Battle Log

Wednesday, 27 January, 2021

Posted 27 January 2021, 5:35 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink

Tuesday and Wednesday were very hot days in Christchurch (NZ) - 36 degrees Celsius.

Yet, the temperature seemed quite pleasant when I set up my flip chart in Riccarton on Tuesday afternoon.  As usual, Roger joined me.

I started out with a difficult conversation with two guys from Christ College - a prestigious boarding school - enjoying the last days of school holidays I assume.  They were both quite resistant to start with.  So we sparred with apologetics to start with.  One of them softened, but the other hardened.  I was able to touch on God’s law during the conversation.  One of them shook my hand, shared his first name, and took a tract.  The other refused all three.  The conversation ended when I said, “well, I’m not holding you here”.

The next conversation would have to be one of the hardest I’ve had in a long time.  Harder than with the gospel + abortion outreach - in that case you can expect it.  I think it was harder than the couple of times the Police have been called.

So, five late teen girls come past.  Four of them are very interested in the flip chart, and we fall into an easy discussion.  The other goes and sits down some distance away.  During the conversation, they say they are Christians, and as I’m learning what that means to them, they declare that they are gay - interesting.  So I ask if I can back up and explain what I understand Christianity to mean.  We start working through that when we start discussing the logic of hell - one of the girls didn’t believe in hell - no problem so far.  But at this point, one of the girls leaves the conversation to go talk to her friend sitting some distance away.

She comes back and says that they need to go - apparently I’d upset the fifth girl a month ago.  I was surprised, but didn’t have any problem with them leaving - but I just confirmed, “do I look like someone who would aim to upset?”.  One of them agreed with me, and they moved on.

Well, a few minutes later, the fifth girl comes back, in tears and starts giving me an emotional filled verbal assault worse than I’ve experienced in as long as I can remember.  I decided the best approach was to say nothing - I let her say what she wanted to say.  Apparently I’d told her: she was going to hell, she had been in deep pain for the last month, this stuff deeply impacts people, and you shouldn’t be out here talking about it, I’ve had to talk to my boyfriend about it, etc.  Then she started cursing and calling me foul names.  It was this point that she crossed a line into hypocrisy.  Sadly, my listening just enraged her more - I guess she was expecting me to fight back.  She then questioned the way I was looking at her.  So I dropped my eyes to the ground.  By this stage, one of her friends was with her.  Well, me looking down didn’t help - she just got worse and then claimed I was ignoring her, so I looked up and said, as gently as I could, “I’m hearing you”.

Eventually a lady who worked in the bank came out and asked the girl to calm down.  “Everyone in the bank can hear you.”  That didn’t help.  Roger had finished his conversation, and he came over to help.  I told him not to say anything - and he wisely ignored me.  He stood in front of her to talk.  Soon she was yelling at him to step back.  He ignored her.  She said something about me not letting her go.  Roger denied that, and said, “you are free to leave”.

I turned to the lady from the bank and said, “I’ll pack up and move” - anything to get this girl to stop and calm down.  The lady from the bank asked if I was okay.  I said I was, but I don’t think I was.  Outwardly I was calm and analytical.  Inside I was a blubbering mess.  There was a huge disconnection between the two.  I packed up and moved across the street.  Soon after Roger was with me.

Roger wanted to take me to get an iced coffee, but I felt obligated to finish the outreach as best as I could.  Roger soon fell into another chat, and I noticed a homeless guy sitting not far from us, so I decided to go and talk with him.  He asked how my day was, I smiled and said it wasn’t the best.  But then I swung the conversation to him.  I found out his name and started to learn about why he was on the street when a friend came past.  Suddenly I was in two conversations.

I managed to start sharing with my friend about the experience I had just been through - the homeless guy listened in.  Part way through, the homeless guy said: “wow, you really do have problems!”  So he packed up and moved on (after a handshake).  In hindsight, I found that quite comical - there is no way my problems are worse than his!

Eventually, the outreach came to an end, and I went with Roger for an Iced Chocolate.  It was then that my emotions started to kick in.  I was a bit of a wreak for a few hours after that.  I couldn’t do online outreach.  I reached out to some people as a way of processing my emotions - that really helped.

And writing this report has helped.  That girl was emotional & irrational.  Obviously in a lot of pain or under conviction of sin - or both.  She made a lot of false accusations.  I have no recollection of talking to her before (I don’t deny that I did - I just don’t remember it).

I am always very careful in how I present the law, and talk about hell so that it doesn’t come across as me judging.  Not to say that I don’t make many mistakes - I’m sure.

I was feeling okay by the evening.  And I was back to work on Wednesday.  Many wonderful chats online.

I’m so dependent on God.  I’m so weak.  And it’s hard to be faithful to the gospel - which is so offensive.  I don’t want to be the offence.  God help us!