Thursday Night Notes!!!

didn't expect that now did ya?


I went out street preaching a day earlier than the usual time due to scheduling conflicts. I'm not just a street preacher, I'm also a lab technician, a husband, and a father of four. Friday night, I will be putting on my "daddy" hat, and will be going to a hockey game with my eldest son who will be celebrating a birthday early next week (Pastor Tim was actually given a couple of tickets to our local junior hockey team and he passed them on to me and suggested I take my son).

I was out, by myself, for a little over 2 hours, street preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and handing Bible tracts, and I suspect Pastor Tim will be doing the same tomorrow night (remember him in your prayers, dear saints). It was cold and quiet on the streets of the marketplace tonight. I forgot to bring my gloves with me (I didn't think I'd need them), and my hands froze two or three times (to the point that they ached when I paused to warm them up). Mental note: break out the winter gear.

The market was mostly empty tonight. It's the same every year. Things will remain this way until December, and then there will be a bit of a spike in the number of souls in the market. Even then, the large crowds are gone until springtime, some 5-6 months away. Still, we will continue the work of the Great Commission... preaching to a few hundreds may seem like a big drop when compared to the tens of thousands that crowd the streets of the market in the summer, but giving the Gospel to those few hundreds is a whole lot better than not giving it to anyone over the span of 5-6 months!

With the smaller crowds, I ended up doing more tract distribution than preaching. I walked around looking for groups of people I could share the Gospel with. I ended up setting shop near the entrance of a shopping mall where many souls read the Bible sign I was carrying, and a fair number of them accepted some literature. The Lord use those seeds as He sees fit.

I spoke with a man named Randy who was mighty happy to see me preaching. He professed to be a believer, and said he really appreciated what I was doing. There were a number of doctrinal and practical problems in Randy's testimony, so I don't know if he is genuinely my brother-in-the-Lord, but he definitely had an interest and an appreciation for the things of God. I encouraged him to become faithful to a local assembly of believers, and most of all, that he would be faithful in the Scriptures. He received everything I had to say and didn't argue against the Scriptures I cited, which is a decidedly good thing. The Lord be merciful to him.

On a few occasions tonight, I had young people walk up to me to receive a Bible tract. Like they would walk from across the street, or would deviate from their course in order to receive something of the Gospel of Christ. I love it when that happens. One young lady, after taking a tract, even said: "I think you are doing the Lord's work right now... and I really respect that!"

I called it a night around 8pm. By that time, my whole body was shivering and both my hands were frozen. Ah! the cold season...

Here we go again.


Rand

Labels: Evangelism