Friday Night Notes

a much busier night...

Last week I couldn't hand out a Bible track to save my life! This week I was handing them out steady from 7:30pm to 10:30pm. I think I gave out 3-4 tracts last week; I probably handed out 10-12 times that amount in the first half of our street preaching endeavour. It's hard to figure... just how different things can be from one week to the next.

Pastor Tim was still recuperating from the lung infection that had stricken him a couple of weeks ago, so preaching duties were handled by "Your's Truly" for another week. Pastor Tim did come out with me, but limited his activities to Gospel tract distribution, and speaking with any soul willing to hear something of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I preached the Gospel for at least 2/3 of the total time we spent evangelizing. It was quite a task. I don't know if any of you have tried to preaching for that long... it's quite wearying. I had a few souls come with questions. Like the two young men who wanted to know how I defined "faith" (a word that comes up often in my preaching). I gave the young men the Biblical definition of faith, as written in Hebrews 11:1: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." Then I explained how the faith of Jesus Christ was a gift from God and should they receive it, this faith would radically change their lives. I encouraged the men to read the Bible, that it was able to make them wise unto salvation.

A few scorners and mockers put in their usual jabs. One man claiming that God was "dead" (to which I answered: "We'll see about that..."), and a woman later pridefully asserted that she didn't, nor would ever believe the Scriptures (to which I answered: "Oh... I guarantee you... you will... one day, you will). Despite this folly, I thanked and continue to thank the Lord my God that for a number of weeks/months now, no one has threatened us with any violence, nor has anyone aggressively tried to obstruct our preaching. I'm not being melodramatic, pastor Tim and I have, on a number of occasions, have found ourselves in some pretty nasty situations.

When 9:30pm rolled around, pastor Tim and I were certain that the streets of the market would empty out. That was the start time for the Olympic hockey matchup between Team Canada and Team Slovakia; yes, hockey is a really big deal in the Great White North. While there were more people in bars and pubs to watch the game than on the streets, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were plenty of souls still around that we could share the Gospel with. So we kept going for another hour. Ever so often, we'd here the people in the pubs cheer, so we knew Team Canada was fairing rather well (they ended up winning 3-2).

Before calling it a night, I had a chance to preach and offer tracts to men that work in the same building I work in. I don't know the men very well, but no doubt, they knew who I was. They did their best to ignore my preaching and turned down my offer of Gospel tracts. As they walked away, I could see them mumbling and gossiping amongst themselves. The Lord have mercy on them.

With that, dear readers, I close this edition of the Friday Night Notes. I need some sleep. I will preaching the evening service this coming Lord's Day, so please pray for me, dear saints of God.

Have a blessed weekend everyone,


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism