Hi Everyone

Today is our first outreach of the 2024. I have been looking forward to this for a long time!

Present today: Pastor Jarryd, Mike, Di, Maree, Peck & Simeon. June, Frances and Helen met us down at the shops.

I opened with John 4:34-38:

“Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.””

We spoke of the importance of sharing the Gospel. The harvest field is getting bigger and bigger, but time is getting shorter and shorter. Eventually God’s patience will run out with the world, so we need to make sure we tell as many as we can. We prayed for boldness and strength to tell the truth in love to everyone we met.

It was a nice but windy summers morning down at the shops. Not too many people were about, but still enough people for us to engage with. 

The first person I engaged with I recognised. I had a feeling I had spoken to him before. He did tell me his name, but I didn’t record it, and have since forgotten it. He was tossing back two big whitebait fritters from one of the food caravans. They smelt divine, and my tummy started rumbling. I asked him about the afterlife, and he said he was going to heaven because he was born again. Lots of people say that to me, but can’t explain what it means. So I asked him. He looked at me and asked “You don’t know what it means to be born again?”. I said I did, but was wanting his explanation. He turned it back on me, and asked my thoughts. I didn’t want to answer, because from experience, as soon as I do, people just say ‘yeah, that’s what I think so too’, without really understanding it. So I kept on returning the volley back. He told me that in the Bible it says that you must be born again. I sighed internally, and decided to start from scratch, asking him if he thought he was a good person. He said he used to be a ratbag back in the day, but not so much now. He still lies though, and murders through hatred. That was OK still, apparently, because he is born again. There was no conviction for what he was doing. It really was an exercise in futility trying to converse with this guy, as he was just stonewalling me every step, and his self-righteousness was making me sick, So I thanked him for the chat and wished him well.

The next guy I stopped around by the subway turned out to be a surreal conversation. By surreal I mean it was a ‘what on earth was that about?’ conversation. I asked him if there was a God, and he said yes, he sees him every night. He said he does astral travel, an out of body experience made popular by cultists like the Theosophists. He said he believes in the Maori religious gods. He travels astrally, and the gods give him permission to talk to his ancestors. They told him that everything is going to be alright. His eyes were big and glazed over, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was also taking something medically as well. He politely asked me to respect him for what he believes in. I said I did, but that it didn’t mean I should try to warn him of the consequences of what he was doing. I asked him if he was a good person, and he said yes. He admitted to lying, stealing and blasphemy. When I asked him if he would be innocent or guilty of breaking God’s laws, he got a bit squirmish. He didn’t want to talk anymore, and politely left. He took a tract, and I encouraged him to read it for his eternal safety.

I spied a woman sitting across from the food caravan, so I thought it would be safe to engage her. I never normally approach women on their own, for safety and accountability reasons, but it was in public view with people passing by. Her name was Ta’i. I asked her where she would go when she died. She said “Oh, definitely heaven!”. I asked her when you stand before God and He asks her why He should let her into heaven, you would say “Because…”. She said “Because I have tried my best to make a difference in this world, to be a better person.”. She was pointing to her works to save her. I asked her how she knew if she had done enough to earn God’s favour. She said no one knew, we just needed to try our best, and leave the decision to God. I tested her goodness, and she turned out to be a lying thief, who murders with her words. She was shocked and a little offended at my evaluation of her – which isn’t actually mine, it’s God’s, as defined by scripture! She said if that was true, she would go to hell. I asked her how she was going to make it to heaven, and she said she would ask for forgiveness and change her ways. I used the courtroom analogy to explain the folly of this, and she agreed it wouldn’t work. I asked her what God did so that we don’t need to go to hell? She said He died on the cross to take our sins away. I asked her if that was true, why was she relying on her goodness to make it to heaven? She thought for a while and said we need to do both. We went back and forth a while, me using analogies pointing out that anything less than 100% faith in Christ is not faith at all. She said she used to go to a Seventh Day Adventist Church. Straight away I asked her if she needed to keep the Sabbath to go to heaven? She said yes. Baptism? Yes. It was God’s providential timing that this came up during the 100% faith question, as I used that to show her the folly of her answers. She said I was crossing a line questioning her Christianity, when she was following what the church told her. I asked her which should she be trusting more – God’s word, or the church? She said both. I said that if the church teach something opposite to God’s word, should she listen to them? Ta’i had had enough by then, and stood to leave. She took a Good Person tract from me, and I asked her to consider what we talked about as her eternal destiny was at stake.

Later in the morning the group was gathered discussing their morning, and I joined them. A gentleman walked by, so I decided to engage him. I asked him about the afterlife, but he wanted to tell me a Bible story – something about where God was asked if there were 10 people in the city would He spare the city. He got the story wrong. I always just let them talk and have their say, then segue back to the Gospel. But one of the team challenged the validity of the story, and he took exception to it. He started yelling and abusing us. We asked him to calm down, but he just got louder. He tried to rip the Gospel tracts out of my hand. He got one, and tore it up in front of my face, swearing and cursing at me. A couple of the group, including Frances – who is in her 70’s and half my size – got in between us, and managed to move him away. He left still swearing and abusing us. Mike mentioned afterwards that he has spoken to this gentleman before, and he said he talks to Jesus every morning. I’m wondering which Jesus that is. It was a good teaching experience, something to note for future Gospel conversations.

It was near the end of the outreach, and I didn’t want to end it on that bad experience. I walked past some of the stall vendors, and stopped a couple of guys on their bikes. They were very receptive at first, but then lost interest when it came to the Gospel. They started cycling in circles out of boredom, and then just scooted off. One of them did take a tract, so all is not lost. 

There is no such thing as a Gospel conversation in vain, as God’s will is always done regardless of the outcome. So we give thanks to God for all our interactions today, as the Gospel seed was either planted or watered. We leave the results in His hands!

Blessings

Craig.