Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was filled with blessings and every good and perfect gift. I had a good day on campus and Ian and Kyra each prayed with me to receive Jesus. Thanks so much for your prayers, there stories are below if you have some time. There was a lot said and I’ll do my best to reiterate it.

I came in and went down the hallway along where the student activities offices are and asked a couple students who were not interested. I thought I should go back toward the cafeteria but then I had a picture in my head of the chairs along the wall if the SSC lounge. It seemed like a nudge from the Holy Spirit. So I turned around and cut past the lounge by the offices to the base of the stairs up into the main lounge. There were two guys sitting in the chairs 15 feet from each other and the first guy was Ian.

Ian had short trimmed hair parted on the right his bangs swept aside. He had a thin mustache and was a slight build. His beard appeared as a line down his chin then more beneath and then here and there on the sides. He was dressed all in black but had a silver cross and chain that hung lower than his chest and would fit inside a 50-cent piece. He wasn’t interested saying, “I believe in God,” sort of dismissively and then that he wasn’t even a student here. I asked if he’d like to hear the big metaphysical question to think about through the day. “Sure,” he replied.  So I said, “You’re walking down the road and you get hit by a bus, so you’re dead and you stand before God and He says, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven?’ What would you say?” “He shouldn’t, I haven’t done enough to be worthy,” he replied. I said he wouldn’t get to heaven based on what he had done but because of what was done for him. Then I asked if he’d like to see some Bible verses telling him that. “OK,” he replied. I took out the booklet and got his name and gave him mine and read some verses. He was familiar with John 3:16. I explained “Knowing God” was that God lived inside him and talked about his sin and that God had to take it away. Then he would be perfect and holy inside, he’d match God and so God could live inside him. I asked him what Jesus had done to take away his sin. He knew Jesus had died. Telling him that the blood of Christ cleansed him I said God forgave him and that the Blood of Christ was a payment to God.  He asked what I would say to someone who would say Jesus had died but you had to do things to earn that. I said that was semi-pelagianism. Explaining the problem would be that you owed God something perfect in return for damaging, [Matt. 5:48] you, someone else or the world—His stuff. But nothing you could offer to pay God fixed what you had done or was a perfect gift to give back to Him. I said from the Bible’s perspective that you thought you could add something to the perfect payment of Christ’s blood, that it was not enough to pay for your sins, was really and insult to the work of Christ. I explained the righteousness of Christ to our credit. And nothing you could give back to God was perfect anyway. I explained that sometimes this was called Lordship Salvation, where you did not just ask Jesus to be your savior but you made Him Lord of your life. But the grass does not make the sun and I explained that it was only by the power of the Holy Spirit we could do anything that pleased God. I said the verse by grace you are saved through faith not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not by works lest any man should boast. “That’s what I don’t have,” he replied.  God had to turn our bad things into good things I explained. I offered him the two options of trusting in what Jesus had done to save him or something else. He said he had been in eastern thought and been into crystals and even had an altar, by which he tried to reach certain deities but there was no one there. [I later used his statement in talking to Kyra who was really into new age things like crystals and reincarnation.] He said Christianity kept popping up but he felt like it wasn’t cool enough. Finally, he began to look into it but he was just kind of getting started, though it seemed like he had been at it a while.  I think he believed it was true up to the point he had to earn forgiveness. I agreed with him that eastern religion made everything one but Christianity is 2 and I and a Thou. I suggested when you died Buddhism was a bit more philosophically consistent (than Hinduism). In Buddhism you were just reassembled from the particulates of the universe some of which were you, some was not. But then why was there Karmic guilt if all of you as a unified whole had not previously existed? He agreed it did not fit with experience. He said he would want to trust in Jesus. I said there was a prayer he could pray. I said he could pray it silently and he did. Finishing  he looked up. He said he had met people who had had a religious experience and kind of an emotional thing. I said that repentance was changing your mind about Jesus, that He was your savior and God. I said those facts are more likely to carry him through life. I said I felt things from God through life, though not when I first became a Christian. But feelings can come from a piece of bad pizza. If he went through a hard time it might not feel like God loved him, but the fact of it remained and he could cling to that. I told him there was more about faith in the booklet, that it wasn’t a feeling. I explained living inside > out asking for the Spirit’s power to give him help in everything. I gave him a copy of Bible Promises for You writing his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. He smiled at that and thanked me. I gave him The Case for Christ Answer Booklet. He said had come to Christianity more reasoning and I said the author was the same. I also gave him a Bible Study. He was grateful and said he’d email me sometime and I said that would be great. (He never on campus on Wednesday when we’ll have Bible Study)

Two black students were sitting together a tall guy named Treavor (slender with a mop of braids 5 inches long or so) and Kyra, a very pretty girl with long braids past her elbows and oval face, small nose. She was wearing a grey t-shirt with some big white letters I never made out and orange sweats. When I asked them what they would say to God he roughly stated the Gospel. After he’d said he believed in Jesus she said Jesus was not God. Treavor said something like Jesus was God’s son and I explained the Trinity to her a term she was unfamiliar with. I said she was kind of like a trinity in that she had a body like Jesus’ emotions like the Holy Spirit and a will or a mind, like the Father. I said however her trinity was dysfunctional in as much as someone could say something rude to her and it would affect her ability to concentrate, her emotions upsetting her mind. Or she could get injured and become upset from the pain, her body effecting her emotions. But God was a complete Trinity, 3 in one, where He loved Himself and was in agreement within Himself.  She accepted that. In asking her what she would say to God she said, “I don’t know, I feel like He would just know my heart, simple, Rashad Jamal.” (Rashad Jamal is a New Age TikTok influencer who is up on charges for murder right now and I think that is who she meant.) Treavor, claimed to be a church musician who was good at every instrument said he knew the Gospel. He strangely was an annoyance and butted in a periodically, interested in telling her what he knew. She told him (more than me) she believed in a different god and said something about dying and becoming a color. It seemed that the physical world was not real in the view she was voicing, in keeping somewhat with Hindu belief possibly. She said after she died she would not remember anything. I used that later to say everything in Eastern Religions is one and you go into it when you die and lose yourself, you have no identity and are gone. But in Christianity you always remain you and God knows you and you talk to Him. By the time I began to go through the Gospel he claimed he, “knew all that”. So I asked him if he could explain the Righteousness of God. He could not. “Then you don’t understand all of it. Paul had said that it was not by his own righteousness he was saved but by the Righteousness, which is by faith.” She was interested. And so I continued through the Gospel with her and he seemed distracted or attempting to distract her. (He later even began to talk to me while she was praying and I hushed him.) Finally, I said, “Stop, be quiet and don’t say anymore let her listen.” She talked about her practice with crystals and things and said there was really no one to talk to in it, no Person there. I explained a bit of Eastern thought then and said, “A guy I just talked to was into crystals and that and Eastern Religions just told me the same thing. He decided he wanted a Father and trusted in Christ). This was attractive to her as I continued to go through the Gospel. I explained the righteousness of God that Jesus had earned that could be hers. And finally asked her if she would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done, then God would be her Father and know her. Surprisingly she said she would. I talked her through the prayer and asked if it was the desire of her heart. She said it was and I said she could pray it silently. I think she had some background in the Church as she finished praying to receive Jesus and said, “Praise God.” I gave him a copy of Bible Promises for You writing her name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. She thanked me and I gave her The Case for Christ Answer Booklet, “I get gifts”, she said more to him than to me. I explained the Bible study to her and she liked that. I gave him two books and wrote some notes in another booklet saying he could use it to share his faith. She was happy and I got up to go and found out they were friend but were not dating. Being a couple was something she had no interest in she then made clear. Another pretty black girl walked up with shoulder length big curls. She said her friend was also into Crystals. I said, “Well you can tell her how it is.” She agreed she could. I told her I would pray for her each day until next Spring and one year after and she was grateful and I headed out.

I later came upon Ian and told him his story had helped lead someone to Christ and he was grateful to be told that and thanked me enthusiastically.

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

In Him,

Bob