Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed in the Lord. Tomorrow Ellen and I have to fly to Texas for me to officiate the wedding of a former student. Today I had a good day on campus, and  Billy and Justin  prayed with me to receive Jesus.

Billy was sitting in the row of chairs at the front of the tunnel headed out of the BIC into the PE building. He had an open shirt and jacket on over a t-shirt and jeans wore glasses had a sharp chin. The t-shirt was of a Pink Floyd record cover, from 1973, “Dark Side of the Moon”. I chatted him up about that a bit. He had been in a Lutheran church as a kid but had not been to Church since then. When I asked him what he would say to God to get into heaven he said, “Because I haven’t committed any crimes, I’ve been good I guess.” He thought he’d have a 75% chance of going to Heaven. He was a thoughtful guy but he didn’t have any idea at first what Jesus had done to take away his sins but I think the story came back to him a bit. He was attentive to what I said and grateful and when I asked him if he would want to be forgiven for his sins with Christ living inside him or if he thought something else he thought for a moment and said, “I’d probably choose this one,” pointing at the life that had Christ living inside him. “Well, do you believe that Jesus was God, died for your sins and rose from the dead?”I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Well if you would like to trust in that God can forgive you and and you can figure things out in life with God inside you giving you strength, not outside you,” I said. Then I talked him through the prayer to receive Christ explaining what it meant and said he could pray it silently and God would hear his thoughts and prayer. I asked if he’d like to pray and he said, “Yeah sure.” He took the booklet and prayed to receive Jesus. I went on to explain the Christian life living “inside out”. He didn’t have his own Bible so I gave him one and put his name and the date and “forgiven” under it. I explained living “inside out” with God’s power and wrote “By the Spirit’s Power” in the front of 20 Things God Can’t Do and I gave him a Bible Study. He gave me his email so I’ll send him some stuff, he thought he’d like to come to the Bible study so I hope he will. I gave him a card for Compass church so he could go on line and listen to some sermons if he was led to do that. I shook his hand and he thanked me and we headed separate ways down the hall as I told him I’d pray for him the next year. There’s some lines in Dark Side of the Moon in the song entitled “Time”, “Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town.  Waiting for someone or something to show you the way… No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” But Billy heard it, and he began to run by the Spirit.

Justin was sitting across the long row of tables in the PE lounge with Lionel. Justin was very fair skinned but had freckles and a loose curly mop almost an afro shaved on the sides. He wore sweats, had classic facial features of an African American his friend was jet. They were chatting up a girl or she was chatting up them. He didn’t think he had time before practice for track to do a survey but he said he’d answer on question, “So you’re walking down the road, you get hit by a bus, so you’re dead, and you stand before God and He asks, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven?’ what would you say?” I don’t know he said, the girl who was hanging about said she could answer it saying she’d followed God’s will and then decided that didn’t sound good enough or she hadn’t done that and knew it. But Justin said that sounded about right for him.  (I’ll have to catch up with the girl later since she drifted off, I do see her around.) But Justin let me tell him the heart of the Gospel and the imputed righteousness of Christ. Lionel was across the table and I tried to engage him with a eye contact that worked a bit of the time. When I finished the cliff notes version of essentially what I say to the peeps, using the booklet a bit, Justin wanted to be forgiven and so I said he could pray a prayer and I talked him through it on the next page and asked him if he would like to pray it. “I just did, I was reading along,” he said grinning. I explained living inside out but that was all they had time for and I got the spelling to Lionel,s name saying I would be praying for them and he said he’d think about the prayer taking a copy of the booklet. They had only their workout gear with them and had no way to carry a book but said they’d get one from me some other time. They did take a Bible study  as it is just on a page of paper founded up. I thanked them for listening and letting an old white guy chat them up and they laughed and said no problem and headed out.

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

In Him,

Bob