Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope you had a good Monday. I had a good day on campus and Chase prayed with me to receive Jesus. After that I had a 4 hour ad hoc counseling session with Darrell whom I had met over a year before as he’d finished up the truck driver licensing program at COD. Black guy 23 years old long braids. He was struggling with entering into marriage and living the Christian life. “You really helped me you can’t know how much this helped,” he said.

I got to school kind of wasted still from the weekend of travel, as I officiated a wedding in a Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, which was a lot of stress for organizational reasons. We got home and in bed by 2 AM Sunday and then 11 hours later I got to baptize Hope at the Compass Church after their service. They’d had some baptisms and let me use the water. So I was dragging a bit when I got to school. I put my stuff in a locker and headed down the hall towards the PE building a couple steps. Then I felt like I was supposed to go towards the science building so I turned around and took a 90% turn around the corner to head that way. I greeted a girl Jordann in the hall who prayed this year and then headed down the hall which goes past the book store. Sitting in some couches across from the back door of the store I found Chase. He was a tall guy, at least 6’4″ wearing all black. He had a ball cap on and a young very boyish face, good looking kid.  I asked if he wanted to do a student survey. In response he asked if I worked with Intervarsity and I said I used to and sat down by him. He said he planned to join the group, (they got started up on campus again this year and I met their leaders in the winter) it later seemed he had been to one meeting on Wednesday. He said he’d do the survey then. When I asked him if he died what he would say if God asked him why He should let him into Heaven, he said, “I tried my best.” He went to a Bible church in Lombard and knew the Gospel in part saying he had a 74% chance of going to Heaven. He knew John 3:16 having heard it “…all his life.” When I finished he said something like I was really good at explaining a lot in a very short period of time. So it seemed like he enjoyed the word pictures God had given me to use this year. Which is great if you understand what they mean. But Chase had kind of missed it. After saying he wanted to be forgiven for his sins I asked, ‘So when you do something wrong you are probably thinking, Well I am going to church and basically a good person so God will forgive me. He agreed that was what he was thinking. So I said if he wanted to trust in what Jesus had done to be forgiven for his sins there was a prayer that he could pray. I talked him through it and he said, “”I can pray this if you want but I’ve been slowly working on letting Jesus into my heart.” “I am not asking you if you want to let Jesus into your heart,” I replied. I am asking you if you want to be forgiven for your sins trusting He died for you on the cross. Then the Holy Spirit can live inside you and give you the strength to live the Christian life.” He decided he wanted to pray to receive Christ then and he did. I gave him 20 Things God Can’t Do. I explained living by the Spirit’s power explaining that idea through some of the chapter titles in the 20 Things God Can’t Do  book and wrote “By the Spirit’s power” in the front. I wrote his name and the date and “forgiven” saying, “This is the day you were forgiven.” I explained living “inside out” and the fruit of the Spirit. I explained that if he was trusting in the righteousness of Christ to be his righteousness 74% becomes 100%. I gave him a Bible Study and talked about it bit and got his email. Then he realized his ride had been waiting for 7 minutes, it was his uncle who was a christian and he thought he wouldn’t mind since we had been talking about God. He got up and headed off in good spirits.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for Evangelism yesterday if you had a chance, God blessed and I’ll be praying for Chase in the hope God will give him what Paul prays for in Ephesians 1:17-19.

17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the ]saints, 19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might

In Him,

Bob