Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
I hope you had a good day and were blessed in the Lord. I had a good day on campus and a girl, Kris, prayed with me to receive Christ. It was after my class and I was pretty worn out after talking with peeps for another hour, encouraging some Christians and giving them assurance of salvation by faith. I was headed down the hall of the science building to go out, as I still had to finish a bit of a Bible study and had been at school for 5 hours without a break. I was spent and almost walked past her to go home and write. Talking to her perked me right up though. Kris was sitting on a bench looking at her phone and I had kind of walked right into her, cutting across a hallway when the elevator was out of service and I had to stay on the ground floor. So I knew I was supposed to ask her. She said she’d do a survey for the Bible study group. She wanted to help recovering drug addicts. She had a colorful bow-tie tattoo at her throat (I think part of something larger) poking up out of the top of her t-shirt and another plaid shirt she wore the shirt tails out of over tights she had on. Her black lace-up boots had the toes covered in metal studs. She had chin-length short brown hair with highlights and black round-rimmed glasses. Tiny stars were tattooed on her right temple, sweeping up onto the edge of her forehead, and she had larger colored stars tattooed on several of her fingers. She was cute and really. She said she had relatives who were “really religious” Catholics, her aunt was a nun. She’d bought her own Bible a couple years back to understand what she read better. It seemed like she meant she’d gotten a easier English version than what relatives had supplied. She was fun to talk to. She agreed with the Gospel, though she did not remember how sin was taken away. When I started talking about the Cross after a couple minutes she said, “Oh I remember now!” She would give short little phrases of agreement or affirmation as I read a verse and explained things. After I went through the Gospel with her I offered her forgiveness by faith and she wanted to be forgiven. I walked her through the prayer and helped her see she had really not been trusting in what Christ had done for her on the Cross. She couldn’t have been trusting in what she had forgotten even the basic facts of, but I felt like I should help her understand more even after walking her through the prayer. In asking her then, she said believed Jesus was God, had died for her sins and risen from the dead, saying she “was raised to believe that” (though she’d said she went to church only if there was a baptism or a wedding) but asked, “Isn’t everyone a child of God?” I explained that some people did not want to be God’s child and were not. And reading again for her John 1:12, I explained again this was something God gave those who believe in Him and trusted in what He had done for them. I explained that other religions were not offering Heaven to people and many who practiced them did not want to be in Heaven with God anymore than she wanted to spend eternity in a box with her ex-boyfriend. “I definitely don’t want to spend eternity in a box with my ex-boyfriend.” she replied. That was funny, but I was somehow too tired to see that at the time. “Some people hate God,” I replied. She understood and decided to pray to be forgiven, having God live inside her. And she silently did. I explained the life of the Holy Spirit in her and gave her a leather-bound copy of a Book of Bible Promises I had gotten at an estate sale on the weekend. She really liked that. I also gave her a Bible study on the Deity of Christ and explained one miracle to her and she liked that a lot, too. Fortunately I got her email as I want to send her some stuff. She thanked me a couple times and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you.” I told her it was a pleasure to meet her too and it really was.
I had walked around for a couple hours before class without having very many good conversations, except with Muhammad from Pakistan, right before my class on Islam at school interestingly enough. He was 20 with a short beard except on his chin where it pointed out. He had real faded light blue jeans on and classic black rimmed glasses and a funky cap on. We talked for a long time about the differences between Islam and Christianity as I went through the Gospel. He recommended a guy for me to watch on YouTube and I told him to check out Dr. Michael Heiser on the Two powers of Judaism there. He took the pamphlet on ‘Jesus in the Quran’ from me and The Bible Promise Book, which I thought might get him to read a few verses. His dad had worked his way up from being dirt poor to finally getting to the US, leaving a job as a higher-up in the Education department there. He came here to do menial jobs for the sake of his kids education, now in his late 60’s. Great story. Muhammad was very committed to keeping himself pure and thought he did not want an arraigned marriage and saw many Muslims dating “against the rules of our religion”. He thought he did not want to be with a girl who had even kissed anyone else, and we talked about that. Good seeds of kindness planted I hope (but then maybe he thought the same). He pointed out that the way he understood it, he might go to Hell. But because he was a Muslim, eventually God would release him after he had kind of done his time (not really paid for) for his sins. At one point he played a 2 minute YouTube for me, holding it up to my ear pressing it against my face (odd, but nice of him to help me. I think he might have thought it was not loud enough). The YouTube was critiques of Christianity by a guy who said some correct things. I agreed with some of them and gave some insight on others. We talked about the impact of culture. Great talk.
So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance, God really blessed.
In Him,
Bob
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