Kids, Don't Try This At Home or Not A Scratch

Last night, after a wonderful evening with the prison ministry team, I got a text from my evangelism partner, Thomas, asking if I wanted to go out street witnessing.   He had seen tons of people at the Alderwood mall and he had also noticed there was a large crowd at the Comcast Arena for a Silver Tips game.   We decided to go to the Comcast area and see if we could hand out some tracts and engage some conversations as people left the game.   Little did we know that we were in for quite an adventure.

First, while at the Comcast Arena, there was Gage, a very interesting, street smart, if not slightly out of touch with reality person.   It was amazing though how the God's Spirit pierced through it all and touched this man's heart.  We had the privilege of sharing the Law and the Gospel with him, and he was actually very receptive.  We even invited him to church, and who knows, we might see him there.

Next there was Brandon. He was part of an Own Your Own Business convention happening concurrently with the Silver Tips game, in a convention hall in the upper level of the Comcast Arena.   It was as if Brandon was drunk with greed.  He too though, was either a little out of touch with reality, or just so much more quick witted than me that we had a little bit of a hard time connecting on the most important issue in life; 'where we'll spend our eternity'.   At the end of our conversation, Thomas quoted a very apropos scripture verse with him; "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul."  We encouraged Brandon to find and crack open his Bible, which he admitted, it would take him some time to find.

Then we headed west on Hewitt because we saw a lot of people outside of the local bars, smoking.   Boy did things get interesting from there on.    Most people welcomed the Million Dollar tract (with the Million Dollar Question on the back: "Where will you go when you die?).   We handed out tracts to groups of people, and kept walking past a couple of bars.  We spoke with a gal named Charmaine  who said she was a Christian and that she went to church (she named some nearby church), while at the same time she was pretty buzzed, and puffing up a storm.

Did I mention the Satanic Heavy Metal music coming out of the bar we had just passed by.

Next, we stopped and talked to people directly outside of a bar and began talking to a guy with two gals.  The one gal who really engaged the conversation was named Candice. She was catholic, and she said she was Christian, while at the same time admitting to being drunk.   She even showed me a tattoo on her wrist of First Peter 3:8.   I went through the Law with her when I heard someone from behind me tell me to leave their patrons alone, I couldn't talk to them and had to leave. I protested mildly, but thought better of it and left.   As we were leaving though we gave Gospel tracts to as many people as would accept them.   All total for the evening, we handed out about 200 tracts between the two of us.

Also, there were several street people (men), I can't remember their names, but we stopped, witnessed, encouraged and prayed for them.   One had a bloody and bruised face from literally being 'falling down drunk', the night before.

I know this post is way longer than normal, but there are two more incidents I'd like to share.   First, we crossed the street and headed back toward our starting point.   We encountered a group of black men outside a bar, and we started talking to a young man and shared the Gospel with him.   He was pretty mellow but at the same time, pretty intense (I know that doesn't really make sense, but that was my perception of this young man.) He was pretty open to dialog and we had the chance to share the Gospel with him, but when Thomas pulled out the Curved Illusion tracts, and showed the guy, he became very irritated and said, "get that magic away from me."  He said, "drop the magic stuff", I can deal with the Gospel but not the magic. Thomas tried to explain it was only an optical illusion, but to no avail.   We moved on.

As we continued to hand out tracts all along the way, we came to another bar, and Thomas engaged the bouncer who was Jewish. When the bouncer had to attend to something a couple of guys came up and we gave them Million Dollar tracts.  The one guy, tall, thin, late twenties was really drunk. Bear in mind, I realize it is mostly unfruitful to engage a drunk, but this guy asked what it was I gave him.   I told him it was a Gospel tract.  When he didn't know what that was, he asked me to explain.  When I told him that Gospel meant 'Good News about how to go to Heaven when you die.', he started saying over and over again, "Have you been there?", as he kept jabbing his finger into my chest.  We actually tried our best to extricate ourselves from the situation, but he kept going on and on.   Finally after we got his name out of him, I said, "Jason, I love you and care about you." He quieted down and turned and went into the club.

So, the message from last night was, 'Kids, don't try this at home'.   Finally, through it all, God kept us safe and we were able to witness to people who were literally inside the gates of hell.   To be quite honest, at this point in my life I'm quite sheltered and I didn't realize how spiritually dark it becomes after dark in downtown Everett.  But we each got home safely and 'Without a scratch.'