Something to Learn on Black Friday

We embarked on an early morning evangelism adventure, on Friday, November 27, 2009. We left for Kohl's at 3:30am so that we could pass out tracts and witness to the deal-seekers by the 4:00am opening time.

I dropped off Steve near the front door, and went and parked the car. By the time I parked the car and walked back to the head of the queue it was just a minute or two before 4:00. I was a little disappointed, we had arrived so late, the actual conversations were few, but amazingly, as the doors opened, and people streamed past me, I handed out all 200 tracts I was carrying.

After I handed out all my tracts, I went and found Steve, talking with a couple of gals. He was showing them the Law, but they weren't really engaging in the conversation. It seemed though, that the Holy Spirit was convicting them, because like so many, all these gals could do was respond with a 'guilty chuckle' as Steve went through the Ten Commandments with them.

After that, we went over to Best Buy. There were (I'm guessing) five or six hundred people in line, maybe more. We started at the end of the line and handed out tracts and engaged people. Here's where I have something to learn. I need to learn to how to wait, rather than moving on, right away to hand out another tract. I need to press people to find out, if they know what a Gospel tract is and if they are open to me sharing the Gospel with them.

The first discussion I remember was with Andrew. He was a really nice college aged guy, who had indeed (seemingly sincerely) been seeking God and inquiring of Christians about God and faith. He did cling though to a form of self-righteousness. We had a very good discussion with him though.

Then we spoke with Tim, who also seemed like he was seeking God. He was separated from his wife, but he was trying to get back with her and they were supposedly going to go to church together next Sunday. We shared the Law and Grace with him too. We tried to be encouraging to him, and we prayed for him and for his marriage to be restored.

Then we spoke with Arba and Franklin and their friend. They were Catholics, so we had no problem engaging them on the subject of God and faith.

We probably spoke with several others, but the last encounter was kind of humorous. As we began to witness to a Hindu couple, the doors were opened and the line began to move ahead of them. The guy was hustling the gal to move ahead. I went into speed-witnessing mode and presented the Gospel in less than 60 seconds.

All-in-all, it was a very encouraging morning, and we had some very good encounters. Praise the LORD for guiding us to people, whom He had prepared and softened their hearts ahead of time. It was a joy and an honor to stand with a brother so gifted in sharing the Gospel and to share the Gospel myself, during the early morning of Black Friday, 2009.

God bless...

The God Mobile

Here's a picture from the Evergreen State Fair at the Monroe fairgrounds.

God bless...

An Opportunity To Preach The Gospel At Lunch

I got the opportunity to literally preach the Gospel yesterday at lunch, in the cafeteria, here at work. It is often strange how the topic of 'religion' will morph into the topic of eternity, salvation, judgement and hell.

Charlie was talking about how he was camping with some people in Utah, at Lake Powell one summer when it was 110 degrees in the daytime. How all the other people were partying and drinking all night, but when the sun came up, it was too hot to stay in the tent, so you had to get up. He couldn't understand how people kept going when they were staying up so late and getting up so early. He hadn't been drinking though, and people were asking him if he was Mormon, and he said, 'No, I just didn't drink' and shrugged his shoulders.

When the topic of Mormonism was raised, my boss, Rahul (a Hindu), said, 'Keith, what's the deal with Mormonism, they don't drink, they don't drink coffee, etc.' I said, "I really don't know about the coffee thing." Then Rahul said, 'is Mormonism Christianity, or an offshoot of Christianity, or a derivative of Christianity?'. I said, "Its a derivative of Christianity."

Then Rahul asked, 'What about all these other churches that I see, like Methodist, and Presbyterian, what are they?" I said, "those are Chistian churches, they just vary in form of worship and church government, and things like infant baptism and such. But the core beliefs. about Salvation (how to go to Heaven) are all pretty much in agreement."

Then Charlie piped in and said, "some of those churches believe in pre-destination, others don't. With pre-destination, they believe you don't have to do anything to go to heaven". I said, "I don't think they would say that."...

[Since that I found myself talking about salvation, I thought to myself, okay, here you go, and I went into explaining salvation and how God became a man in Jesus Christ, and what He did on the cross to die for our sins. I got to explain Judgement, Heaven, Hell, sin and the Law. Boy was I nervous. I don't know why, but that sure did get the adreneline going.]

Anyways, no one was believing what I was saying, but I was blessed to have the opportunity to share the Gospel. They were peppering me with questions, about Hell and Judgement.

Praise the LORD for the opportunity. Pray that their hearts will be softened. I hope I said the right things. I do care for their souls and pray for their salvation.

God bless...