Snake Charmer Receives Jesus!

In 2011, I somehow missed a trip to the church near the snake charmers. When the pastors informed me that I would be going there on this day, I was quite intrigued. As we drove in, the two pastors of the church were filled with anticipation of what fire God might do on this day of extreme natural temperatures outside. The older pastor, it was related to me afterwards, often told people coming for healing from God to look at the Jesus in his eyes and when they did, they were healed.

As I ministered the new message to this group about the amazing benefits of the Father’s love for them, one young girl’s head who had been down in obvious discouragement, lifted it higher and higher as the message progressed. Others seem to sparkle with hope in their eyes and the expression of their countenance changed to more and more joy.

After praying for almost every single person present at the meeting for healing and breakthrough, including both pastors, the faith in the room had grown exponentially. A few expressed a change in their condition in the moments right after prayer, but some of it was lost in the lack of translation on this day. That’s ok, the Father knows!

Now it was time to see about this snake charmer dude. We walked a short distance behind the church to a street where a snake charmer had baskets filled with cobras and one lone boa constrictor who was lively, but small. He demonstrated his skills working with the snakes in front of a small crowd that gathered to watch the show. I noticed that he didn’t provide any real safety for young children, who often drew in too close , other than to redirect the snakes, or put a piece of cloth over their beady eyes. He seemed to agitate the snakes on purpose by blowing into the closed baskets so they came out angry, flaring their heads (cobras are impressive that way) and striking out at air, and each other. There were also some guinea pigs that were released from a box to join the fray, but what, at first, seemed a dangerous situation for the critters, was really just for extra show because the snakes seemed to ignore them.

Since there was this nice crowd already brought together for me, I preached the Gospel with plenty of animated drama after the snake charmer show. I told them to look into my eyes and they could see that Jesus lives in me. Even the snake charmer looked intently into my eyes when I directly looked at him. The children thrust their arms into the air and mimicked me when I declared, with much fanfare, that Jesus came back from the dead! Some received when I offered prayer for salvation, but the snake charmer seemed unmoved, albeit, he was listening carefully. Possibly he was learning how to better hold an audience’s attention from a Holy Spirit anointed speaker (thank you, Jesus!). 

I decided to engage him and challenge him one-on-one with the crowd still there. When asked if the snake-charming had anything to do with a religious exercise, he said, “No, only a business.” I then asked him if he worshipped the snakes. He said, “No,” again. I asked if he heard my preaching about Jesus. He said, “Yes.” He was making this too easy. I told him I had no intention of forcing him to do anything (at this point, I performed a short drama illustrating one person forcing another that made young children laugh), however, I wanted to know if he was interested in receiving the Jesus I had preached about. There was a moment of confusion with unclear translation as he thought for a moment and then shook his head, Indian-style, as a definite “Yes.” I asked again, just to make sure, and he repeated the shake of the head and said, “Yes.” What a privilege it was to lead him in prayer to receive Jesus and then introduce him to the younger pastor from the church 30 yards away. Turns out he has a wife and 3 children that had survived his snake charming business. I encouraged him to tell them what he had heard that day and what he had done about it. Sometimes ministry is just so much fun, you tend to forget about the fact that it must be 100+ degrees in the shade and 110 degrees in the sun where this gentleman met Jesus.