Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was good and you walked in joy you received from the Holy Spirit. I got lights on the front porch so I’m done ‘til after this next Thanksgiving holiday. I had a good day on campus and Moe and Salvador each prayed with me to receive Jesus. Their stories are below if you have time. Please pray they grow and truly rest on the blood and righteousness of Christ for forgiveness of their sins.

I was headed the opposite direction down the first-floor hallway of the BIC and had a sense I should walk toward the MAC Arts building the other direction. I just turned around. I sometimes don’t know if that kind of thing is a nudge from God to get me somewhere I’m just supposed to say hi to someone. I really am (it seems) getting blown around like John 3:8 on campus and I just have to roll with it. Lex a black girl with a cute small face, greeted me in the PE this afternoon. She said it was always great to see me around. So that encouraged me before I had talked to anyone for example though I felt led to go to the PE lounge.

I headed the other way and saw Moe, an African American, sitting at a table, he wore a black hoodie up over his afro and you could see he had a block chin and mustache, the beard seemed to run his Jaw line. He wore light grey sweats. He said he had to run to class and had not time so I asked if he would want to hear the big question to think about for the day. Usually I just give someone the booklet after if there is not time. But his answer was a bit off. He said thinking on it, “I’m a believer, I pray before I do anything before a play basketball…” he listed a couple other activities he prayed before. “I guess it would be those two things.” He replied about being a believer and prayer. I said, “Ok,” and just asked as I continued on with him a bit saying, “Christianity is like a blood transfusion and I had A+ blood so if you fill me with B- I clot up and die.” He could not tell me then what Jesus had done to take away his sins so God could live in him. As I queried him more after explaining the blood and righteousness of Christ. I asked him if when he asked for forgiveness he was thinking Christ had died and rose from the dead or was thinking he was a good person and God forgives. He said that that part of it (the atonement as I had explained it with verses) was not part of his thoughts. I asked if he would want to trust in what Jesus had done to be forgiven. He said he would so I said there was a prayer he could pray quietly to be forgiven and explained it. He was willing to do it. At that point Salvador interrupted me saying, “I see you are preaching.” and I said just a moment I want to finish this. As Moe prayed I wrote his name and the date and forgiven on the inside of Bible Promises for You and I quickly gave him The Case for Christianity Answer Booklet. I felt like I had rushed a bit and felt bad as I do once in a while when I can give so little time to someone. Fortunately the Holy Spirit will bring guidance in Him now and I don’t trust in anything but the power of Him and the Verses He wrote. Moe seemed to have a Christian religious, life. But he had to run to class. So I will pray for him and hope now he is believing on Jesus seeing the difference. I’ve prayed since he’d have real joy and validation by the Spirit and His word. I tried to write down some things he said but could not do that as Salvador came back.

I had moved over to an ottoman and Salvador more or less said he’d felt led to talk to me and sat I the chair in front of me. I stopped writing in mid-thought and he began to tell me his story. He had a short James Cagney cut face. He was a Latino, a bit darker and had swept back hair in the classic Clark Kent fashion. Clean-shaven. His hoodie was a zip up with an interesting kind of paper clip link gold chain and a gold crucifix. His black t-shirt was the skyline of Chicago. We talked a long time. He told me he’d seen all his family members lives crumble. His mom was homeless, his dad who was very unforgiving and distant had cheated on her, his sister had an out of wedlock baby. He had been the angry guy in the military. But he had a Sgt. Who had talked to him about John 1 and that Jesus was the Word of God. This man had failed to explain the Gospel however somehow or Salvador hadn’t picked up on it. That seemed to be a real turning point for him that had really struck him. I told him this was also saying Jesus was the creator God and the name for Jesus came from the first chapter of Jeremiah. I asked him what Jesus had done to take away his sins so God could live inside him. “Sacrifice,” he replied. But I’m not sure how he meant that as I asked him why he thought God took away his sins and then he said something like, “He is good and kind and I sin but I am trying to be good.” So I repeated that back to him and he said yeah that was it. So I went through the atonement also with him. He interrupted periodically. The Catholic Church had not moved him at all so he left it, sighting the repetitiveness of the liturgy.  As I was explaining that it cost God something to forgive and it was because God had to be Just quoting 1John 1:9. He went the wrong direction with it so I corrected him with what I meant and he said, “Oh I didn’t know you meant that.” He seemed to be thinking of the next thing to tell me and missing what I said so I just kept working us back to the point. I made sure he understood it was because, “God got paid” by the Blood of Jesus that he was forgiven. He said something like, Oh I had not thought about it that way. He began a story about getting into an argument with his sister and though they lived in the same house they did not speak for 4 months. Finally he approached her and patched things up not really sure at that time what had been said, but took the first step. I used that as an example of how it cost him something to forgive. It cost God to forgive too. Jesus had died. I explained how it mattered who did the work and Jesus, being God, His work was worth an infinite amount. He talked about other times (a church in Naperville that had pressured him to attend and meet with them but said that we all used to be angels before our time on earth. (He at one point had also rejected the Mormon Church when they told him he needed to pray to their book and ask for faith to believe it.) I said that was false we were made originally out of the dust and God breathed a soul into us, we had definitely not been angels. He agreed feeling like that and some other things they had said. I finished explaining the righteousness of God and that he would not go to Heaven because he was good but because Jesus was good. Paul said he would not be saved by his own righteousness but “by the righteousness that was by faith.” I asked (after hearing out his interjections and redirecting him to the Gospel) if he would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done for him on the cross. He said he would. I walked him through the prayer he could pray. Saying he could pray it silently, the only other person in the lounge was a girl with ear buds behind us, not listening to us as she waited for a boyfriend. He prayed softly then but audible to trust in Christ. He said he’d been baptized; I think 2 years before. I said that what I had explained to him he should have had explained to him by whoever had baptized him. They said he only need to ask Christ to live in his heart, this had given him a warm feeling all over for a day but he’d slipped away from following then so I talked about the risk of feelings as a guide though he seemed to have some guidance by the holy Spirit I mentioned John 14:17. I explained living by the Power of the Spirit Inside out. We talked more I gave him Bible Promises for You writing his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. I gave him The Case for Christianity Answer Booklet and told him a bit of Strobel’s story. I showed him a Bible Study connecting a story on how Jesus had walked upon the water to Job’s description of God in Job 9:8, he thought that was great. We walked down the hall until he peeled off to use the bathroom and I excused myself and headed off we’ve been texting a bit and he said, “Thank you so much happy Thanksgiving to you as well I appreciate the talk today means a lot to me.”  We talked about needing a Church as a base of operations like the Delta Force soldier at the end of the movie “Black Hawk Down”, which he had seen.  Even that guy needed the Ranger camp to get some grub and more ammo. Please pray he finds a good one.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today, God truly blessed.

In Him,

Bob