Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I hope you were blessed today with good and perfect gifts from above. I had some good conversations on campus and Ryan a guy I had gone through the Gospel with before prayed to receive Christ with me today, understanding a bit better the Christian life. Please pray he grows in his life in the Lord.
Ryan reminded me we’d talked before. He had a brown curly mop hair of hair, not long though and a square jaw. He had a black polo shirt on and black jeans. He was sitting on a bench in the empty hallway as class had just started up on the 3rd floor of the BIC on the North side. He said I had explained everything really well the last time and he’d been to church a few times but he really had a hard time getting into it. I asked if he had, “…prayed the prayer in that little booklet I gave you?” He said he hadn’t and so I began to explain living the Christian life to him again as he said he wasn’t really connecting with God. When I last asked what he would say to God to get into Heaven I think he’d just said, “I don’t know.” I asked if he had ever asked God to forgive him trusting in what Jesus had done for him on the cross. He said he had asked for forgiveness before. I took out the little booklet. I made it more clear, asking if when he asked for forgiveness he had been trusting that Jesus had died for him and that made it possible for God to forgive him. He said he hadn’t thought about it that way. I said if he wanted to place his trust in Jesus to forgive his sins and His sacrifice on the cross then he could be cleansed and the Holy Spirit could live inside him. Then the Spirit could give him the power to live the Christian life, so knowing he hadn’t prayed with me to receive Christ I encouraged him to do that realizing it was something different than he had done before. He decided to do it and prayed to receive Jesus. We talked more about how at the Church he went to a few times they wanted people to lift up their hands when they were singing and for everyone to hold hands when they prayed. He said he didn’t like to do that. I said there were entire denominations of people that did not want to do that either and there was nothing wrong with wanting to sit and sing and participate that way. I said the Old Presbyterians were called the “Frozen Chosen” because they wanted to chill out at church and I was sure God was fine with that. I said he was pretty young to have taken a long road trip with a friend. But when you drive with some guys for 6 or 8 hours you are not necessarily talking the whole time but you are with each other and you feel together and that’s cool. I said that is in some measure what Paul means when He says to “Pray without Ceasing.” You posture does not matter or if you sit or stand God is just with you through the day and you don’t have to say anything to Him most of the time, but you sense He is with you. He understood that and I gave him Bible Promises for You saying he could turn a verse into a prayer. I wrote his name and the date and “forgiven” inside. I also gave him a Bible Study using a story he knew to talk about how Jesus claimed to be God. I explained that the Holy Spirit was with him even if that was not generating a feeling of some kind and he could ask for strength from him to accomplish whatever he thought God wanted him to do. I said the Holy Spirit would transform him on the inside and he would then do good things on the outside. We talked more about his future and college and he was grateful. I also gave him a copy of Pocket Prayers that takes a Bible verse and makes a prayer out of it for examples he could look at. I headed out saying I would keep him in my prayers each day and he thought that would be great.
So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance. I had some good talks with Christian students too today.
In Him,
Bob