Results of the Work – 2/20/2020

Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed on Thursday; I had a good day on campus chatting up the peeps and putting in my 2 cents in an adult education class again. Jack prayed with me to receive Christ too, so that was great.

Jack was sitting in Starbucks and hemmed and hawed a bit when I asked him if he wanted to do a survey, but decided to do it and we got to talking for a longer time than either of us expected. He had straight hair swept back on top and a Michael Jordan barely there mustache. He wasn’t a very big guy, square chin and sharp features, wore a black quilted coat and black jeans and had gone to Church when he was younger but now he felt he wasn’t very religious. When I asked him why he would say to God if asked why He should let him into Heaven he said, “I’m a good person. I make good decisions, I’m morally driven, and I have a lot of morals.” I asked what the likelihood he would go to Heaven and he was pretty sure he’d go saying, “Pretty much.” He went on to say that when he did something wrong he’d apologize for it, and if God could read his thoughts He’d know he was sincere. He knew Jesus had died for his sins and listened to the Gospel closely, tuning right in asking some questions as I explained the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin. He asked, “So what if I killed a hundred thousand people?” “Well I don’t really think you could get around to that frankly,” I replied. “But some people claim the name of God and kill people.” “They have a different God,” I replied. “There are killers that believe God is telling them to kill people.” he said. “Yes, but those people are psychotic. If you are asking me if psychotic people go to Heaven, or insane people who would not seem to be held responsible for their actions, I’d say that it would depend on what drove them insane or made them psychotic. Some people do this to themselves.” He agreed this was true. “I can’t know all the circumstances, but if someone is a psychotic killer and a sociopathic liar all their life and claim to convert to Christ in prison, well they have lied all their lives. I can’t know if they were sincere.” I explained an infinite sacrifice of God would pay for extreme sin. But if you just decided one day you got off on killing people, it would show you did not really believe in the love of God for you. As I finished saying he needed to trust in God by faith, I asked if he’d want to be forgiven or thought something else. “Be forgiven,” he replied. So I asked him if he believed Jesus was God, had died for his sins and rose from the dead. He thought about it and then said, “I guess if I have to think about it that’s not a good sign?” “I don’t know,” I replied. “If you never thought about something before–you’d have to think about it. If I asked you if you thought green eyes were pretty and you had to stop and think if you’d ever dated a girl with green eyes and had never thought about it before but went through some girls in your mind and decided you did think green eyes were pretty, that just means you had to think about it. It doesn’t mean you are wrong about what you decided.” “You’ve got some good answers,” he replied smiling. I said I had a few degrees and had been at this kind of thing for a while. We talked some more and I told him if he wanted to be forgiven for his sins he could begin with God, telling him that and praying to trust in Christ. “Then you just begin to pray for help, and God living inside you gives you the strength.” I said. “Everything was by the Spirit’s power. If you know you should pray to be the kind of person that will do something you are convicted of, but you don’t want to pray to do it, pray God would begin to change you so you would be the kind of person who would pray to ask God to help you to do it. Just step it back. You don’t have to become some super Christian tomorrow. God will change you over time, but you will always feel like there is something you could do better that God needs to change.” I asked again if he thought he’d want to be forgiven. “I believe I would yes,” he replied. I offered him the prayer and he decided and said, “Why not?” cheerfully. He prayed sincerely and slowly, silently. We talked some more I told him I would pray for him each day. I’d memorize his name. He asked if I prayed for a lot of people. I said I prayed for about 150 from last year and he was number 140 this year so about 290. I had the names memorized and took a while each day to pray for them. “That does not make me some super Christian. I’m a pastor and it is part of my job to pray for people. Most people would not pray for an hour and a half or 2 each day because they wouldn’t know who to pray for for that long.’ I suggested he could pray for most of the people he could think of in 10 or 15 minutes. I explained how short life was compared to eternity and that he would be glad he had asked for God’s help and forgiveness when he got there. I said that it counts for more than we can understand that we trust in God, and in eternity we will be glad we did. He liked that. I gave him a copy of 20 Things God Can’t Do and wrote “Just Ask” in the front. I gave him a Bible since he only had a New Testament and wrote his name and the date and “forgiven’ in the front. I gave him a Bible Study and we talked some more about the Christian life. He’d gone to a youth group with a pretty good Church in town and I suggested he could go back there and see what he thought. I gave him my contact info and he got up to go shaking his hand and he said, “Alright, thank you.” I said he was welcome and headed out.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism Thursday and today if you have a chance to ask God to lead me. God is good.

In Him,

Bob