening and maybe there's somebody who needs to hear about Jesus at the Apple store.

So I made the appointment at the Apple store for 11:30am the next day.
I got there at 11:15 checked in and was told to wait.
At 11:20 another guy comes and sits next to me and come to find out his appointment isn't until 11:50.
That intrigued me, seemed really early for him to be here.

That was my first clue that there was a reason for us meeting.

We made small talk and we talked about iPhones and different apps.

I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me to talk to this guy about my life and share my testimony with him.

So I said, ok God, I don't know how we're going to do this but lets do this.

After talking about where we grew up we were able to segue into talking about my church Meadowcrest and he said, hm, that place sounds familiar. I didn't think anything of it and we just kept talking and I shared my testimony with him about growing up in church and relying on myself instead of Christ. We talked some more about church and how Jesus changes lives and it was a really encouraging conversation for the both of us.

He remembered at this point why the name Meadowcrest sounded familiar.
Turns out his aunt and uncle attend our church.

In fact his uncle beat me numerous times at Ping Pong at the men's retreat I went on a couple months ago (an embarrassing fact I shared with this guy).

So look at this.
Me and this guy met at the Apple Store in Baybrook mall.
20 minutes from my house.
25 minutes from his house.
20 minutes away from Pasadena where Meadowcrest is located.
My laptop broke.
His iphone broke.

At the same time.

What were the chances of us meeting?
Me 15 minutes early for my appointment.
Him 35 minutes early.

At the end of our conversation I told him, "I know why my laptop broke. It was so I could meet you here today" and he agreed it was not chance that brought us there.

We exchanged information and him and his dad came to church this last Sunday (which was really awesome by the way if you read this).
I hope he continues to come and we can grow in our faith as brothers.

I'm looking forward to it.