Battle Log

Saturday, 12 May, 2018

Posted 29 May 2018, 9:01 PM by Ryan Hemelaar. Permalink

On Saturday night in Brisbane city it was a little cooler than usual but God still allowed the team to have some great gospel conversations with the lost.

It is great that sometimes we get to speak to people we have spoken to in the past. On Saturday night we spoke to one such man who one year ago had a conversation with us. He didn't fully remember the way to Heaven, so we got to remind him that it is through trusting in the the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

This man saw this second conversation as another wake-up call to really take this all seriously, but he saw that sin is pleasurable and so wasn't sure if he is ready yet to come to saving faith. We stressed the urgency of doing so, gave him a gospel of John to start reading, and left him in God's hands.

Another man we spoke with was a student from Nepal whose brother gave him a Bible when his brother became a Christian, before becoming a Muslim and then becoming a Hindu again. This man said he had read some of the Bible, and so in the conversation after talking about how we have all broken the law of God (to bring the knowledge of sin) and after hearing the gospel, he saw that his Hinduism doesn't actually provide a solution to getting rid of the history of his sin. He saw that doing good deeds wouldn't erase the past and saw how he needed a perfect person to take his punishment for him.

But he said, "The biggest thing stopping me from becoming a Christian is that we as Hindus must burn our parents once they die and you Christians bury your parents." It was explained that there is no commandment in the Bible about what exactly should be done with a person's body when they die, but burying is usually done because it shows respect for the person and it reminds us of the resurrection to come.

The second thing stopping him was, "But I don't want to lose what I've gained in Hinduism." We gave him the example of the apostle Paul who had gained so much in his Judaism prior to becoming a Christian - he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, and yet then in one of this letters he says "Whatever I gained, I now count as loss in comparison to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."

This man was seriously counting the cost of leaving Hinduism and trusting in Christ, we gave him a full Bible (as he left his in Nepal) and recommended a local church to attend on Sunday to learn more. To God be all the glory!