Summer Days of Sharing Jesus

The Lord mightily blessed our Witnessing Workshop Weekend! We had over twenty folks for the training on Saturday including a youth group of about a dozen teenagers.

After the role playing / practice time in the afternoon, we went to a big festival near the river to share the gospel. We broke up into smaller groups of 2 or 3 Christians and passed out tons of gospel tracts. I was so happy to see that even though this was most of the teenagers first time sharing their faith, that a bunch of them were very eager and excited to do so.

I was trying to coach the various groups so didn’t really get into any substantial conversations myself, and when we went inside the air conditioned mall next door (it was over 90 degrees out) to eat, my wife asked if I got into any meaty, Christ-centered conversations. I told her I had not and she said that she had been praying that I’d get into at least one good, meaningful gospel conversation.

We only had about 25 minutes left so my friend Heidi and I went out into the heat for one last hurrah. Praise the Lord, God answered Christy’s prayer as Heidi gave a unique family (a grandmother, mother, and daughter) gospel tracts. They went over to a bench and were reading the million dollar bill together, actually discussing it amongst each other.

Once they put away the gospel tract, I moseyed on over and asked them what they thought of it. They were happy to discuss it and it turned out they considered themselves Catholic. I asked the grandmother, “If you were to stand before God and He asked you why should I allow you into my heaven? What would you say to God?” She answered, that Jesus died for me and I believe that. That’s it.” Which was surprising.

So then I asked the mom, “Do you believe eternal life is a gift or something you have to earn?” She answered, “I think you have to earn it.” Which gave me a great opportunity to point to the grandmother’s correct answer that salvation is a gift received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

The 15 year old daughter was pretty quiet, but was taking it all in. I asked her a different question and it gave opportunity to explain the gospel again. Just then our party was leaving, so I had to wrap it up quickly. But I praise God that He did give me at least one strong Christ-centered conversation.

The next day, after more witnessing teaching sessions we went door to door around the neighborhood by the church building. We were giving away Jesus film DVDs. Hanging small plastic bags of the DVD and a gospel tract on doors if they didn’t answer.

I like to say that door to door evangelism isn’t the most efficient way to get the gospel out, but it can be very effective. This is because you get a lot of doors that just don’t open. Then you get many folks who open the door and receive the package and the verbal invitation to church but don’t have time to talk. But praise God for the third category of people. Those who open the door and are willing to have a good gospel-centered conversation right at their doorstep.

Thank the Lord we had two of these. One was an older man named Tom who was so angry at Donald Trump that we could barely keep him on the topic of the gospel. We had to ask questions to redirect his thoughts to the gospel over and over. He listened, so praise God the Word of the Lord went forth.

The second gospel conversation was with a Jehovah’s Witness couple. At first the wife was talking with us, but when the husband heard us, he came to the door as well. It was a friendly conversation. We challenged him on the deity of Christ and the validity of the New World Translation. I think maybe the conversation was ultimately for the wife because she seemed to really be taking it in.