My 7th year of teaching begins in two days. Who would have thought all those years ago that I would be a teacher and that I would last 7 years at doing it? God has been good to me by providing a job that has, for the most part, been a steady source of employment and income. I am blessed to work at a school where I can freely share the Gospel and invest in the lives of students who need to know Christ and learn how to walk with Him. I am looking forward to this school year with hopes that it will be a blessing to the students and that they might grow not only in their scholastic knowledge, but also in the knowledge of Christ.
I had something happen a few weeks ago that I can't talk about freely at this time (that will be a different blog for a different day...when that day comes). I can only say that I can't believe that something this cool happened for Nicole and me.
This past Friday night was symbolic of many of our recent Friday night evangelism outreaches in our community. It is getting harder and harder to simply hand someone a Gospel tract! I had about a 10 percent success rate of people accepting the tracts I was offering them. Nicole has always been better at handing out gospel tracts than me! But we weren't out to merely pass out literature. We were out to verbally share with people about the Hope that is within us. We were joined by our friends Nathan, Laura, and Kelly. They all go to different churches but we all share a passion for proclaiming the Gospel to "strangers".
Nicole shared with a guy named Colton and his female friend who is also named Nicole. After Nicole had presented the law first (to show them what "sin" is and why they need a Savior) she then presented the Gospel to them (that Jesus Christ died on the cross for their sins, was buried in a tomb, and rose 3 days later....and that they must repent and believe this message in order to be born again). Nicole told me that Colton said "I have never thought of it that way". They had no religious upbringing but seemed receptive. Pray for Colton and his friend Nicole!
Nathan and I started the night by talking with a young man named Robert. Robert was enthusiastic about being a Christian. He said he had been a Christian since the "age of 3". He spoke of going to church on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. He spoke of being filled with the Holy Spirit. He spoke of church being a "really cool place, with really awesome music". There was, however, a problem with Robert. When we asked him to share the Gospel with us he stammered for a bit and talked about how he would invite someone to church and that they needed to hear the good music (or something to that effect). He spoke nothing about Jesus or what Jesus did for us (His death, burial, and resurrection). In essence, he was proclaiming a Christ-less Christianity. After making sure we understood him correctly, I read Galatians 1 to him (Robert) and talked about how if we have a false Gospel we are to be accursed (Galatians 1:9). Robert had a false Gospel. He was well meaning and sounded like he wanted to be spiritual. But he was ignorant of the Gospel. I told him that it was impossible for him to have the filling and indwelling of the Holy Spirit if he was not born again through faith in the Gospel (it is a logical conclusion that if you don't know what the Gospel is or understand what the Gospel is...that you cannot believe in something that you don't know/understand). We took him through the law and then proclaimed the Gospel to him. By the end of our conversation he understood that he has to repent and believe the Gospel. Whether or not that had actually happened earlier in his life is not up to me to judge. Perhaps he did believe the Gospel correctly when he was young and just has had poor discipleship and doesn't know how to articulate his faith at this point in time. Or, this was Nathan and my's suspicion, he has never heard the biblical Gospel and has been given false assurances for most of his life that he is in fact a born again Christian when in fact he has never repented and believed the Gospel as the Bible teaches it (1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 10:9-10, John 3:16-18, Titus 3:5, Romans 3:23-25, etc...). Pray for Robert that he would either be born again or that if he is already born again that he would study the scriptures more to know how to give an account for the hope that is within him (1 Peter 3:15).
I have been using a new Gospel tract to initiate conversations with people not only about the Gospel, but also about the topic of abortion. You can read what the tract says HERE. I began a conversation with a young man named Giovanni. Sadly, even though his mom got pregnant with him when she was 14 years old and chose to keep him, Giovanni was pro-choice. Though I tried to reason with him about the sanctity and value of life he was stubborn in his views. After a while I announced "I have been addressing your intellect and some of your moral viewpoints, now I would like to address your conscience" and I took him through the law and the Gospel. Giovanni, like all of us, was guilty of sinning against God (lying, stealing, blasphemy, dishonoring his mother, etc...) and was in need of a Savior. Sadly, he wasn't humbled or in a state where he saw that he needed saving. Pray that the Lord would send other believers to Giovanni to preach the Gospel and teach him what the Bible says. Pray also, that he would repent and believe the Gospel!
The atmosphere, as I alluded to earlier, is changing. It seems like people are less and less receptive to the Gospel. It also seems like people have less and less of a knowledge of the Bible and what it actually teaches. If our nation is to recover we need to turn back to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! We need to return to the Bible. Most importantly, we need faith in Christ! This passage from the Old Testament is very true.
Hosea 4:6a "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..."
While that passage is talking about Israel, I feel it can be applied in a general sense to why the people in any nation get worse and worse morally (which leads to the lack of receptivity to the things of God - the Bible, the Gospel, etc...). People not only in our nation, but also in all nations of the world, are perishing for a lack of knowledge. Let's get out there and share the Truth with them, while there is still time!
No comments:
Post a Comment