Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed with every good and perfect gift in Christ and you were encouraged. I had a good day on campus giving one guy Chase assurance of salvation. And also 2 guys each prayed to receive Jesus, Conner and Connor. They had a vowel difference between them and the first was twice the size of the second. Please pray these students are sanctified by the Spirit and grow in faith. Their responses are below if you want to spend the time.

 I had a nudge I was supposed to find someone in the cafeteria when I got to school. I walked around and asked several people with no takers and came across Connor. He was about 6’ 4” twice my weight I’d guess, but more fit. He had a basically round face and short sandy hair trimmed close to his head and a small caterpillar mustache broken in the middle over a small mouth. He had a grey pull over hoodie on and jeans. He’d been on student aid for football until he tore his ACL coupled with a torn meniscus. It seemed his playing days were done. His goal was to become a firefighter. He looked like he could carry me out of a burning house without pause. I asked him, “You’re walking down the road and 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?” He gave kind of a smirk of introspection. “In all honesty I probably shouldn’t [be let into Heaven]. Especially right now,” he replied. “It depends on if you believe in works or salvation,” he added. He thought he had a 65% chance of going to Heaven. I began to go through the Gospel with him and he knew Christ had died to take away our sin. He listened in and seemed reflective. I said all I usually say about the perfect life of Jesus we could not live and that we owe God life. He must be paid. This is the illustration I have been saying for a while now; “Say you borrow your friend’s car and you dent the fender. Then you take it to a body shop they pop out the dent you give it back to your friend and everything is for cool. But basically when you borrow someone’s stuff you have to give it back to them perfect how you got it. Well everything belongs to God; you belong to God I belong to God the world 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’m out screwing around in the parking lot and I roll over your foot and I crush it, I don’t have an extra spare perfect foot to give to God. Plus I’ve destroyed your quality of life, your shoes don’t fit, you walk with a limp you can’t dance at your wedding. So I owe you life and I owe you a foot, and I owe God life and I owe Him a foot—because he gave you the foot. But I can’t shave off years of my life to pay God what I owe. I’m old now and I don’t have enough years left but I’d be out of years by now anyway because I keep screwing up. So I owe life, but I can’t pay. But fortunately for me Jesus is the Creator God and His blood is filled with life. So when he pours out His blood it pays God back for all the imperfect stuff I’ve done that I owe God something perfect for. So the real reason God forgives me is He got PAID. But he had to pay Himself. He had to be just so there had to be a payment.” I then explained the righteousness of God Jesus earned to our credit. He died for us rose from the dead and we have to receive this by faith and faith saves you. I asked him if he wanted to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done or thought something else. I showed him the two circles. “I probably lean to the right,” he replied. (The circle on the right has God living inside you because you have asked for forgiveness for your sins.) I said, “Well the Bible says to forget what lies behind and reach forward to what lies ahead and press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of Christ Jesus. So if you’d want to have a new start there’s a prayer you can pray.” I talked him through it and asked if it expressed the desire of his heart. “Probably,” he replied. I said, “Well if you wanted to you could pray this silently right now. I wouldn’t hear you but God would hear you and you’d know you were forgiven trusting in what Jesus has done. Wanna do that?” He hesitated and thought for a moment and finally said, “Yeah.” I handed him the booklet open to the prayer and he said, “Do I get to keep this paper?” “Yeah man, for sure,” I replied about the booklet and he prayed to receive Jesus. When he finished I said the likelihood he would go to Heaven was 100% trusting in the blood and righteousness of Jesus. I began to go through the Christian life with him and asked if he had a Bible. “Sort of,” he replied. “It’s like a family Bible not your own?” I asked. “Right,” he said. “Would your own Bible?” I asked he said he would I finished the rest of the Christian life and living “By the Spirit’s Power” and living “Inside out” asking for transformation. I then showed him the Bible and the cross references and the study helps Q and A with passages and so on, hey there’s maps. I wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” on the inside. I gave it to him and he thanked me. I gave him Bible Promises for You, (which I said was NIV and easier to read than the NKJV Bible in places), The Case for Christ Answer Booklet saying Strobel had been on Shawn Ryan who Conner knew of (it’s a podcast) and a Bible study on the deity of Christ explaining the prophecy that leads it off. I told him I would pray a Bible verse for him each day from now until Spring and one Year after asking God to bless him. I grabbed my pack to go and stood up and he stood up on the opposite of the table and reached out to shake my hand (he had a great handshake). “Nice meeting you,” he said. “Nice to meet you too,” I replied. “I’ll see you in Heaven.” He was grateful and I headed out. I headed out to the Jeep (my truck is still in the shop) and got the extra Bible I brought.

 I looked around outside saw a student I know and stood in the shade to see how he was doing. Then he walked off and I found Connor sitting at a table under an umbrella. He was a real nice guy with a curly mop of brown hair on top that reached his collar in back. He was a white guy with black-framed glasses kind of rectangular oval. He was clean-shaven but only would have had a mustache and a small goatee. He had a square chin and a long face, good-looking, wore a white T-shirt and nylon sweats. Had a black laptop and some kind of calculator or it might have been a big phone in front of him. Seemed like a quiet, determined guy, nice. He said he’d do a survey kind of like he’d do me a favor. That vibe happens often enough; students are pretty cool to me even in saying no. He thought he’d like to go to Europe and I mentioned a couple of times I’d seen things there. I asked him, “You’re walking down the road and 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?” He said, “Um… I’m nice to everyone. I treat people how they would like to be treated.” “The golden rule,” I replied. “That’s my thing,” he confirmed. He thought he had a 99% chance of going to Heaven. He said he went to church on Easter. I began to go through the Gospel with him; he was really friendly and engaged. I asked what Jesus had done back in History to take away the sins of the world. “I know you’re washed; I don’t remember how,” he replied. I said something like, this is how it works and explained the perfect life of Christ His blood to cleanse him and be a payment, the righteousness of God. God could live inside him. “Beautiful,” he replied. I read that 500 saw him after He rose. I said he needed to receive Jesus, believe on Him name. So if you believe Jesus is God died for you sins and rose from the dead. Not that you just kind of knew the story from being a kid but that that’s what you put your trust in as an adult. So if someone would say to you why should God let you into Heaven you’d say, “Because Jesus died for me, that would mean you had faith in Jesus. Faith and grace saved you not works as your good stuff could not fix your bad stuff. I asked if he would want to be forgiven for his sins trusting in Jesus or thought something else. “Be forgiven,” he said. So I said if he wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer he could pray and read through it and asked if it expressed the desire of his heart. “Yeah be a part of it,” he replied. So I said he could pray it silently I wouldn’t hear but God would he’d know he was forgiven. “Of course,” he replied. He took the booklet and as he did said, “Thank you.” When he finished I explained the likelihood he would not go to Heaven was 100% trusting in the blood and righteousness of Jesus. “Beautiful,” he said, expression he used it seemed.. “Keep doing this, you have a passion,” he said. “Yeah, thanks for the encouragement,” I said. “I’m trying to help people understand.” “The world needs more people like you,” he said. “I don’t know about that,” I said. Then I said it probably needed more people to talk about God maybe not like me, but my wife liked me. As I went through the Christian life he didn’t have a Bible so I gave him one and wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” on the inside. I also gave him, Bible Promises for You, (which I said again was NIV and easier to read than the NKJV Bible in places) The Case for Christ Answer Booklet mentioning Strobel’s story.  He got a Bible study on the deity of Christ; explaining the prophecy that leads it off and walking on the water in Job. I told him I would pray a Bible verse for him each day from now until Spring and one year after asking God to bless him. He was grateful and I headed out.

 So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance. God truly blessed. It’s my birthday tomorrow and Ellen’s Sunday so we’re gonna chill if we can avoid the heat west of Chicago.

 In Him,

Bob