Battle Log

It’s the end of another awesome week of gospel outreach.  Another week of God’s patience.  A standard week this week, although I stayed online on Friday due to rain.  I’ll work backwards in my report, starting with today’s (Sunday) outreach in Cashel Mall.

It was a mini outreach revival.  There was a team of 6!  Binu, Mike, David, Susan, Tanush and myself.

I started out on my own in my usual spot, corner of Cashel and Colombo.  They JW’s had taken my flipchat spot; so I stashed it and decided to hand out tracts close by.  I got into a good chat with one of my regulars when Susan turned up.  And then Tanush turned up.  We grabbed the flip chart, and moved down the mall to a nice sunny spot half way down, we prayed and got into it.  Tanush and Susan paired up and moved off to do ‘walk up’, while I manned the flip chart.

I was instantly into a chat with a ‘journeyman’ (he defined it as someone who travels for 3 years to learn).  He was from Germany.  Since he was keen to learn, I said I had something to share, and we fell into a gospel chat.  It was a short one, but a good one.  He started out as an atheist, but couldn’t argue with the logic I was giving him.  I was able to share the law and the gospel, before he had to go.

I turned around, and David was standing by my flip chart!  Oh, hello!  It’s been a while!  It was so good to have you join the team today David!

As we were catching up, four young ladies approached the flip chart.  I sensed a setup, and I wasn’t wrong.  They were nice, but it turned into an apologetics battle and the tension of it had become uncomfortable.  So, I decided to defuse it and switch it to the conscience rather than the intellect.  They were curious about the pages of the flip chart, and so I used that to switch to the law, and then the gospel.  We parted on good terms, and all but 1 took tracts.

And lo and behold there were 2 more!  Mike and Binu had arrived.  I was exhausted from the tension of that chat, and so I let Mike join David on the flip chart and left Binu to hand out tracts, while I went to get some snaps.  Tanush and Susan were going strong!  Afterwards, Tanush told me they had 3 gospel opportunities.  So good to see you growing in your passion for evangelism Tanush!  Keep up the good work for the glory of God!

The outreach went long when Tanush and I had a good conversation with a young couple.  And David was having a separate chat beside us (he took over my flip chart, haha).  Such a good outreach!

Saturday I was on my own in Riccarton, but it was a wonderful and busy outreach.  It started with a brief chat with a young Muslim.  Before Matthew, who I talked to the week before, came past again.  Being a Christian, we ended up discussing predestination - a difficult subject that Christians wrestle with.

The outreach ended with an interesting situation: two high school aged boys approached the flip chart - I recognised one of them, I’ve talked to him before on a Tuesday outreach.  He was resistant, but his friend engaged.  As I was explaining the gospel, another couple stopped and listened from a distance.  These situations are difficult, because there is only 1 of me!  I suspected the new couple were resistant and thought they were going to break up the conversation.  I was going to wrap up my current chat and engage them.  But then I realised that they were going to interrupt, so I decided to continue my first chat and labour through the checks.

Once the 2 guys had left, I was able to engage the new couple.  And then I realised I recognised him.  He is a good friend of a friend who used to join me in street outreach.  He is a passionate Catholic!  I’ve had a long chat with him before.  We are Facebook friends and he had seen the link to a video I had shared the day prior of a conversation Ryan had had with a Catholic.  He hadn’t watched the video, but in God’s providence, he was standing in front of me now!  We got into a good chat.  He loves to debate, but the outreach was ending.  He was keen to take my email address so we could continue the chat.  I hope he gets in touch.

On Tuesday it was a team of 3: Jermaine and Roger were with me.  It was a busy outreach with all 3 of us in separate conversations at multiple times.  My highlight chat was with a young lady who obviously had a religious background but had never grasped grace.  As I was working through the check questions I could see it starting to click into place for her.  It was so encouraging.

Later, Jermaine pulled me into a chat with a young man who already seemed to have a good grasp of the gospel, claimed to be a Christian but wasn’t in a church.  He had recently immigrated to New Zealand.  Both Jermaine and I invited him to our churches: I gave him my contact details.

Well, this morning (Sunday) he rang me!  He was coming to church.  I met him outside, and brought him in to sit with my family.  Afterwards I was able to introduce to other members of the church and he was connected with a home group leader.  I’m hopeful that he will continue coming and we will get to know him better!

All glory to God for this wonderful week of street outreach.  The online outreach work is still going strong.  We have more message requests on Instagram than we ever have.  And they all lead to gospel conversations.  Some of those conversations are wonderful, when people truly seem to grasp what Jesus is all about.  Here are a couple of comments from one person I talked to this week:

“I literally was crying when you were breaking stuff down and this is good news and I’m soooo happy I thought I knew the full truth about Christ!!! How foolish am I. Now now now now I trust he paid for my sins I understand completely”  and then, in response to the ‘2 things’ check: “no because they still didn’t accept his salvation. I get it now. The only way of true salvation is to accept the free gift of him paying the price for my sins.. past present future sins and nothing I could have done could have saved me. Spreading the gospel, feeding the poor,tithing , loving everyone,worshiping repenting daily, even in his name - nothing I could do to bring me to heaven except… accepting his true loving wonderful freeeeeeeeeeeee giiiiiiiiiftttt!!!! I’m so happy my brother I’m saved”.

All glory to God alone.
 

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