Battle Log

Happy New Year!  This report is for December 2025

 

Two things that stood out to me for December:

 

1) Christmas tracts are popular!  I reckon I gave away 10 Christmas tracts when I would normally give away 1.  I had this funny situation where a lady came round the corner.  I was holding out a tract, and she raised her hand to refuse it.  But before she did I said “Merry Christmas”, instantly she lowered her hand to receive it instead of rejecting it.  There is just something about Christmas!

 

2) Boxing day is still a great day for giving away tracts.  Martin joined me again this year, and we spent 2 hours at Riccarton and 2 hours in the city.  I think I gave away 4 or 5 hundred Christmas tracts in that time.

 

Oh well, the Christmas tracts have been put away for another year.

 

After a short holiday, I got back to the streets yesterday.  I spent an hour in Riccarton.  I was on my own, so I decided to take my flip chart along.

 

Before I had even finished setting it up, I was into my first chat with a group of youths (5 of them).  This chat spoke volumes to me about the power and the simplicity of the law and the gospel.  As I was taking these kids through the law, I had multiple reactions: silliness, denial (“I’ve never lied”), but also, disengagement.  That sounds like a bad thing, but in this case, it was very good.  The young lady was really seeing her personal sin, and that’s the goal of the law!  Sadly, rather than humbling herself to accept the gospel, she hardened her heart by disengaging.  She even walked away from her group and stood to the side while I engaged the others.  As she was leaving, I did say, “hey, I’ve got good news coming”.  But at this stage, she wasn’t interested.  But God can use that, and in his timing he can bring others to bring the gospel seed.  May her heart become ready to receive it!

 

I continued my presentation, but just as I was getting to the gospel, I had 2 more of the kids ditch me.  The 3 that had left walked off, hoping the last 2 with me would leave too.  But they didn’t.  I got to share the gospel with them.  It turns out they went to a Catholic school, and so I instantly went back to my explanation of the ‘false ways’ to contrast what I was teaching with what they had heard in school.  Slowly I saw a light coming across their expressions as the gospel started to really register in their thinking.  It was so good.  But, I had to leave it at that, they wanted to catch up with their friends, and so I let them go with tracts.

 

It was a busy hour of outreach.  Plenty of young people were out & about, bored and with nothing to do.  Two guys went past who had talked to me before in the city (I didn’t really remember them).  I was able to reiterate the law with them (I focused on that, because it obviously hadn’t registered in their thinking the first time) and then touch on the gospel.  They also took tracts.

 

One of my regulars passed.  He is an older guy (74 I think he said).  He is happy to chat, but he is completely blind to the gospel.  What I find fascinating is that, in his retirement, he jumps on city buses and spends his days travelling from place to place, for no particular reason.  He obviously enjoys life, as simple as it is, but he is completely oblivious to the reality of death and judgement.  I decided to ask him about this again (nowadays I usually just chat about the weather with him) and he said he guesses he’ll go to heaven.  And he even mentioned that he and the missus go to church every week (it’s a good local church – he sings the songs and listens to the ‘talk’).  And yet, he has no idea why someone would go to heaven or not and is not interested in talking about it at all.  There is nothing much more I can do than pray, and ask God to soften his heart and remove the scales from his eyes so he can really see his sin for what it is: wretched; and the amazing grace of Jesus to pay for it!  God have mercy!

 

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