Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed and your light shined before men and they glorified God. I had good days on campus this week and Aby and Jude each prayed to receive Jesus Thursday. Their responses are below if you have some time you want to spend reading. Leo, David and Vee also prayed to receive Jesus this short week. Please pray they grow in their faith by the power of the Spirit sanctifying them.

 Aby was sitting at a counter height table in the cafeteria. She was just finishing eating lunch but was willing to talk as she ate. She had on a blue T-shirt and jeans and had an oval face. Her nose was pierced on each side and she had straight dark brown hair parted down the middle. She said she wanted to have a family and kind of looked like a mom somehow. I asked her, “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?” “Because I’ve done all I can to make him proud of me,” she replied. She thought she had and 85-90% chance of going to Heaven and was Roman Catholic. She finished some kind of wrap for lunch as I went through the Gospel with her. I asked her what Jesus had done back in History to take away her sins. She had a mouthful and smirked and got out the words, “The Apple.” I said that was how sin entered the world but what did Jesus do to take it away. “He forgives?” she said in a half questioning tone of voice. I said Well this is how it works and told her of the blood Jesus shed to cleanse her sins and pay God back for all the life we had damaged we owed Him for. He earned God’s righteousness it could be to her credit when God adopted her. Jesus rose from the dead and if she placed her trust in this, that He was God, had died for her sins and rose from the dead that would mean she had faith and faith saved her. She began to glance at her Apple watch and I realized I had run out of time. But she said she wanted to be forgiven when I asked and I said there was a prayer she could pray if she did. “Wanna do that?” I asked. She said, “Yeah,” and she took the booklet and prayed to receive Jesus. I just had enough time to give her Bible Promises for You and write her name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front and she said, “Thank you, have a good one.” I said, “Your welcome,” and she ran off to class.

 I came across Jude sitting on a bench in the west most science building on the south side. He was Latino and had a shaggy hair cut shorter than what I’d call a mop of hair. He wore a blue hoodie and grey sweats. He was clean-shaven beat-up skin with some pencil eraser size bumps on his jaw line. He had a narrow nose rounded on the end and a small chin. He was a click bigger than me size wise. He had a 2 inch by 1.5 inch cross around his neck with what looked like cz stones across it both ways. I think they were too large to be diamonds. Though the ones grown in a lab are indistinguishable from those mined. It hung from a heavy looking braided chain. But it made me ask him if he wanted to do a survey. He asked what it was about, it seemed like other groups had approached him on campus. He showed me a NT from the Navigators.  [Some groups go around and do surveys and do not go through the Gospel with students. It would require a little training to go through the Gospel but you could just read the verses of the Roman Road and have a prayer available for someone to pray. I add a lot including other verses about Christ’s righteousness, God making all things into good, and cleansing of Christ’s blood and some others I just quote out loud and ask questions. So I do not know why students are not directed to go through the Gospel when they do surveys. There is a cult on campus that adds to salvation by baptism and good works. They do not go through the Gospel when they approach people because they want them IN their church where they can begin to indoctrinate them with a works-based gospel and control their lives.] So I said the big question is really, “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?” I said the survey was the answer to that question. “What would you say is the answer to the question?” he asked. I said my answer was in this booklet. I pulled it out sat down beside him and began to go through the Gospel using it. I got his name and showed him mine on the back. He knew Jesus had died on the cross to take away the sins of the world. I explained how that worked, the life in the shed blood of Christ to cleanse him and pay God for the sin we had done destroying life, I explained the righteousness of Christ also His resurrection. It seemed he had seen some dark things and had done wrong things himself. He asked about that. I said the problem of evil was a question for every philosophy and religious view, why it existed. But that outside of Christianity these others could not tell you what evil and good actually looked like or for certain what an evil action was, I explained no one But God could control outcomes and so be ultimately good, but we could be directed to good actions broadly speaking by the Bible. Evil actions destroy your soul and give opportunities for daemons. I said darkness was the absence of life and so people became darker when they reject God light. He said he thought people got things from evil actions, I agreed but said these gains did not last but that Satan could not remove good feelings of success from evil accomplishments though he would if he could. People can be tricked into it by Satan to do increasingly evil things so that they then do not think they can be forgiven. He asked if that was true. I said God’s forgiveness was worth an infinite amount because of the value of the blood of Christ and because then because He as God did the work. But I thought it was possible someone could become psychotic, their mind broken could not be reached. Satan hated God and so hated humans who were made in His image. Satan could not strike God but he could try to hurt those in His likeness, strangely enough Satan even hates his own followers. I offered him receiving Christ by faith. I asked if he would want to be forgiven asking God to forgive him based on what Jesus had done or thought something else. He said, “I want to be forgiven.” So I said then there was a prayer he could pray and talked him through it. I asked if it was the desire of his heart. He said it was. So I said he could pray it silently. “Wanna do that?” “Yeah,” he replied. And he took the booklet and prayed to receive Jesus. I said that as soon as he believed Ephesians 1:13 said the Holy Spirit entered him and sealed him. He asked if that was forever (I think that’s the word he used). I said it was because Christ’s blood was a power in the world that continued to forgive him so God could continue to live inside him and God knew the attitude of his heart. “State of Grace,” he said. I said yes you are in a state of Grace because of the blood of Jesus you received by faith. He had probably heard of the term in sacramentalism in the Roman Church. I was redefining it as something you did not leave because of the work of Christ. I started to give him a book and he did not want take it until I explained that people give me money for books to give to students (so if you have given us money for that thanks). I wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front of Bible Promises for You I gave him a Bible study explaining it and The Case for Christ Answer Booklet. I went through the Christian life with him saying to read in John and the Christian life was “By the Spirit’s Power”, “Inside Out”. He asked me why people tell him to begin reading the Bible in John. I said of the 4 Gospels John, Matthew, Mark and Luke, John has no parables and so there are not any stories to explain and it is mostly about the 7 Miracles Jesus did and that Jesus is God. That’s the basic idea you have to have first so that it makes sense of everything else. He accepted that. He asked me why I had approached him and I said because of his cross. I think he was looking for a “guided by the Spirit” response. God leads me to people by prayer. I have asked students to talk with crosses around their neck who have said “no.” He said he was religious because he had seen a lot of bad stuff and he did not have anything else. 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 objected to that asking why I would pray for him for the next year and a half though I might not see him again. I said Jesus told us to love others and that was my way of doing that. He said he would pray for me, probably later that day or the following day. He thanked me I shook his hand. “I can tell you have the Spirit,” he said and I shook his hand again and said God bless you and headed off.

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

 In Him,

Bob