Battle Log
Wednesday, 18 December, 2019
Posted 18 December 2019, 6:09 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink
A wonderful outreach to Riccarton, Tuesday afternoon. Roger and I - as usual. It was windy and cold, but we missed some rain either side of the outreach - thank you Lord!
Roger had a gospel conversation started before he had barely had time to finish setting up his flip chart. It was a long chat, but a goodie. He was clicking his heels afterwards!
I had four interesting gospel conversations through the outreach. I was pacing myself again, but God was faithful and brought along these people who were very keen to chat.
The first was with a young man from Scotland. He seemed pretty resistant to the idea that God exists, but he was curious about the flip chart, and so I took him through the law and the gospel. It turns out that the guy he works for is a Christian, and had even had him along to a church event. This guy was obviously processing the important questions of life before he even came to me. He left with the tract: “How we know that God exists and why it matters”.
I then had two separate conversations with Catholics. Both thought they were good people and going to heaven, but the law showed them how good they needed to be - before I showed them the way to heaven: faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for their sin. With one of them, it was fascinating watching the guy try to avoid the difficult question: “if you were to die today, and be judged by God, by that standard, would you be innocent or guilty?” Each time I would just listen to his answer, and then repeat the question. On the third time, he admitted he would be guilty.
The last conversation was with a young man on his way to work. I didn’t need to convince him to try the good person test, he wanted to do it. It’s like he knew what it was about and wanted to talk. And he seemed very open. He said there would be nothing stopping him from trusting in Jesus' sacrifice to be saved - even after he considered the cost. So I challenged him to do so, to start reading his Bible, and to get in touch to get connected with a local church.
Wednesday was four seasons, but it didn’t stop the outreach in the city from proceeding. I ended up parking myself at the southern entrance to Cathedral Square (without my flip chart - too windy). In spite of the weather, I had a number of good conversations.
The first was with a young, high school aged, couple. They were not interested in the gospel. They clearly loved their sin too much. But they stayed to engage, and they heard the law and the gospel. He sobered up a little bit, as he realised the logic of what we were discussing - but the cost was way too high (for now anyway).
I then engaged in a difficult conversation with a guy, who knew he was a sinner, had tried to get involved with a church, but didn’t see any change in his life and gave it up. I tried to share the gospel with him, but he seemed hardened. But he accepted an “After Life” tract, and I hope it does a better job of explaining than I did. I hope to see him again to follow up.
The last conversation was with two young Indian guys. One seemed quite sobered by hearing the law and understood the gospel. The other understood too, but clearly rejected it - again, after counting the cost.
Tonight (at midnight) the new Star Wars movie will be showing. Two of us are going to try running an outreach in the two hours leading up to it outside a movie theater. We have special tracts for this. God willing many, who wouldn’t have otherwise, will hear the gospel. I'll write about it in my next log entry.