Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed with good things. One guy Alexis prayed to receive Jesus so that was great. However I had a slow day on campus. I had a some time talking with some peeps I knew already. But otherwise only 2 students would talk about God with me for about 3 hours of walking around, and both were Christians. One I kind of gave a lesson to about sharing her faith. The other was a more mature Christian, Peter, looked in his early 20’s and had come solidly to Jesus about a year before out of agnosticism. So that kind of lifted my heart chatting him up. I left him at about 10 after 3 having gotten a late start, Wednesday is tough.  (Tuesdays are a long day with Bible study.) So I figured I’d head out but had a bit of a strange second wind (after which a day of 20 or so replies of “Not interested” were lifted). I came across Alexis siting on the edge of a lounge in the BIC.

Alexis had a black ball cap on with a green frog on it wore a button up the front mostly black shirt with some pattern on it and jeans. He looked Latino, smaller in stature friendly boyish face clean shaven good looking kid. He went to a nondenominational church it turned out. I’d thought he was Roman Catholic as when I asked him what he would say if God asked him why He should let him into Heaven he said, “I’m baptized… right now I’m truly serving to expand his kingdom. I’ll just wait for my judgement.” He thought he had about a 60% chance of going to Heaven. So I began to go through the Gospel with him and he knew Jesus had died to take away his sins. I explained the imputed righteousness of Christ and that he didn’t go to Heaven because he was good but because Jesus was good and he was connected to Him. “So I hate to say it but what you said here is wrong,” I said pointing at his response. He acknowledged that it was good-naturedly and I thought it would be a conversation that ended refocusing him on Christ’s work. A lot of Churches fail to teach the Christian life is only possible walking by the Spirit. So many feel they are saved by Grace but stay saved by works. I asked him if he was one of two circles where where He’d trusted in Christ to be forgiven and He was on the throne or the drivers seat of his life or thought something else. He said he’d want to be forgiven. But as we talked more he talked about “not being there yet”, there was “more he had to do”. I explained that the Bible talked about 3 different ways of being saved, one was from harms in this life and obedience would save you some from that, one was ultimate salvation in Heaven and one was the process of sanctification (where we are becoming more like Christ). I explained living inside out by the Spirit. He said he wanted to be in control to achieve the things he wanted to achieve. “I’d just say in response then that being in control is not the way to achieve what you really want,” I replied. I gave him some word pictures about God doing the work, quoting, ‘We are His workmanship created for good works that He has prepared beforehand that we might walk in them.” He only needed to do what God was asking him to do and He would give him the power to do what that was–he wanted to have his own family and have”lots of kids”. I walked him through the prayer and said that he needed to ask God by the power of His Spirit to live the Christian life. I showed him some sections in 20 Things God Can’t Do. The 4th one is that you must forgive others to be forgiven by God but that is impossible sometimes when someone has really hurt you without asking God to give you a Spirit of forgiveness. The 13th I showed him also was “God can’t withhold his guidance when you trust in Him”. “But what if you are having a hard time trusting God? Ask Him to give you more trust.” I said that if he hadn’t done so he needed to trust in Christ to be forgiven for His sins, then the Holy Spirit could live inside him and give him the power to live the Christian life. “Everyone has a relationship with God as their creator but not everyone is in a relationship with God where He is there savior and lives inside them,” I said. He felt he still needed to do that (having been trying to earn it) and prayed to receive Christ. I gave him a Bible study and Bible Promises for You book. He seemed relieved. I wrote his name and the date he’d been forgiven in the front of 20 Things God Can’t Do and “by the Spirit’s Power”. I explained that now the likelihood he would go to Heaven was 100% now that he was trusting in the righteousness of Christ to be his righteousness. We both got up to leave. He said there was just so much he had to do in his life and for his family and he was feeling the crush of it all. I encouraged him to ask God for His strength and let His power carry him to do his best and after that it would be enough. We parted at the stairs and I told him I would be praying for him having got his email. He thanked me and I headed out.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance, God blessed.

In Him,

Bob