Battle Log

Friday, 4 September, 2020

Posted 5 September 2020, 7:55 AM by Glen Richards. Permalink

Thursday and Friday were busy days of outreach, as usual.

I started with a couple of hours online on Thursday before heading to Northlands and then Eastgate.  The highlight was a discussion with a guy from Luxembourg!  And he spoke Luxembourgish - you are always learning things with online evangelism. ;)  But he spoke English well enough for me to be able to share the gospel with him.

Andy and I had a good time of outreach at the bus stops.  And it was great to have Daniel join us at Northlands.

At Northlands, I had people stop to talk who I would never have expected to.  I thank God for the gospel opportunities.

But the highlight conversation was with a lady who said she was already a Christian.  I used the “dagger in my back” scenario to see what her understanding of the gospel was.  Sadly, she didn’t even get close to the central key of Christianity: Jesus.  When I told her - she realised what she had been missing and felt sheepish.  She even said she needs to re-read her Bible.  She seemed to appreciate the brief conversation and gladly accepted a gospel tract with more information.  Thank you Lord.

At Eastgate, I had a high school kid approach me - I remembered talking to him before.  So I asked him what he had to do to go to heaven.  He started talking about the things he needed to do - none of which were the biblical answer.  I gently probed, and then suddenly (and unexpectedly) he said the word “trust”.  I smiled - something from our previous conversation had stuck!  I asked him what he had to trust in, and he said, “Jesus”.  So I said, “Trust that Jesus has done what for you?”.  He said, “that he died on the cross for my sin”.  It was in his head, but did he understand?  Sadly, his bus came before I could talk further.  God willing, I will have another opportunity to talk with him.  Or maybe he will cross your path one day?  Are you ready to share the gospel?

Friday started with the gospel + abortion outreach outside Christchurch hospital.  You can read about it here.

We then moved on to Cathedral Square for open air gospel proclamation.  Our hecklers had already started gathering.  I decided to take a different tack today.  In the past, one of the hecklers had become so aggressive, that we had to institute a policy of completely ignoring this guy.  Sadly, this led to us just having to preach over top of his heckling - to outsiders, it didn’t look good.  So today I decided to start re-engaging, and directly addressing the objections.  It went reasonably well.  A small group gathered.  Sadly, due to the constant stream of questions, I never managed to get to the gospel.  I still have much to learn!  I ran out of energy, and Marty stepped in to take over.  People would stop to listen.  I had at least one follow up conversation with a guy who had listened to Marty preach - he was impacted.

I then had a wonderful opportunity to approach two girls who had been listening.  One of them opened up with “I’m gay”.  So I just responded with, “Oh, hi, well - I’m hetrosexual, nice to meet you”.  We then fell into a discussion about where the universe came from.  But then the other came up with the issue of why God allows suffering.  Homosexuality and Theodicy are the two biggest objections I have to deal with.  I gently reasoned with them and then, suddenly, a lady who had been listening from a small distance interjected into the conversation.  To my surprise, one of the two girls defended me!  We exchanged names, and then she initiated a hand shake.  I sensed that now was not the time to push the conversation, and we parted ways at that point.  They left with tracts, and I told them that anytime they wanted to talk, they were welcome to approach me.

We moved to Cashel Mall - Bridge of Remembrance end.  I had a fascinating encounter there.  I had approached a lady to open a gospel discussion - she was open and we started to wrestle with the deep questions of life when suddenly a guy approached me and said “You made me believe in God!”.  I was a bit surprised, and then he said, “At Riccarton - you talked to me”.  He wanted to talk again, but as I was in the middle of a conversation!

I was able to finish the gospel conversation with the lady.  I went to find the guy and noticed that his friends and he were hearing the gospel from Roger on the flip chart.

Once that had finished, I was able to catch up with him and one of his friends to find out what was happening in his life.  Sadly, his reasons for believing God were experienced based, and he wasn’t believing that Jesus had died for his sin.  Yet, he is interested - and even reading a Bible.  His friend is Bahá’í and we ended up having a conversation where, sadly, resistance to the gospel started to build.  Even so, the gospel is the power of God for salvation - in His timing.

Mike and I finished the day with an evening outreach in the city.  Wow, some fascinating gospel opportunities were taken - praise God!  In Cathedral Square I got into some non standard gospel conversations with various people dressed very alternatively.  People would join the conversations at different times and things would get interrupted and so no conversation flow could really be established.  But gospel plowing did occur!

Eventually Mike and I gave up, and we headed off.  Our very next conversation was with a guy who was really keen to talk to us.  It turned out he had been listening to our conversations in Cathedral Square!  (I never noticed him.)  He was an ex-Christian and was ready for an apologetical fight.  We didn’t give him one - he already knows God exists!  We asked him what he understood about Christianity, and it became very clear that he never understood the gospel.  Eventually his whole demeanor changed - it was a great conversation where Mike and I tag teamed the discussion.

Near the end of the outreach, we managed to have some interesting conversations outside the pubs on Oxford Terrace.  I managed to get into conversation with an extremely drunk couple.  I’m not sure if they will remember the conversation at all - I told one to put the tract I gave her into her pocket and read it in the morning.

All glory to God for the opportunities to be a witness for Him.  Please keep us in prayer.