Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed today with good things from above. We went to a funeral for a friend’s mom and ate together after but it was a good time of closure. So I did not get to campus today. Yesterday Sam prayed to receive Christ. I otherwise just hung with some students I knew in conversation and shot down a little bad theology at a book table, so hey it’s everywhere. Sam’s story is below if you have the time. Please pray he grows in his faith.

Sam was sitting outside the glass walls of the bookstore. It turned out he had dark red curly hair short all around and a tight mop up on his head. I did not see it at first as he had a trucker hat on that red “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” which he took off as I sat down. He had a black banjo case next to his chair. His mustache was brighter red about the width of a pen light. He was wearing a dark blue hoodie that had the letters ETSU where he had been accepted to go to school, it seemed he’d originally planned for some kind of technical degree. But he went to a political rally and all the people were so cool and nice to him that he decided to major in political science. So he was doing classes at COD. I said I imagined the teachers here were pretty left leaning and he said, “Oh yeah.” I recommended Hillsdale in Michigan and he looked it up on his phone. When I first walked up I asked if he wanted to do a student survey, what he thought about God and stuff for a Bible Study group. He said he’d already done one and had just been talking to someone. I said this was different, “it’s more about how you get to Heaven”.  I said the main question was: “You’re walking down the road, 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.” “I guess I’m a good person,” he replied. So I asked, “Would you want to hear some Bible verses that tell you the answer to the question?” “There just one verse?” he asked. I said there was a group of them that explained it. “Here sit down,” he said. It seemed like conservative politics had made him more interested in faith as he said he was going to be baptized. So I said I could show him some verses and he agreed after asking how long it would take, I said 6 or 7 minutes. I began to go through the gospel and he tracked really well though he cut me off a couple times with an “I got ya.” As if I was wasting time elaborating a point. I think by now everything I say is concise and actually important but the illustration could be unnecessary if you’re quick. I explained God loved him and wanted him to believe in Him. Eternal life was, “knowing God” where He wanted to live inside you. The problem was sin, “Sin kills you; God gives you life and can’t be in the same place as sin. So He takes away your sin so He can live inside you. So what’s the big thing Jesus has done to take away your sin?” He said he did not know and then added, “I’m kind of new to this stuff.” It didn’t surprise me that someone who was about to be baptized was not yet a Christian. God has brought people who were already baptized into my path before where they understood the Gospel for the first time and prayed to receive Jesus. So I just said this is how it works and with illustrations I use I explained salvation. We were supposed to live a perfect life, and could not. So God became a man Jesus and lived a perfect life for us. They kill him but He wants to die because life is in the blood and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. “So now you’re perfect and holy inside and you match God and He can live inside you.” It’s how God gets paid. When you borrow someone’s stuff you have to give it back to them perfect how you got it. I explained that everything belongs to God. “So if I hurt you or I hurt me or I hurt the world in some way I owe God something perfect back. But, if I roll over your foot in the parking lot I don’t have an extra spare perfect foot to give to God, I can’t pay.  I explained that when we sin, hurt someone in any way we take some of their life. Jesus’ blood is filled with life because he is the creator. So when He pours out His blood it pays God back, (with life) for all the imperfect things we have done that we owe God something perfect for. I explained the righteousness of God Jesus earned it’s to our credit when He adopts us. To have all this we have to receive Jesus by faith. Our bad stuff could not be repaid by good stuff somewhere else. I said, “If I break that window I can go fix windows for free on someone’s house to pay it back. You can’t rob a bank and give the money to charity and everything is OK.” I said this was an equivocation fallacy. “I get it,” he replied. I asked if he would want to be forgiven for his sins trusting in what Jesus had done or thought something else and I gave him the cliff notes on Islam and the Buddha. “So would you want to be forgiven for your sins?” I asked. “Uh huh,” he replied. I said if he wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer he could pray, I talked him through it and said, “It says here does this prayer express the desire of you heart?” He said it did and so I said he could pray it silently. “OK,” he replied, I handed him the booklet and he said, “As silently, I get ya.” And he prayed to receive Christ. When he finished he said, “I don’t know if there is anything else in here you wanted to say.” I took the booklet saying he could keep it but quickly explained the Christian life to Him. He wanted to shop for a bible on his own. I explained living “By the Spirit’s Power, Inside Out”. “Everything in the Christian life is Just Ask, God wants to help you with everything,” I said. “You just explained this, I’m gonna say in 8 or 9 minutes, better than my teacher in my Religious Studies Class did in 2 months.” I said I wasn’t too surprised to hear that. You can’t explain what you don’t understand. He’d told me then he was going to be baptized in June. It turned out it was at a Roman Catholic Church but he had not been to the Church yet. It was near his house. I asked if there was a class and he said there was and he hadn’t taken it yet. He explained he was effectively raised atheist as his parents disagreed about faith and so decided to let him make up his own mind by telling him nothing. His dad was Roman Catholic however. I told him I would pray a Bible verse for him each day from now until the end of Spring and one year after. He said a lot of Churches seemed to be plastic Jesus. I gave him a Bible Study, I also wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front of Bible Promises for You and gave him The Case for Christ Answer Booklet he said he liked to listen, I said he could get to Strobel’s stuff on line explaining his story. I explained of one of the questions of the survey we did not do, “How likely is it you will go to Heaven when you die?” I said this was now “100% if you are trusting in the blood and righteousness of Jesus.” We talked a bit more. He said he was stuck there on Tuesdays and said if I saw him so be sure and sit and talk more. He was grateful and I shook his hand and headed out.

So Thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism if you have a chance. God has continued to bless.

In Him,

Bob