Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope you had a good day and the Lord blessed. I had a slow day on campus and after hours only had 2 guys talk with me. One was vision impaired but could read the time on his phone if held 2 inches from his eye. He used a walking stick to get around and had only been that way about 4 years. The next Anthony prayed to receive Christ.

Anthony was sitting in the cafeteria having nearly finished his Chick-fil-a. He was from Detroit and played football at COD. They get students from far away as it is the only community college for more than 200 miles in any direction with a football team. He was wearing a long sleeve white t-shirt that said “College of DuPage Football” athletic shorts and sandals with white socks. His afro was about 5 inches high and he wore a Malcolm X looking pair of glasses. He had nice features clean shaven good looking guy. When I asked him what he would say to God to be let into Heaven he said, “I would say…” then he stopped and started with a couple approaches and finally said, “I’ve been a true follower since I’ve aged.” By that he meant he had more recently decided to try to follow God. He though he had a 50% chance of going to Heaven. I explained the Gospel to him and he knew Jesus had died to take away his sins. So I explained that he did not go to Heaven because he had tried to be good doing what he thought it meant to follow God but he went to Heaven because Jesus was good.  He had to be trusting that Jesus had taken away his sins and so he would be forgiven. “Does it matter if you are baptized?” he asked. I queried him a bit about that.  It turned out he had been baptized when he was about 14 but had not really understood the Christian life. I asked if they had asked him if he believed Jesus was God had died for his sins and rose from the dead. He thought they had but he had not understood what that meant. I explained he needed to be trusting in Christ’s righteousness to be to his credit by faith and told him the parable from Matthew 22. There the king throws the man without the wedding garment into Hell for not wearing the right clothes, which he thought was crazy until I explained the symbolism. We must be clothed with Christ [Gal. 3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ like a garment.] I explained he needed to trust in the righteousness of Christ. I said the things Paul listed he had gone through to preach the Gospel and if anyone might have been said to earn a spot in Heaven it would have been Paul. Yet Paul said it wasn’t by his own righteousness but by the righteousness that is by faith in Christ that He earned for him that he would be saved [Phil. 3:9]. I asked him if he would want to be forgiven trusting in Christ. He nodded and I showed him the prayer he could pray and asked if this was the desire of his heart and he nodded and prayed. I explained more to him. He had left his Bible back in Detroit so I gave him one writing his name and the date and “forgiven” under it in the front. I showed him where to turn section. I got his email and gave him a Bible Study and 20 Things God Can’t Do writing “by the Spirit’s power” in the front explaining anything that God was asking him to do he would give him the power to do. He said he had been asking for Gods help. I said that before he was asking for God to provide the right circumstances but now God could help him by making him a different man, inside by His Spirit, then he would have the strength to do good things on the outside. And I told him if he was trusting in the righteousness of Jesus to be his righteousness the likelihood he would go to Heaven was 100%. I thanked him for talking to me telling him I would be praying for him each night. “Thanks for talking to me. I really needed it,” he replied. “Yeah,” I said, “It seems like God just needed to give you a little bit to make it all clear.” And he rushed off to class since I had made him a bit late.

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

In Him,

Bob