Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed walking with the Lord. I got home to find they had turned my front side walk into a big a asymmetrical mermaid tail. I called them and they reshaped the forms and the sidewalk after I got pretty upset with them, maybe needlessly. But everything turned out ok and I went through the Gospel with the guy who came out to fix it while I helped him dig out the new path. (Man, am I glad I do not dig earth for a living, Luke 16:3). The stairs were visibly out of square too so hey at least they didn’t pour it yet because I’m pretty sure I’d have to live with it. But Justin & Nick prayed with me to receive Jesus today and Mark committed to Christ saying he thought he would pray the prayer after class.

I got a bad night’s sleep and got up early to greet the concrete demo team and then left them to go to School (unwisely it turned out). When I started walking through the building I had a thought I should head over to the science building (it turned out God just wanted me on the road to there). I kind of thought I would take the short cut outside so I looped around finding no conversations and went out the doors at the Cafeteria seeing some students on benches on the path over to the Science building crossing the road. I headed to them and found Justin who had a shirt with something about cows on it I could never really read. He wore tan cargo shorts and had sandy hair kind of swept up on top of his head like if Superman’s hair was curlier, had freckles. He was thin and looked a young 17. Justin said he would talk with me and answer some questions. It turn out he had gone to his grandparents church in the city most of his life. When I asked him what he would say to God to let him into Heaven he said, “Because I feel like I’ve lived a good life, grown up Christian, went to Church, I always give I never take. I tried to live my life as it is.” Maybe he meant he didn’t complain? He thought he had a 70% chance of going to Heaven saying as a qualifier, “I don’t go to Church all the time.” It was obvious as he talked a bit he thought his good religious behavior was all God wanted. I explained to him that his good stuff couldn’t fix his bad stuff. “Like say you got a girl friend for about 3 weeks and you thought she was pretty cool then you find out she’s cheating on you and stealing your stuff, so you cut her loose. She comes around in about a week and she’s like, “Oh Justin I know I did you wrong, I was even stealing your stuff and selling it for drugs, but I just want you to know, I’m gonna be nice to my next three boyfriends.’ You’d be like that doesn’t help me at all because you can’t do good things over there to fix you bad things back here.” When I personalized it he saw that was true I explained we couldn’t be perfect but Jesus was perfect and His righteousness can be imputed to us. I explained the rest of the Gospel to him and he hadn’t thought about it. He wanted to be forgiven. I told him something like, you know you grow up in the Church and you have your parents faith and you agree with everything but when you get out on your own you have to decide for yourself what you will believe. I asked him if telling God he wanted to trust in Christ to be forgiven for his sins was something he had done or something hadn’t done yet. He said, “As I mature that’s something I want to do.”  So I read him through the prayer in the booklet I used part of and said if he wanted to he could pray that silently and he would be forgiven and God would live inside him. “So would you like to do that?” Yeah sure,” he replied and took the booklet from me and prayed to receive Jesus. He was glad when I told him he could keep the booklet I had scribbled in and I showed him some verses on living the Christian life inside out. I gave him a Bible Study and 20 Things God Can’t Do writing his name and “forgiven” and the date inside. I also showed him a couple chapters and explained everything God was asking him to do He would give him the power to do by the Spirit. I had taken longer than I had told him and he gratefully ran off to class.

Mark was sitting on the floor in a north/south hallway in the BIC. He had dark blonde hair and was wearing a button down short sleeve shirt. Had a smattering of facial hair. He had an interesting voice a bit like he was talking with a mouth full of lettuce and an Eastern European accent to boot. I struggled a little to understand him but followed ok. He described himself as an “Eastern Catholic”. When I asked him what he would tell God to get into Heaven he said, “Because I prayed the rosary every day.” He also said he went to confession and was getting into his faith the last year of high school more even driving himself to Church when his mom didn’t go.  He listened to the Gospel closely and I helped him understand he would have to be perfect. I explained the Catholic Priest as a representative who was telling him God forgave his sins, because God was just and Jesus had paid for his sins. He wanted to be forgiven saying he was a Catholic and so he of course would believe everything I had said. When I walked him through the prayer he could pray he was very interested but said, “I have a half an hour after class I will pray this then.” So I said I had a book for him and gave him Bible Promises for You. I told him the parable of the King and his feast where the guy gets thrown into Hell for wearing the wrong clothes saying that was the righteousness of Christ he was not wearing the garment given him by God. But that if he trusted in the righteousness of Christ to be his righteousness the likelihood he would go to Heaven was 100%. “Do you believe Jesus is God died for your sins and rose from the dead and do you trust in that to make you right with God and go to Heaven?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered so I shook his hand saying then his sins were forgiven. He gave me his email and I gave him a Bible study so I’ll be able to ask him if he prayed after class as he intended. I talked him through a symbolic view of the mass for Sundays too. He was thankful.

Nick was sitting in the hallway on the south side of the BIC. He was wearing a pretty prominent steel cross and a T-shirt with a dove symbol on it. He had an inch high afro, wore glasses, looked and talked like a smart kid, a kind face, good looking guy with green pants with a lot of quilted stitched lines straight across the legs. When I asked him what he would say to God if he died and God asked him why He should let him into Heaven he said, “Ooo I never thought about that ever before. I’m not gonna lie to you, I don’t know. The good things you do don’t outweigh the bad. So it would be tough to answer. You can’t say you’re a good person.” He thought his chances of going to Heaven were 60-40 saying he was the least terrible person of all his friends and then more or less saying that didn’t count for much. “You can’t do anything perfect,” I said agreeing with him. “See what I’m saying?” he replied. He followed closely with the Gospel as I launched into it conversationally and then took out a booklet so he would have some Bible verses in print. A guy came by and asked what we were talking about and I said Jesus and he gave Nick 4 chapters to read in the Bible on a scrap of paper so Nick took them and the guy walked off without introducing himself. I guess he did not realize I was sharing the Gospel. I finished explaining how Christ had lived a perfect life for him keeping the law and told the story in Matthew 22 again about the King that throws a guy into Hell for wearing the wrong clothes to explain imputed righteousness. “That’s a great story,” he said liking the explanation. And I said it was one of Jesus’. He wanted to be forgiven and so when I offered him the chance to receive Christ and pray he wanted to and prayed to receive Jesus. We talked some more. I gave him 20 Things God Can’t Do writing his name and the date and “forgiven” in the front along with “By the Spirit’s Power” explaining the Christian life. He talked about his mom a lot saying he did not have a father, just a twin sister. She was very religious but the advice she was giving him seemed to suggest he needed to cling to faith (try harder) and pray but not really the right details. And he had not understood the Gospel. She also had not mentioned walking by the Spirit. He said he was going to ask his mom the question I had asked him and he planned it out saying he was going to wait until she got home and had her feet up. He took an extra booklet and I gave him a Bible Promises for You book for her and he said he kind of wanted to keep it. I gave him a Max Lucado book on prayer for her then too, since I didn’t have another copy with me. I got his email, gave him a Bible Study and taught him about living the Christian life, “Inside out”. He was grateful and I got up to leave and said, “God bless you.” and he said, “God bless you too.” “Thanks,” I said and headed down the hall. I’ll pray for his mom when I prayer him. Really a great conversation.

So thanks for your prayers for the Ministry and for Evangelism today if you had a chance. God blessed real good. 🙂

In Him,

Bob