Battle Log

Had a bit of a stressful week in my personal life.  But I’ve learnt so much from it.  I now have a fresh empathy for those that get anxious.  I’ve experienced being constant in prayer and dependence on God - and seeing him answer!  I’ve learned that my micro management is not always needed; when people get in tough spots, God has given them survival instincts - yet, encouragement and support is helpful.  I hope some of this will be applied in my evangelism work in the future.

 

But, anyway, 2 street outreaches this week: Tuesday in Riccarton (with Roger), and Sunday (today, with Thomas) in the City.  On Friday and Saturday I was so tired I stayed home and worked online.

 

Tuesday started out a bit slow, yet Roger seemed busy on his side!  3 Christchurch Boys High students came and sat on the seats behind where Roger was, and since Roger was already in a chat, I decided to go over and engage them.

 

They seemed to have time, so I took it slow - I didn’t push it.  And I gave them plenty of opportunities to disengage.  Yet, at least 2 of them were keen to continue the conversation.

 

It was interesting watching them test my character.  Is this guy genuine?

 

Anyway, I fielded a lot of questions, but within that I was able to share the law and the gospel, and start working through check questions.  It was a great chat.

 

I’m sure I had other chats - I just can’t remember them now.  It was a full 2 hour outreach.  Glimpses of short chats are slowly coming back into my memory.  Nothing is wasted - even those short passing comments / interactions.  Little bits of ploughing and sowing.  God knows the result.

 

It was great to have Thomas join me again for today’s outreach.  He enjoyed the ‘walk up’, from the last time he joined me, so we decided to do that again today - no flip chart.  We started with prayer, and then put a few tracts & a gospel of John in our back pockets, before moving down Cashel Mall.

 

We started collecting rejections.  I think on the 4th approach we got some engagement.  It was with a young couple, hung over.  The guy had a ‘super religious’ family, but was in rejection.  He believed in God, and heaven, but not hell.  I was able to address that, but I was amazed he talked with us for as long as he did, before he decided he didn’t want to keep chatting about it.  Yet, they both took tracts.  He even said, ‘keep doing what you’re doing’.

 

I had a short chat with a young Irish couple from Sydney.  And then Thomas had a few goes at starting chats.

 

We then got into a great chat with 6 or 7 high school aged guys.  They were all in different places, so that was quite hard, but they were all very engaged in different ways.  They were queueing up questions by putting their hands up!  I spend a lot of time on building / builder, really nailing that down, before moving into the law and then the gospel and checks.  I think some of them were really getting it.  Tracts were accepted and a gospel of John was taken - I only had 1, and so they even did ‘rock, paper, scissors’ for it!  I’ve never had that occur before!

 

Thomas started the next chat, it was with a young couple.  He was instantly engaged!  She was very much not.  He came to grasp the gospel, although he really struggled with the initial check question.  “My brain is trying to process it”.  It was at this point that she became involved in the conversation.  She was very resistant, I became very aware of how the issue was less about intellect / logic, and more about something emotional.  I wanted to address it, but I struggled to disengage the intellect and address it.  In hindsight, I should probably just cut to the law!

 

We finished up with 3 more short interactions before starting to head back towards the car.

 

It was then that we encountered our local World Mission Society Church of God evangelists.  I decided to engage them in a very friendly manner.  One of them looked fresh.  What was great was the freshie decided to engage Thomas while I talked to the main evangelist.  That was great!  Because the guy I was talking to was very open about how closed he was (he refused my offer to catch up again or via email).  Yet, Thomas was able to engage the freshie with the gospel.

 

Well, that wraps another week of God’s mercy.  Please pray that God continues to raise up labourers for the harvest!

 

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