Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your week was blessed so far and the grace in which to stand has been with you. I had a good week on campus given with remote classes many students are done already. Maggie prayed to receive Jesus (Olivia let me know she had prayed; she heard the Gospel Friday) Gianna* said she would pray later. I hope to bump into several students I’m praying for who said they would later pray. Angel prayed to receive Jesus on Thursday, his story is below.

Angel was sitting with his back against an outcropping in the wall buried in an iPhone as I remember. I passed him not wanting to bug him and then went back to give it a try. He looked Latino or Persian in complexion and had a short-cropped hair cut like the Jokic the NBA center. He’s click bigger than me in stature. He had on a dark blue t-shirt and black jeans. He had smooth rounded features, firm jaw, good looking. Interestingly as we talked it came out that he had converted to Islam in High School due to “peer pressure”. But then looking at Mohamed’s life, (he realized studying it later) the prophet was not the guy to follow. He looked at Jesus life and decided He was worthy of following. I asked him what he would say to God if he died and was asked “Why should I let you into Heaven?” ” Um… I have faith in you.” He said kind of tentatively. He thought he had a 50/50 shot of going to Heaven. He described himself as “reform” denominationally. As I went through the Gospel he knew Jesus had died to take away his sins. I explained the blood of Christ to pay his debt. To which he replied, “Oh that makes a lot of sense.” And then the righteousness of God Christ earned, saying, “You don’t go to Heaven because you’re good but because Jesus is good and your connected to Him.” “Oh, it’s just faith!” he replied. I said it was and Paul had said, “he was not saved by his own righteousness but by the righteousness which is by faith” but that we could have all kinds of faith. I said he probably just flopped down on the bench we both sat on without thinking about it or testing it to see if it would hold him first. I said I did the same thing without checking if my additional weight would hold. We had faith in the bench. The faith that saved him was faith in “that Jesus was God, He died for your sins and rose from the Dead. Not that you just knew the story from Church but that you trusted in this alone to save you. And I read “not by works” from Ephesians 2;8,9. “That makes a lot more sense,” he replied comparing this to what he’d thought. I explained we could not do anything perfectly and so there was no way we could contribute to our salvation, “Your good stuff does not fix your bad stuff.” He had some questions about the Orthodox faith which is really comes out to works salvation in practice. The church fathers (I said, “strangely Jesus tells us to call no man “Father” yet they use the term Mt 23:90) before the reformers are most often a system of works salvation not Grace. I asked if he would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done to forgive him so the Spirit could live inside him and give him all the strength he needed to live the Christian life? ” Yeah,” he replied. I said if he wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer he could pray and I walked him through it. I said he could pray it silently and know he was forgiven. “I’ll do it,.” He replied. He prayed then to receive Jesus. He had some other questions, on the Trinity and on why Jesus said the “father is greater than I”. I explained there was hierarchy in the Trinity (quoting Phil 2:7) and that it might help to realize he was kind of like a Trinity [1Thes 5:23]. He had a mind or a will like the Father, a body like Jesus and emotions like the Holy Spirit. But his emotions could overwhelm him and he’d be lost in them and might start to drive off the road. Or pain in his body might make it impossible to think well. “So you are kind of like a trinity you’re just a dysfunctional one. When you think about it when you are alone sometimes you are talking to yourself, well who are you talking to? There’s more to you than just you. Yet you are one person. It helps a little to think about God but we will not fully understand these things until we have a gloried body.” I then quoted 1John 3:2. I explained the Christian life living “Inside > out” saying that the Holy Spirit would disciple him and that it had been the movement of the Holy Spirit when he had said, “It’s by faith!”. I said the likelihood he would go to Heaven now was 100% trusting in the blood and righteousness of Jesus. His teacher had come out in the hall summoning him to class and he dismissed him as he closed the doors to the classroom. He seemed unconcerned to be on time and more concerned to get some questions answered. He was talking not I as the teacher came out so I could not be blamed. But faculty and staff complain about me anyway. I told him to look into “The Two Powers of the OT” by Heiser on YouTube to understand Jesus’ appearances in the OT. I gave him Bible Promises for You and wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. I gave him The Case for Christ Answer Booklet saying Strobel had some good things on YouTube also. I gave him my card to contact me. He was grateful. I told him I would pray a Bible verse for him each day the next year and I let him go into class.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism last week if you had a chance. I’m really worn down, and got a bad leg (sciatica) but I’ve only got a couple weeks left of evangelism. Looks like I’ll crawl across the finish line for the semester.

In Him,

Bob