Battle Log

Friday, 17 January, 2020

Posted 29 January 2020, 1:14 PM by Matthew Andersen. Permalink

A battle log report of the New Zealand Summer Mission from an Australian perspective, part 1.

The first week of the Summer Mission in Christchurch started strong. The first morning a team of eight turned up which was very exciting considering it was a Monday. The week continued, with eleven people on Tuesday and similar numbers throughout. Over the course of the week I personally had 77 gospel conversations with a total of 96 people. 5 days, 11 outreaches and over the course of the week, there have been a few stand out conversations.

Every opportunity to speak of Christ is a good one. Even opportunities to challenge people about the inconsistencies in their beliefs, to point to God's existence or to reveal sin via the law are valuable as well. Occasionally though there are moments in which God seems to really be calling someone.

On the first day there was a young man named Salomse, who had only been in the country for a matter of days and had been looking for some accomodation, as he was intending to start at university in the coming weeks. At first he was being quite closed and a little hostile and was struggling to engage as he was really trying to shut it down but by God's sovereign hand there came a point where he declared that he had tried his best to convince himself that God doesn't exist, so that he could justify living his own way but he knew that wasn't true. It was a wonderful moment where I got to help him with the clarity of how one is justified and the importance of responding in faith and therefore the resultant life change that will occur.

There was an important conversation with Jamie a professing atheist and quite knowledgeable about many topics but this didn't stop the gospel being his greatest need. He first came to hear the good news, was able to explain to me the way to Heaven and how a Christian will live and then was challenged as to how he would respond to it and then the excuses started. After answering quite a range of his objections, each time pointing out that it wasn't intellect or information stopping him from trusting in Christ but his desire to live his own way, it was cemented with the analogy showing that in every other case one can simply leave the place where the rules are set but when it comes to God because we cannot leave the universe we are stuck either to obey or to try and justify our disobedience by declaring that we don't believe God exists. Jamie heard this, said it made sense and was actually the best answer he had received and said he would have to consider the gospel.

A theme of people that I spoke to was professing Christians. It is almost hard to believe how many people say they are Christians (attend evangelical Churches) and then when asked what they would say to God if He asked, "Why should I let you into Heaven?" have in the forefront of their answer or sneak it in the back that they own obedience, or their baptism, church attendance or prayer life is why they are hoping they will end up in Heaven.

The last conversation of the week was with Louis an American who had stopped by in Christchurch on his way to working in the Antartic project. He said he had grown up with a Christian grandmother and once upon a time attended church but had walked away from it all a few years back. He was surprised that we stopped to chat to him and mentioned late in the converastion that he was sure God was trying to call out to him as just that previous night he had been pondering it in his hotel room. He was able to grasp the way to Heaven and was able to answer the questions asked correctly and took a gospel of John and a tract. He was challenged not to leave this just as knowledge but to trust in Christ this day because there are many people in Hell who knew the way to Heaven and yet never responded in faith.