Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed and you walked with God in Christ. I had a good day on campus and Jess prayed to receive Jesus today. Her story is below and if you have some time. Please pray she grows in her faith.

 I met Jess in the lounge between the science and health buildings. She was wearing blue scrubs and was tall and thin had long, stick straight, brown hair and a pretty face with a pug nose a bit flat across the top. She wore no make-up, which I think is standard in you are a woman in one of the nursing or medical programs like dental hygiene. She was sitting on a couch with no back against the pit in the middle they’ve now filled with tables. She said she didn’t have much time before class so I said, “Well I’ll just ask you the main question.” So I asked, “Say you’re and walking down the road and you get hit by a bus, so you’re dead and you stand before God and He asks, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven?’ What would you say?” “Umm, I would say I feel like I’ve become a faithful servant, a good disciple, a good representative of who you are. I do what’s right. I feel like I’ve extended the same grace you gave me. I’d ask His forgiveness for anything I did wrong,” she replied. I explained to her that Christianity wasn’t what she did to be forgiven but what God had done. I began to go through the Gospel with her. Showing her the verses that God loved her and wanted to know and live inside her. But first, like a blood transfusion God had to make her his type by taking away her sin. So I asked what Jesus had done to take away her sins. She knew his had died. So I explained that his blood cleansed her and was a payment to God. I explained the righteousness of God that was to her credit and that God adopted her. I went pretty quick and left out a couple illustrations. But wrote all the verses of His blood and righteousness. I told her that to be in Heaven we had to be perfect. She would not go to Heaven because she was good but because Jesus was good and she was connected to Him.  I explained receiving Jesus by faith, “believing that Jesus is God, died for your sins and rose from the dead, not that you just know the story but that that is what you place you trust in to be forgiven so if someone would ask you ‘Why should God let you into Heaven?’ You’d say, ‘Because Jesus died for me.’” I explained being saved by faith and that her good stuff would not fix her bad stuff. I asked if she would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done. She said she would. I asked if when she asked for forgiveness for her sins if she was hoping she had done enough of the right religious things or if she thought “I know I’ll be forgiven because Jesus died for me.” She replied, “I was going to a Catholic Church that taught that but I have been going to a Christian Church with my Boy Friend now. I’m still learning.” So I said if she had not told God she would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done there was a prayer she could pray and I walked her through it and said if she wanted to she could pray it silently, I wouldn’t hear her but God would hear and she’d know she was forgiven. “Say it in my head?” she asked. “Yes, God can read your thoughts so he will hear you,” I replied. She took the booklet then and prayed to receive Jesus. I told her then Ephesians 1:13 says as soon as you believe the Spirit lives inside you and seals you so He will never leave you. I explained the Christian life to her praying and reading the Bible. “I’m reading through the whole Bible right now,” she replied. “I’m not doing it just to be able to say I read it but to understand it as I read.” I said that was great and it takes a while. I said everything was by the Spirit’s power and Christianity was Inside out, not outside in, she could ask God to change her on the inside and then she would become a good person and do good things on the outside. I gave her The Case for Christ Answer Booklet she had heard of Strobel and I said he had other things on line but she could look at the chapters when she had time and she might fine one she was interested in. I also gave her Bible Promises for You and wrote her name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. I then gave her a Bible study saying she could do it with her Boy Friend and explained Jesus claimed to be the same God as the God of the Old Testament by what he said and did. I told her I would pray for her each day from now until Spring and one year after and asked her Boy Friends name. “Tony,” she replied. I said I’d pray for him too and hopefully in a year they would still be together and she said that was the goal. “Well, thank you, I gotta go,” she said shaking my hand. “Ok,” I said and she hurried off to class.

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

 In Him,

Bob