Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed and your heart was thankful. I had a good day on campus and Brianna prayed with me to receive Jesus today. Also a newly decided atheist, Raheem, seemed responsive. A thin guy with shoulder length dreadlocks and a mustache and goatee, dressed in all black, my height. His Haitian family turned out to be into the Black Israelite legalism cult. They claim you must keep the Old testament law and believe they are doing so. I think his atheism was in part due to the burden of the legalism of the cult. I pointed out a few things that seemed to help. One was that anyone who drove a car on the Sabbath was kindling a fire if they drove an internal combustion engine as a spark to compressed gas causes an explosion in the cylinder that moves an automobile. “Every car runs on fire,” I told him unless it was electric. “If you take a shower you have caused the electronic pilot to spark and ignite gas as you drain the hot water tank to heat more, so if you showered on the Sabbath you kindled a fire,” I explained to him. Then I explained how Jesus was your Sabbath rest based on Hebrews chapter 4. I said that the Bible says we are the temple of God and He lives inside us. So it is not that we have changed the Sabbath to Sunday and broken the Law, but that now everyday is our Sabbath rest in Jesus. We did not make the Sabbath less, we made it more as we keep it 7 days in Christ. Because we are a temple and His presence by the Holy Spirit is within us, each day we rest in Him and we praise Him in His Temple, our bodies. He said he had never heard it explained that way before though he went to church with his family each Saturday. He also had problems with all the evil in the world and I explained and talked him through that as well, saying God was working against evil but needed time to not crush us in the process. I offered him the prayer and explained the Gospel and said he should think about it and think about giving God his burden, not by claiming He does not exist and getting relief from the burden of keeping the law that way, but by claiming Jesus had fulfilled the law for him and resting in that. He agreed there was a burden. He was moved I think and said he would think about what I’d said. I gave him a hug and told him God loved him, so it was a good conversation. I am hopeful a good seed was planted there as well.

I was talking to a couple of conservative Christian guys who I bump into at school. They are affirming of evangelism and I usually try to slip some doctrine in on them and go deep on them a bit. They are pretty straight laced Baptist types. They said they would pray for Raheem and I said I’d pray for a guy, Tim, one of them had shared with in class. I was saying I had not talked to almost any people in the last 2 and a half hours or so, and one of them said there was a big “convention” in the SSC lounge maybe I could work that. I said I had seen it and walked through, but not a lot of people seemed to be sitting around. But I said it wasn’t a bad idea and I would check it out, mostly not wanting to seem like I was not taking his advice. So I worked my way over there, not really finding anyone to talk to. But it turned out to be a good idea because as walked into Starbucks at the edge of the lounge I found Brianna there sitting in the seating area, curled up in an over-stuffed brown leather chair. So I sat at her feet, indian style on the floor, and we talked.

She had black leggings on and a long sleeve t-shirt. He long brown hair was pulled back in a hair band, she wore brown rectangular framed glasses and had a willing smile. She had a cute kind of all-American-girl look to her face. She said she’d do a survey and looked over for approval to the guy beside her. He seemed like her brother, who was not paying attention and so we began to talk. Describing herself she said, “I’m Spiritual, close with my religion.” When I asked what she would say to God to get into Heaven she said, “I would say it’s up to Him. He’s the only one to judge. You don’t have your own say. It’s just based on what you did.” She thought she had a 50/50 chance of going to Heaven. As I began to go through the Gospel she knew John 3:16 as I quoted it to her and regularly went to a community church. I told her some stories and verses and she was pretty sober as she listened and took it all seriously. She knew Jesus had died to take away her sins after some prompting. So I explained His righteousness could be to her credit, that you don’t go to Heaven because you are good but because Jesus is good and you are connected to Him. It was His righteousness that would get her into Heaven. I explained receiving Christ and asked if she would want to be forgiven for her sins with God living inside or thought something else. She said she would want to be forgiven with God inside and so I asked if when she was asking for forgiveness if she was thinking she would try harder and went to church and God would forgive her. Or did she think, “I know I’ll be forgiven because Jesus died for me.” “I know you knew the story but were you trusting in Jesus to be forgiven or hoping you’d be good enough? She thought about it and said, “I’m getting there.” I said if she wanted to ask God to forgive her and help her get there, there was a prayer she could pray (and I walked her through it) and then told her that God’s Spirit would give her the strength to do anything God was asking her to do. And I told her a story and explained living in the Spirit. So I asked if she would like to pray silently so only God could hear and be forgiven and then know she was going to Heaven. “Yeah,” she said. So she took the booklet and prayed to receive Jesus closing her eyes and praying in her heart. It took a bit as every time I looked up her eyes were still closed or closed again. But she finished and so I explained living “Inside Out” by the Spirit’s power. She had a Bible that her youth pastor had given her in High School. So I gave her a Bible Study and 20 Things God Can’t Do writing “By the Spirit’s power” in the front. I also wrote her name and the date and “forgiven” so she could remember. I explained that if she would trust in the righteousness of Christ to be her righteousness, the likelihood she would go to Heaven was 100%. She was happy, so I said I would see her in heaven but if I saw her around I’d just say hi. “It was good to meet you,” I said getting up to go, realizing I was getting too old to sit cross-legged that long. “It was good to meet you too,” she said cheerfully. “Have a good day.” “Thanks very much,” I said and headed out.

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

Love ya,

Bob