Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed in the Spirit of the Lord. I had a good day on campus and Ramy and Tatyana each prayed with me to receive Christ.

Ramy was sitting in the hallway of the BIC and was really interested to talk. He knew who I was and had seen us having a Bible Study in the lounge it seemed. He had a tight knit community at church he explained. He was wearing gray sweats and a gray hoodie with the hood half up over a White Sox cap. His face was kind of beat up like mine and he had a dark brown beard to match his hair and a bit of an accent. It turned out he was an Orthodox Christian and looked Greek.  He said basically that he was trying to live a life pleasing to God–when I asked him what he might say to God to get into Heaven. I began to explain the Gospel to him and he new Christ had died for our sins. I explained the imputed righteousness of Christ and he was really interested to clearly understand the Gospel. As he’d talked about asking for forgiveness and trying hard then not to do it again, he had not claimed he trusted in Christ’s work on the Cross. It was more like he hoped God was magnanimous. I questioned him, trying to get at his heart a bit more. I asked him if, though he had known the story of Christ dying for him, he’d really had not trusted in that to be right with God but was hoping in his religious work. This really gave him pause as he thought about where his trust had been. It seemed it had been in his religious commitments, not in the work of Christ. I explained how God did not just forgive us, but He was Just and Jesus paid the price for our forgiveness on the Cross. I explained that all the things God was asking us to do we did by the power of the Spirit. I showed him the quote in the back of the booklet, “Your walk with Christ depend on what you allow Him to do in and through you, empowered by the Holy Spirit, not what you do through your own self effort.” I quoted Paul saying, “Walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the Flesh.” I showed him a prayer he could pray to place his trust in Christ which ends “Thank you for forgiving me of my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be.” I explained that he’d be asking God to forgive him and make him a Christian man. He decided he wanted to pray to depend on Christ for his salvation and he did, silently praying the prayer. I talked about how we were his workmanship and God had created good works beforehand for us to walk in. I gave him the book, Bible Promises for You as he had a Bible and a Bible study on the deity of Christ he liked a lot. He was really grateful to have talked and thanked me saying it was amazing what God had done in bringing me by to talk to him. He pulled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo of Jesus on the Cross on the back of his forearm. “Yes,” I said of his tattoo. “This is real power because He died and rose again. He conquered death and now gives us the power to live the Christian life.” I left him saying it was nice to talk to him. “Nice to meet you.” he said. “If you see me stop so we can talk again.” I gave him my card and said if he saw me to flag me down. I got his email.
Tatyana was a kind of heavy set girl who was sitting beneath the stairs by the book store. She wore leggings and a jacket and had her hair pulled up into kind of a broom top. She wore black-rimmed glasses, she had soft features and a round face. She was African American and had been in the foster care system. She thought of herself as a Christian it seemed, but had not been to Church for a long time. When I asked her what she would say to God if He asked her why He should let her into Heaven she said, “Ouch!” Thinking some more she said, “I tried my best and still called on you for help, and I love you.” I went through the Gospel with her and she seemed to follow along well with the Gospel. Though she had not been trusting in what Jesus had done,  she’d been 100% sure she was going to Heaven, or at least she said as much. When I finished I asked her (pointing at the picture of the two options), if she would want to be forgiven, trusting in what t Jesus had done so God could live inside her. She said, “Forgiven, this one,” pointing at the circle with Christ on the throne of her life. “Well it doesn’t seem like you had ever put all this together before to be able to place your trust in it?” “Yeah,” she agreed. So I talked her through the prayer and asked her if she’d like to pray it silently to receive Jesus and she said, “Absolutely!” and she prayed to receive Christ. I explained trusting in the power of the Spirit to live the Christian life. I gave her a Bible, showing her the “Where to Turn” section as she said when she read the Bible it was hard for her to understand.  The Bible she’d had had been left at her former foster care home with some of her stuff. It seemed she might have burned some bridges there. I got her email to send her some stuff. I also gave her a Bible study and 20 Things God Can’t Do. I wrote “By the Spirit’s Power” in the front and she said she might come to Bible study, so I hope she can find a way to make it out. We lost a lot of kids at the semester break so it would be good to have a couple more to disciple. I told her I would pray for her. “Thank you!” she said and I got up to go saying, “OK, I’ll see you in Heaven.” “Ha ha, That’s nice,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll see you in Heaven.” And I headed home in the hopes of shaking off my headache with some food.
So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance. God truly blessed and answered Prayer.

In Him,

Bob