Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your weekend has been bless so far walking by faith. God blessed last week where Kaitlyn, Ivy, Vanna each prayed to receive Jesus. Vanna emailed me after saying, “This is Vanna from yesterday morning. I believe it was God’s intention for me to hear from you that day so I prayed about you. Thank you for your guidance, it helped me more than you know. And thank you for the books, I have started looking into them and I will be reading them every night.” 

I also a good day on campus on Thursday and Princess prayed to receive Jesus. Her story is below if you have the time. Please pray these grow in their faith.

Princess was sitting in a chair that is by itself facing the construction that is now a wall of drywall blocking renovations to the SSC lounge. She had on a trucker’s ball cap tilted back on her head a bit with straight bangs and straight black hair down past her shoulders. She was a fair skinned African American. She was slight in build wearing a grey sweatshirt with some printing on it I never had the angle to read. She had a pretty face with a triangle nose and sharp jawline with a bright smile.  She looked 20 years old. I found out she was a mother in her answer to the question: What’s one thing you’d like to do before you die? “Something to do with my children, leave them a lot of wealth. But not just money.” I agreed saying wealth in terms of money can badly screw people up. She agreed. I asked her what she would say to God if she died and He asked: “Why should I let you into Heaven?” “Ooo, Oo,” she replied thinking about it. “I’m not, ha ha… that’s terrible,” she said then continued after some thought. “Because I was trying to know more about Him that’s the Honest to God truth.” She thought she had a 50/50 chance of going to Heaven. I began to go through the Gospel with her saying God loved her and had created her and wanted her to believe in Him. Eternal life was knowing God—that He would live inside her. But everyone is sinful so like a blood transfusion first God had to make her His “type” taking her sins away. I asked her what God did with Jesus to take away her sins. “Isn’t it something with the water?” she asked.  I said, “That’s part of the symbolism it works like this,” I went on to explain that Jesus died for her and His blood cleansed her from all sin and was a payment to God for what we owe Him.  “Hmm,” she replied understanding the atonement for the first time. I explained the righteousness of God earned by Christ, which was to her credit by God adopting her as His child. She needed to receive Jesus, to believe Jesus was God, died for her sins and rose from the dead. This happened by grace through faith. I turned to the page with 2 circles one was being forgiven with the Holy Spirit living inside her to give her strength and take her to Heaven when she died. The other was God living outside her like the god of Islam. “So would you want to be forgiven trusting in Jesus or do you think something else?” I asked. “Definitely forgiven,” she said pointing to the circle with Christ inside her life. I said if she wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer she could pray and I talked her through it and read, “Does this prayer express the desire of your heart?” She said it did and I said she could pray it silently and she took the booklet and prayed to receive Jesus. I began to go through the Christian life with her. She said she had been meaning to get a Bible so I gave her one that had a couple Bible reading plans and maps and wrote her name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. I told her that everything in the Christian life was “By the Spirit’s Power” and He would give her all the strength she needed just by asking. Christianity is “Inside Out not outside in, first we are transformed on the inside and then do good things on the outside.” I explained that as soon as she asked God to forgive her trusting in Jesus God lived in her and would then take her to Heaven. “You know what this is like, say you have a friend back in High School and you just hang around with him all year then one day he says to you, ‘So we are going to prom,’ You’d say, ‘Maybe as soon as you ask.’” She laughed and agreed. “Pretty girls like to be asked and God is like that, I explained, you have to ask Him to forgive you trusting in Jesus.” “I have some questions,” she said. “Ok shoot,” I said. Are there many different versions of the Bible?” I said there were and each was trying to use words that are either closest to the original language or help communicate the idea better. I explained the NKJV I gave her and that it was updated. The KJV was originally based on Tyndale’s translation, which they burned him at the stake for writing. It might be a bit harder to understand but she could go to Biblegateway.com and look at other versions if the language was hard to follow. I told her I would give her Bible Promises for You and it was the New International Version and the verses in it might be easier. Then she asked, “What do you think about people saying they Manifest?” I said as best I understood it people that claim that believe they can make demands of God or of the universe, often for wealth, “Like we said before wealth might destroy them.” I explained she would really not want God to give everything she asked for because He is much wiser and knows what will happen better than we do. He might not want to give you something because something bad will happen if He does. You might want a job but driving there will get you in an accident where you kill 4 children, so He does not give it to you. “Think about your own children,” I said. “Say one of them watched a YouTube where a guy was cutting down trees with a chainsaw and they ask you if they can have a chain saw so you say, ‘Fine I’ll save up and get you one.’ You wouldn’t say that because they might cut off their foot with a chainsaw. Sometimes we don’t know it but we are asking God for a chainsaw we can’t handle.” She accepted that. Then she said someone had told her that slave owners made the slaves Christians so that they would accept slavery. I explained that the opposite was often true. Paul encouraged people to be free if they could in the Bible. I explained what slavery had been in the U.S.. After the first few decades here where white Europeans were made slaves, all slavery here was black people who were kidnapped from Africa. They were either kidnapped by Arab slavers from their tribe or another tribe raided them and enslaved them. They were brought to the coast and sold to white people (usually) who brought them here.  But everyone was kidnapped at first or born to people who were kidnapped here. The Bible teaches that kidnapping was punishable by death so no one had the right from the Bible to hold on to kidnapped people. Also in the Old Testament you could only be enslaved in Israel for 7 years then the law required you be made free unless you did not want to be and that slavery was part of the welfare system for women. I explained many states did not allow people to free their slaves even if they inherited them and did not want them. There were too many black people and not enough work for them if all were made free at once and they would starve. It wasn’t like you could just go get a job at a 7.11 selling slushies. Everyone in the south mostly worked on farms.  Some could not fend for themselves. But some people found a way to free their slaves. George Washington took some of his slaves out of Virginia where he lived (where they could not legally be free) to Washington DC where they could be freed. When he left after his time as president was over he freed them and they stayed there. She liked that story. I told her some unpleasant things about Lincoln too that are good to know, in case someone brought that up. I explained, people were sometime enslaved by the Romans for committing crimes. Paul encouraged people to try to become free but some could not but probably the majority of slaves in Paul’s time were not black people either. So the Bible did not support slavery like we had here where black people were kidnapped. The truth is many slave owners refused to teach their slaves to read knowing if they read the Bible for themselves they would want freedom. People telling her the opposite of that were trying to make other people distrust the Bible. “They also try to say it is a white religion but the first guy to bring the Gospel to Africa was the Ethiopian Eunuch (which I defined) who worked for the Queen of Ethiopia. He was told the Gospel by Phillip who was a Jew from the Middle East who walked around in the sun all day so he was dark. So he wasn’t a white guy, “He looked a lot more like you than me,” I said. The paintings of Jesus that make Him look white in the Middle Ages were painted by people in Europe. The Jews they knew were most often converts to Judaism not from the Middle East so they looked European unlike Jesus,” I explained. I also gave her a copy of The Case for Christ Answer Booklet and a Bible Study on the ways Jesus claims to be God. I told her now the likelihood she would go to Heaven was 100% and that as so as she asked for forgiveness the Holy Spirit entered her and sealed her; God would always be with her. I told her I would pray a Bible verse for her each day through Spring and one year after asking God to bless her. She said she would pray for me too. “Thank you so much,” she said as I was getting up to go. “Your welcome God bless you,” I replied. “God bless you as well, have a good one,” she replied and I headed off. After walking down the hall it dawned on me I did not know her kids’ names. I went back and asked if she could tell me them so I could pray for them too. She said, “Raquel, Ioshe (with a y sound not i) and Austin,” she thanked me again and I blessed her again and headed off.

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

In Him,

Bob