Battle Log

I think I’m getting back into the routine of the regular weekly outreaches now that the summer special outreaches are well and truly past.  All four street outreaches went ahead this week - which was great.

 

Roger was with me in Riccarton on Tuesday afternoon.  My notes say “Straight into a chat with Hunter: had a lack of interest”.  I have no recollection of that particular conversation now, but it’s great that I was straight to work.  The outreach was busy!  It went for the full 2 hours, and so it was dark by the time we finished.

 

I also can’t remember the chat I had with “2 guys with glasses”, but I do remember the chat with the 2 Burnside High School kids very well.  Roger was busy with another chat, and the 2 kids were intrigued by his flip chart, even to the point where they were looking at the 2nd pages on their own!  So, I popped over to Roger’s side to engage them.  It was an awesome conversation.  Sadly, neither of them had ever heard the gospel.  Yet, gladly, they were very open.  The chat was textbook, and they followed the logic smoothly.  When I challenged them to respond to the gospel, there was a pause, and one of them said, “this is the first time I’ve heard this, I need some time to process it”.  That’s fair.  And yet, I explained how this message is simple and urgent to respond too.  I think they’d be prime candidates for my church's new foundation Bible study.

 

A third Burnside High School student tried to join this chat, but by this stage, Roger was free again, and so I directed him to Roger - which was great.

 

Back on my side of the street, 3 more high school students passed and were willing to chat (Roger had talked to 2 of them on the previous Friday’s outreach, so it was a partial follow up).  There wasn’t yet gospel clarity, and so I went back to the start.  It was wonderful seeing the reaction of one of them in particular.  She became very engaged as she got check questions wrong and learned why.  Glory to God, it was a wonderful chat.

 

As they moved on, a young man on a scooter came over, he wanted to try the good person test.  We ended up having a long conversation.  He struggled to grasp the gospel, not able to believe that salvation would be a gift.  I had to labour with him on both the law and the gospel.  I’m very grateful for the wonderful suite of check questions I have to utilise for this purpose.  I ended up giving him a church contact card with my contact details and an invite to our next Sunday gathering and the foundation Bible study.  I haven’t heard from him, yet he has the gospel seed.  I leave him in God’s hands for others to follow up and water.

 

On Friday, Andy and Roger were with me in the city.  I ended up doing a wander to Cathedral Square and back to the Bridge of Remembrance, having chats as I went.  I had a great chat with a young man who was in a Catholic school uniform.  He seemed to have a click moment with the gospel, which was great.  I also talked to a flat earther, and then a group of 3 european tourists.

 

But the highlight chat was with a young man from Italy.  In God’s providence, He had 2 Christian evangelists talk to him today!  He showed me a Gideon’s New Testament and gospel booklet that had been given to him earlier in the day - probably one of the OAC guys.  God is good!  So I had a wonderful follow up chat with him.

 

Back at the Bridge of Remembrance, it was great to see both Andy and Roger busy in conversations.  The harvest field is so ripe, the opportunity is endless!

 

I was also able to have a couple more conversations.  This outreach ended up going longer than usual, which is great.  God is good.

 

On Saturday I was back in Riccarton.  From memory, this outreach was a bit slower than usual.  And yet, I was still there, with my flip chart, a banner, with the name of Jesus on it (figuratively) being salt and light in the community.  I would hand out tracts, and I had a number of conversations, often shorter ones.  Ploughing, sowing.

 

After getting back from this outreach, I joined the online training outreach.  I had a very memorable conversation with a Sikh who lived in Portugal.  The conversation went for 45 minutes.  He was engaged enough to stay that long, but he really struggled to grasp the gospel, constantly defaulting back to ‘be good’, as the reason to get to heaven.  After much labour to show him how we are not good, and that Jesus is the only solution, I think he was finally grasping it - but maybe not, even at the end, some final checks and he had already started to slip in his thinking.  He is now in God’s hands to convict and convert - in His timing.

 

On Sunday, I had Elijah from church join me in the city for outreach (also Binu turned up to share tracts).  We had a very busy outreach at the corner of Colombo and Cashel.

 

There were a lot of young people out and about (the weather was nice at the start of the outreach).  So our first chat was with 2 young guys.  There was subtle resistance, and one of them was being particularly silly.  And yet, I rolled with that, and proceeded to share the law and the gospel anyway.  2 young girls joined the chat at one point, and so I decided to start fresh with them.  But they didn’t want to engage and walked off.  The 2 guys followed, but I was able to give them tracts before they left.  Interestingly, they soon came back.  And the conversation became more serious, and they engaged more sensibly.  It was great talking to them (we also saw them again right at the end of the outreach).

 

And it’s great seeing Elijah growing in confidence and ability in engaging with people.  By the end of the outreach, he was even engaging people on his own with the flip chart, as I would engage with others a few paces away.

 

One highlight chat was with 2 young ladies.  Fairly open and engaged well.  Elijah did most of the sharing.  The gospel hit home for one of those girls in particular, I could tell in a few ways, but particularly in the questions she would ask.  She accepted a gospel of John.

 

Near the end of the outreach, I had 2 particularly interesting encounters.  The first was when a large group of kids engaged.  Some of them said they had done the flip chart before.  I vaguely remembered some of them.  Yet some of them hadn't done it before.  There were too many for me to engage them all, and so I just cast my line and engaged with whoever responded.  I ended up with 3 of them in conversation.  But they soon had to split.  But as they did, one of them came back, and changed his tone and said something like, “hey man, what you said to me the first time made sense, I’ve started going to a church, thank you so much for what you do”.  Wow, that was encouraging.  Glory to God!  He didn’t have a Bible yet, and so I was able to give him a gospel of John before he went to catch up with his friends.

 

The last encouragement was when 2 guys stopped, I didn’t remember them initially, but when they said they had talked to me before, I remembered it from 3 weeks ago.  His answer to my check was “the mercy of God” which is not as precise as “because Jesus died on the cross”, and so I did some follow up.  But, I think the real reason they stopped was to encourage me, they had been impacted by the first chat (even though 1 of them in particular had been silly at the time).

 

All this to say: DON’T GIVE UP.  The law brings the knowledge of sin, and the gospel is the power of God for salvation.  God has the power to work in the hearts of people through our feeble efforts for his glory.  Don’t give up.  Continue to proclaim the wonderful good news of Jesus, wherever you may be.

 

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