Monday Night Visitation/Evangelism (11/3/08)

  Monday night was truly a blessing. Once again, our numbers were down, but we still had 4 participating in taking the Gospel to the streets of Wendell, as well as others that were downtown praying for our state and our nation's elections. There were two groups. Aaron and Trel went door to door where we have been for several weeks in Holly Pointe (Aaron is the author of the next few paragraphs), while Bobby and myself went to do community ministry, which will be explained in another post.

    Tonight it seemed apparent that the gospel of Jesus Christ fell upon def ears and hard hearts. One man said, “who is it?” through his door, then proceed to ignore us as we left the gospel by his door. We then shared the gospel and gave a track to a seemingly reluctant lady on her way to bed. Another man told Trell and I…”I go to church”, “not interested”, “don’t need it”. Lastly, we met a mother in the middle of cooking who said we could come back another time. She received a succinct presentation and written copy of the gospel. However, her level of interest seemed questionable at best. 

      Yet, this was not all that God had for Trell and I tonight. As I was taking Trell home, he requested that we stop by a store to get a soda. I agreed, so we stopped in at the Trans II Mini Mart. While at the convenient store, we introduced ourselves to Phillip, the cashier. I explained our desire to share Jesus and proceeded to ask him what Jesus meant to him. Phillip responded by saying he was a catholic, which was superfluous to the question, so I kindly repeated it. This time he said that he believes in God and Jesus, but that he only practices his faith about 50%. I shared the fact that the demons believe and shudder (James 2:19). It takes more than an intellectual “belief”; Christ must be your LIFE (Colossians 3:1-4)! Then I shared of Christ’s disgust with lukewarm people (Rev 3:15-16). Phillip also said that there are many other beliefs and that it’s just important that you believe in something. I explained to Phillip that this popular pluralistic belief is simply false, because only Christ has paid for our sins, allowing us to have a joyous relationship with God (John 14:6). No other god even claims to take away our sins. I felt the power of God as I shared the gospel in an all but pleading fashion. After much deliberation, I plainly told Phillip that he will either deny Christ with his life and spend eternity in punishment apart from God or that he will decide to live for Christ and experience abundant and eternal life in Christ for all eternity (Matthew 25:31-46). I told him I loved him and that Lord willing I would see him again. 

      We don’t know the types of soil the gospel fell on tonight, but we know that God’s word does not return to Him void. It accomplishes the purpose for which He sent it (Isiaah 55:10-11)! And we were encouraged to simply share the gospel for the sake of the name. Please pray for Phillip and the souls of these other un-named persons!