Friday Night Notes

a solid night of preaching...


With the weather becoming milder, we are beginning to see far more people in the market, and the bigger the audience, the greater statistical chance that we will be preaching to some of God's elect. We ofter pray about that, pastor Tim and I, we pray that the Lord would lead us to His elect, and/or that He would lead them to us. I hope and pray that that happened tonight.

We shared the Gospel with a whole lot of people tonight, and the Lord granted me a good number of one-on-one conversations with individuals. Some of those conversations were obviously unprofitable, but a couple were obviously quite profitable. Praise God. It's these profitable conversations that really encouraged my heart tonight. That and I suppose my success in continuing in prayer as I distributed Bible literature surely helped keep me focused on the reason I was out there evangelizing tonight: God's glory.

Pastor Tim and I were really "ON" tonight. LOL. Seriously though, the Lord really gave us wisdom and utterance, even in the face of mockery and the folly of the wicked. Here are a few examples:


Classic Pastor Tim

Pastor Tim was preaching about the need for repentance and faith in Christ Jesus when a young man who was passing by him yelled out: "Satan rules!!!" Without missing a beat, Pastor Tim pointed at the young man and said, loudly: "He rules you, alright! He use to rule me too, but no more!" After this quick and witty retort, my pastor went on to warn the young man that if he remained with Satan in this life, he would spend his eternal life with Satan, in Hell. The young man quickly walked away, mocking, but I think he got the picture nonetheless.


Scott, the youth group leader

A man named Scott came by as I was preaching the Gospel and gave me the usual: "Are you sure this is the best way to communicate God's love?" Now Scott is a supposed youth group leader at his church, and a faithful Christian (this was his profession to me), but Scott obviously felt that my evangelism was, well, not so great. I tried to explain to him, with Scripture no less, that my preaching is the power of God to those who belong to God, and foolishness to those who belong to Satan. I was just beginning my explanation when some of Scott's friends started calling out to him from across the street. I was clear that Scott really didn't have much time for my biblical exposition, so he shook my hand and wished me well, but as he started walking away, I clung to his hand and dragged him close to me and said:

"Scott, you claim to be a Christian... now before I let you go, I want to remind you that a Christian isn't one who only says he's a Christian, but someone who acts like a Christian. You see, Scott, I know what goes on here in the market on Friday night when a bunch of guys get together for 'a good time'. You watch yourself Scott, 'cause God is watching you."

You should have seen the level of discomfort on Scott's face. It was clear I had touched a sore spot. He was probably up to no good tonight, and me reminding him of God probably ruined his night. Praise God.


Matthew, the geologist

By far, this was the best conversation I had tonight. A man named Matthew wanted to know more about why I was preaching the Gospel, and why I thought the Bible was 100% true. I gave him information on the Second Birth, and the salvation of the Lord, and he received these truths rather well. He did however have a big problem with the Biblical doctrine of Creation. He said:

"I'm a geologist. I know that some of the matter I study is far older than five or ten thousand years old. So when I hear Christians claim that the Bible is 100% true, I think that they are nuts. I mean, we know things today that was completely unknown when the Bible was put together. The Bible might have been great 2000 years ago, but things have evolved now, things are different today."

I started laughing when he said that. I made sure to tell him that I wasn't mocking him, I just found his statement, while totally accepted in the general public, completely without merit or logic. I asked him if he had studied the Bible at all, and he said he hadn't. So I said:

"You know what I found out about what people believed and how they behaved 2000 years ago from the Bible, Matthew? To my shock and surprise, the acted and believed in the same manner as our supposed advanced and modern society today. Oh, we have sweet technological gadgets and really fancy clothes, but when it comes to social behaviour, we are far more like our ancient counterparts than different. The same way our modern society has forsaken the Living God for vain and foolish pursuits, ancient cultures, for the most part, had done the exact same!"

I then tackled his geological problem. I told him to consider a rock in his laboratory, a rock that by his calculations, had to be 20,000 years old. He looks at that rock and says: "well, there you go, this rock has all the properties of being 20,000 years old, so the Creation account is false!" I then told him that if I viewed that rock, I would see a rock that was created 5,000 to 10,000 years ago with all the properties of a rock that had been around for 10,000-15,000 years.

"And you can't prove that I'm wrong any more than I can prove that you are wrong. We are now, both of us, in the realm of faith, Matthew," I said. "Rejecting the Gospel is an act of faith, just as receiving it."

This clearly blew his mind. He said that if what I said were true, it would mean that the foundations of our society, from the foundations of science, to psychology and other social studies would be completely false.

"That's right," I said. "And that is consistent with Biblical teachings. Sinful men hate God, so when laying the foundations of their society, it only makes sense that would God be left out."

With that Matthew thanked me for speaking with him, he made it clear that I had given him a lot to think about. It was a good time of witnessing for the Lord Jesus Christ and the Truth of His Word, and I truly hope the Lord will bring up these ideas in Matthew's head over the next few days. He took a Gospel tract with our church address on it, so I'll be praying for him to come to one of our meetings, and learn more about the Bible.


Scott, the drinker

I dealt with another Scott tonight. This one was an alcoholic begging for change on the streets. He came by to speak with me, and in our conversation, he professed to be a believer.

"Scott," I began, "if you're a drinker in this life, you're not going to be in God's Heaven when this life comes to an end."

That pretty much ended our exchange. Just like the rich young ruler, Scott was quite favorable to our endeavour, but when his sin was exposed, he walked away with sorrow in his heart. In the end, he may have had some sort of love for God, but he loved the bottle more.

The Lord deliver him from the cursed booze.


That's the notes for tonight. It was a pretty good night of street preaching. Now, it's quite late, and I have lots to do tomorrow. So, I'm off to bed.

Thanks for all your prayers, dear saints of God.

Have a blessed weekend, dear readers, and a restful, God-centered Lord's Day.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism