Battle Log
Wednesday, 28 October, 2020
Posted 28 October 2020, 5:26 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink
Tuesday: I was online before heading to Riccarton.
Online: two conversations stand out in my mind.
In the first one, I used the new way of sharing the gospel that Ryan showed me during training Sunday. It’s more concise and utilises questions throughout that attempts to get the person to really think through what is being explained. I was really encouraged to see the penny drop early for this guy! I’m going to work on memorising this technique and then rebuild my gospel sharing workflow. I’ll aim to stick to the concise method, and pull in the other tools as I need them. Constantly wanting to get better at sharing the gospel - but will ever be dependent on God using my feeble efforts to his glory! I’m so grateful to be around a team of evangelists equipping and encouraging me.
The second conversation was with a young lady from Canada wearing a mask. She often thinks about what happens after life, and so was quickly engaged in the conversation. Glory to God, the gospel made sense to her, and then her questions started rolling! She esp. had questions about the paranormal, demons and angels. She started following needGod.net on Instagram and was keen to download a Bible onto her phone, start reading, and find a local church. I leave her in God’s capable hands.
Roger joined me at Riccarton (pictured).
The highlight conversation was with a young man who was trying to do skateboard tricks out of busy car traffic! :O I was able to strike up a conversation with him. It turns out he had grown up in a Christian school environment - so I asked him, “what do you understand a Christian has to do to go to heaven?” His answer: “be good”. He had tried to meet the standard, but failed (as we all do) so had given up. Sadly, although friendly, he was very resistant to the good news of the gospel.
Wednesday: I was in the city before joining the Aussie team online.
In the city, I hadn’t even made it to the Square before I saw an old workmate. He stopped and we ended up having a long chat. As we talked, a number of my “regulars” would go past. I managed to interact with some of them and this made an easy bridge to talk to my old workmate about the gospel. He doesn’t believe in the trinity - so we discussed that for a while, before I decided to steer the conversation towards justification. He had a different understanding of the word “faith” than I did - and in the end he said he was trusting his faith to get him to heaven! He had to get back to work, but I was able to point him to the sixty second video clips on the social media accounts of needGod.net as examples of people coming to a proper understanding of faith.
I had a great chat with a couple of teens across the river from Oxford Terrace. One of them had grown up Atheist, but had been investigating religions including Christianity - he had a reasonably good grasp of the concept of justification by faith alone, but not a complete grasp of what that faith needed to be in, which I was happy to explain. It was great watching the penny drop.
I had a number of chats in Cashel Mall and before I knew it, my time was up!
I headed home to go online. I was first up to live stream. I had a string of difficult conversations - but that is okay!
Thank you for your prayer and support of the Christchurch (NZ) team! :)