Friday Night Notes

no rest for Rand...

There was about 30 minutes left to my workday... I was getting "psyched up" for the Friday night of evangelism... that's when I noticed that there was something terribly wrong with one of the mass spectrometers in the lab I work in. I won't bother explaining what a mass spectrometer is for those of you who have no idea; all I'll say is that this piece of lab instrumentation has a $650,000 price tag. So when this machine gets sick, my boss counts on me to stick around to figure the problem, and if possible, fix the issue. It took me an hour to realize that the problem was with one of the turbo molecular pumps, and with my boss' help, it took another hour and a half to remove the defective pump and install a new one. It was near 8pm when I finally got out the door of my workplace, and after a quick stop at pastor Tim's house to put on some serious winter gear, I made my way to the market where the good pastor was already preaching the Good News.

"The Bible says that there is no rest for the wicked," I said to pastor Tim when I first arrived. "I guess I must be a really wicked person!"

And without missing a beat, with a big grin on his face, pastor Tim replied:

"Yeah, you sure are!"

I really have to stop making it so easy for him...

Anyway, I took over the preaching duty and decided to go with the same Scripture to begin my night of evangelism:

"The Bible says that there is no peace, no rest for the wicked (Isaiah 57:20-21), but that they who walk in the way of the Lord, those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ will find rest for their souls (Jeremiah 6:16; Matthew 11:28). Why should you walk in paths that cannot satisfy, in ways that are hard (Proverbs 13:15), when the Lord gives peace and rest?"

Sadly, there were no takers for the message of salvation tonight. Pastor Tim had a couple of one-on-one conversations (as you can see from the above picture), but I had none until we started making our way back home at 10pm. All I got as a clear response to my evangelism tonight came from a group of men who walked by me as I walking to our preaching spot with a Bible sign:

"We should grab his sign and beat that %$#@ with it!" one of the men said.

I would be pretty depressed at the results of our night of evangelism had it not be for a couple of conversations pastor Tim and I had with sinners as we left the market and headed back to pastor Tim's house. The first man we met was a young man who wanted to know how a man who is completely sinful could possibly get right with God. Pastor Tim asked the young man if he had ever heard of being "born-again", and he replied that he was completely ignorant of spiritual matters. Pastor Tim explained what it meant to be born-again and how God saves sinners by transforming them from the inside. The young man accepted a Bible tract and thanked us for our time. The Lord be merciful to this lost soul.

The second man we dealt with was a drunken mess. I would have had nothing to do with him, but pastor Tim was very longsuffering toward him, trying hard to reason with this most unreasonable man. Now pastor Tim didn't get anywhere with the drunk, the drunkard's two friends who were with him, well there, there was profit.

"I don't believe in God," the drunk said, "but I know that God wouldn't condemn people to Hell because of their sin..."

"You are so contradicting yourself, dude!" one of his friends replied. "You're not making any sense at all, and these guys, well, are!"

"You guys shouldn't talk to this guy tonight," another of the drunkard's friends said. "He's totally drunk! You guys are good guys and what you are doing is good. Don't listen to this idiot."

I hope that Lord will get all these men thinking about eternity and their earthly conversation after being reminded of the Lord by us street preachers. The Lord use our testimony as He sees fit.


With that, dear readers, I close the notes. It's been a very busy day, and I'm going to get some rest now.

Have a blessed weekend dear readers, and a glorious Lord's Day.


Rand

"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." (Jeremiah 6:16a)

Labels: Friday evangelism