May 7. Charlie Plys. On this date in 2016, Charlie started a new job at a golf course, and that job provides the setting for today’s story.
You don’t always need the right answer; sometimes you just need to listen.
At the golf course in Minnesota one Monday afternoon, Charlie Plys and his coworker Thomas were bartending. Generally speaking, bartenders can be good listeners, and Charlie was exceptional; he listened with purpose.
“I’m done with the church. I’m done with God,” Thomas said to the other coworkers around him.
This line of conversation caught Charlie’s ear. He, too, had been hurt by the church—a church he’d been deeply involved with for many years, even employed at. And the sting still lingered.
Charlie knew what it was like to not be heard, and he also knew what it was like for someone to listen him and to value what he had to say. He’d experienced both sides of this scenario and learned a valuable lesson—men are not God. God was different from man.
God was good.
“Done with God forever, huh?” Charlie wiped the counter. “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”
Thomas had gone through addiction and overcome it. He was a winner in a huge battle. But today, he felt hurt. “I’m done,” he said. “I don’t need to be looked down on when I go to church because of what I’ve been through. I don’t need to be preached at and told how bad I am. I already know that.”
“You’re right,” Charlie said. These ideas were familiar to Charlie. “What you need is some hope.” What he also needed was a listening ear, and someone to help him see that man does not equal God.
Over the next many weeks, Charlie and Thomas talked a lot. Charlie soon discovered that Thomas’s two adult kids were also struggling, even getting into the same tough lifestyle Thomas had just escaped.
“Do you want your kids to be done with God, too? Like you are?” Charlie asked. “If they’re struggling like you say they are, you might want to encourage them to move toward Him, not away from Him.”
Thomas shrugged, obviously unsure if he could trust God or not.
“What are your kids’ names?” Charlie asked. “I’d like to write their names down and pray for them.”
Thomas looked surprised. “You’d do that?”
“I would.”
And he did. Charlie wrote their names on a sticky note and put them near his computer, and every time he looked at them, he said a few simple prayers over Thomas’s kids. Every single day.
Over time, Thomas talked; Charlie listened and kept reminding Thomas that Jesus can be a true friend, someone he can trust, and someone who won’t look down on him because of the things he’d done in the past.
And over time, Thomas changed: He went from giving up on God and church, to being willing to give them both another try.
Within a year of their first conversation, Thomas got a new job and moved away, but he left with a willingness to try again with God. He even said that after his move, he was going to find a new church.
“God’s way is perfect. All the Lord’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection,” (Psalm 18:30, NLT).
Have you ever been allowed to be a listener for someone who needed to talk? You don’t always need the right answer; sometimes you just need to listen.
Charlie Plys’s story is based on interviews in July and August, 2019.
Story read by Joel Carpenter