Friday Night Notes

another night at the zoo...


It was another busy night on the streets of the downtown market.  With the summer crowds comes great opportunity to share the Gospel of Christ to hundreds and thousands of souls.  Sadly though, it also means far greater abundance of wickedness.  All manner of wickedness.

Pastor Tim and I both distributed a fair amount of Gospel tracts tonight, which made up for the lack of one-on-one conversations with sinners.  The only one-on-one conversation I had tonight was with a wicked man who rejected my claim that the Lord had gotten involved in my life and had given me faith.  He claimed that the Faith was "all in my head" and that I looked like an idiot.  I just smiled and silently thanked God for the peace and assurance He provides for me by His Holy Spirit.  The man, perplexed at my unwillingness to argue with him, walked away shaking his head.  The Lord have mercy on him.

Another good thing I took note of tonight is how little mockery and violence we have had to deal with of late.  I mean, we still occasionally get a threat, and a night of evangelism doesn't go by without having some awful words thrown at us, but all in all, nothing too grievous has come our way in quite some time.  We even had respite from that awful, mocking guitar player which had been plaguing us the last few months; I truly hope nothing bad has happened to him, but I was thankful for the "night off".

Nothing too dramatic to report tonight.  It was a quiet night of evangelism considering the number of people we ministered the Gospel to.  The only excitement came around 10:30pm, when an army of police cars converged in front of a strip club a few yards away from our preaching spot.  Without exaggeration, there was surely 5-6 police cruisers with their flashing lights on.  In very short order, they grabbed a man, handcuffed him and put him in the back of one of the cruisers.  A couple of minutes later, a policeman came by, wondering what my Bible sign said.  I asked him what the big fuss was all about and he told me an intoxicated man ran out of a bar and started attacking anyone and everyone who got in his way.  The officer told me he had just been transfered to the market, so with a grin on my face, I said:

"Welcome to the zoo."

On my way back home after our night of evangelism, I came across Brother Layton and his group of Open-Air Campaigners who were packing up and heading out themselves.  I was quite happy to see the dear brother out, soldiering on, despite a rather serious health problem.  Remember to pray for Brother Layton.  He's making good progress with medical treatment, and he's hoping for a complete recovery after a few more months of treatment.

With that, dear saints, I'm off for some good rest.

Have a blessed weekend... especially the Lord's Day.


Rand

Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:1-3)