Hi Everyone

Present today Maree, June, Peck, Helen & Mike.

I opened with 2 Cor 6:1-2:

We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says:

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

(2 Cor 6:1-2)

We prayed for boldness to tell the truth, for time is short, and no one knows when the day of the Lord will come – hence today may be their last chance, this may be their day of salvation!

I got a lift down to the shops with Mike. It was a beautiful clear but crispy cold day, and the nice weather brought the crowd out.

Stephen – as I was handing out tracts, Mike struck up a conversation with Stephen. He was hard to miss – wearing a top  with the Gospel message on it loud and clear! I went over to join them. Stephen was quite unfamiliar with the Gospel message itself, but he seemed pretty genuine in his faith after some checking questions. He reminded me of myself early in my Christian walk – all vigour and vim with all this passion to share the Gospel, but no idea how to go about it. For this reason, I am eternally grateful to God for faithful ministries like Living Waters, and NeedGod, who provide practical steps on evangelism. We were able to encourage Stephen, and I gave him a handful of tracts for him to pass out as a way of building up confidence. He thanked us as he left. 

Sam – this guy listened to everything we were saying, but it was obvious that he was totally tuned out. He was respectful to us, but rejected the Gospel. I guess he expects that when he respectfully refuses God’s mercy, God will be kind to him. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. 

Samson – this guy was walking his bike through the market when I stopped him for a chat. Unfortunately, his sarcasm took the better of him. I asked him if he had any thoughts on the afterlife, and he said yes, but they were nothing to do with me. I said I would like to hear his thoughts about if he would make it to heaven or not. He said he would, but not via anything I would know about. His sarcasm was the sort that could escalate quickly, so I wished him well on Judgement Day and left him to it.

Peters – this Sri Lankan gentleman was very respectful, but just as lost as the last two conversations. He told me it was all about being good, and if you are good, you will do well in the next life (that is, reincarnation). I asked if he believed in God, and he said of course. I asked him if he had always kept God’s rules. He said God wasn’t like that, in having lots and lots of rules. So I asked him about justice. Yes, he believed in justice. Did he believe in punishment for crimes? Yes. So if my crime was against the creator of the universe, how am I punished? He reverted back to reincarnation. I said that reincarnation was not a punishment, as there was no remorse for anything in the previous life. Peters couldn’t come up with an answer to that, so he just said that we just all need to do our best and be nice to one another, then walked away. I wished him well also on Judgement Day as he left.

Hamiora – Mike was chatting to this guy while I was busy with Peters. He thought he was good enough to make it to heaven, even when faced with the bottomless list of crimes he had committed. No amount of swaying softened his heart that Mike could see, but you never know how God was working within him.

Moses – this was our last chat. I walked over to Mike chatting to this Samoan gentleman. I overheard him say that he goes to church every week, and that he had a bunch of nephews that were being trained as Pastors. On the surface it could seem that this gentleman was good to go, but as I have learnt from the past, you can’t take these things for granted. So I threw him a checking question – between 1-100, how sure was he that he would go to heaven when he died? To our astonishment, he said he had no idea! I think I physically took a step back, like a boxer that had just taken a jab to the nose. I couldn’t believe he had no assurance. So I asked him what he would say to God if asked why he should be allowed into heaven. He pointed to his good works. I asked him what his nephews would say if I asked them how to get to heaven, and he said he had no idea. This guy was lost and didn’t really care. At the end he got pretty frustrated, and bid farewell to us. He did take a tract, though, so we pray something will hit home.

So we had  an awesome day out today – God was working through us, even if we couldn’t see any results!

God Bless

Blessings

Craig.