Friday Night Notes

what a drop...


It rained for much of the day, the temperature reaching up as high as 7 Celsius (45 Fahrenheit). I was sure the sogginess of the day and the mountain of work still requiring my attention in the lab were going to keep me from my regular trek to the market for some street preaching. To my surprise, I got my work done around 7pm and the rain had then turned to snow, so I made my way to pastor Tim's house.

I knew our night of evangelism was going to be short since the temperature was dropping sharply causing flash freezing, plus I was totally exhausted from another insane week at work. That said, both pastor Tim and I preached the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ for a couple of hours in the downtown area of our city. There weren't too many souls moving about the market, but we still preached to hundreds.

"Well, we're not preaching to a whole lot of people, but we are preaching to more than we would have preached to, had we not come," pastor Tim said.

There were plenty of hard speech and blasphemy tonight. A few souls mocked us, but all in all, it wasn't a particularly grievous night of evangelism. Here are a few echoes from our night of evangelism:

- A young man walked by me and took notice of my 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Bible sign, and after reading it, he said: "Yeah... well the Bible says a lot of things." He's right. Too bad he probably doesn't have the foggiest what it does say.

- Another young man, seeing me with my Bible sign and handing out tracks asked me if he could have a friend of his take a picture of the two of us together. There was probably some serious mockery in this request, but I granted the young man's request. The way I saw it, the lad will be reminded of God's Word every time he looks at the picture taken tonight. The Lord use it as he sees fit.

- It was about 9:30pm when pastor Tim and I called it quits. I was frozen to the bone (the wind was brutal tonight). As we were gathering our Bible signs, we noticed that there was a young man in the parking garage behind us, listening to our preaching. Just before leaving, pastor Tim offered the young man a Bible tract. It was then that we noticed that the young man was totally undone. He was in tears. Pastor Tim gave him a tract along with a church business card and invited the young man to come over tomorrow for a cup of coffee. Let us pray that the Lord will lead this young man to seek spiritual help and most of all, the he would seek the Lord with all his heart.

That's the notes for tonight, dear readers. Life is quite busy for me lately... please pray for me. Now, it's time for some rest.

The Lord bless you all, dear readers.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism

No Notes Tonight

overworked... and overstretched...


See this picture? It's the reason why there are no Friday Night Notes tonight. The instrument in the image is an LC-MS (that's Liquid Chromatograph - Mass Spectrometer for you geeks out there). This particular LC-MS has been very... and I mean VERY bad for about 10 days. I've worked roughly 20 hours in overtime in less than the said 10 days trying hard to get it functioning properly.



I'm dead tired now, but I am pleased to report that my LC-MS is now operating normally. Unfortunately, that leaves me to whipped for a night of street preaching. Even pastor Tim, who also has been working long hours this week, will be skipping our customary night of evangelism.



We hope to be back at it next week, so stay tuned!



God bless you all, dear readers.





Rand

Friday Night Notes

soldiering on...


Another Friday, another night of evangelism for pastor Tim and I. It was pretty cold out there, a bitter wind blew through the streets of the market, making our ministry that much more difficult; I had to warm myself a number of times by (you guessed it) running up and down those parking garage stairs. That said, many souls heard something of the Gospel tonight. The Lord use the foolishness of our preaching as He sees fit.

Pastor Tim and I were barely out of his driveway when a couple of young men saw our Bible signs. One the men asked me what we were all about, and when I answered that we were going to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he mockingly said:

"Did you say Bejus Thrist?"

I just shook my head and walked away while the lads had a good laugh at my expense. As we walked toward the market, I said to pastor Tim:

"The Bible says not to cast our pearls before..."

"Swine," pastor Tim completed.

We reached our preaching spot at around 8pm, and I hadn't even begun preaching when a man took exception to my John 3:36 Bible sign. After reading the Bible verse, he began to curse at me, and blasphemed the Name of the Lord. He literally stood in front of me and yelled out obscenities for 5-8 minutes (I'm not kidding, it was about that long). I decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to put Matthew 5:39 in practice: he cursed, I took it. After the third or fourth minute, pastor Tim made his way towards me to help me, but I gestured for him to leave me be. While enduring mockery and scorn isn't my favorite activity, I didn't want things to degenerate any further.

Then something kind of cool happened. A woman across the street got a glimpse of the blasphemer and my response to his antics. She came over to my side of the street to shake my hand and to tell me that I was doing a good thing and that she appreciated my efforts. All this right in front of the man who was still cursing me loudly. Soon after this event, the man realized that he wasn't getting anywhere with me, and that he had seriously lost the PR war. He then walked way, still mumbling cursings and blasphemies. The Lord have mercy on his troubled soul.

After this unfortunate incident, my night went fairly well. I had a number of one-on-one conversations with souls who wanted to know more about what I was preaching, and why I was preaching the Gospel. The old question "do you get paid for this?" came up a number of times. For the most part, the people I spoke to tonight saw me as having admirable motives; though I'm sure all of them thought I was kind of crazy/dim-witted. Humbling business this street preaching thing.

On my last half hour of preaching, a young couple walked up to me and politely asked me:

"Why did that man give you such a hard time?"

For a moment, I didn't know what they were talking about. It had already been over two hours since the incident involving the man who yelled at me. Apparently, these two souls had witnessed the event and had been wondering what the fuss was about. I told them that I didn't know what specifically set the man off.

"Some people just have a real bad day, and some people just REALLY hate God and His Word," I added.

I then explained what it was I was doing and why I was doing it. Like the others I dealt with tonight, the young couple thought that my preaching was praise worthy. The man insisted on shaking my hand. He left with a Bible tract. The Lord be gracious to them.

A few minutes later, I watched as a young lady read 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 off one of our sandwich-board signs. After reading, she looked to her left, then to her right, and grabbed the sign. She hadn't lifted it an inch off the ground when I called out:

"Excuse me, young lady."

Suffice it to say that I startled to wicked soul. She then lifted her nose at me and claimed that I was "brainwashed". Yeah, that's right, I thought, TV-generation-jane here is in a great position to judge what consists "brainwashing". Again, the Lord have mercy on her lost soul.


With that... oh dear me... it's 2am... I have got to go to sleep. Dear readers, I again thank you all for keeping up with my Friday night activities, and I especially thank all you prayer warriors out there who are praying for me and pastor Tim.

Dear saints, have a blessed Lord's Day.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism

Friday Night Notes

won't be a moment too soon...



It was a strange night a street preaching. The usual was present: the mockery, the hatred, the occasional interest. I suppose it was my own perception that was slightly off... or perhaps it was "on"... I just don't know. I promised long ago that I would never let myself think this way because too many saints in the last 2,ooo years thought the same thing and were wrong; but tonight, I just couldn't help it.

Surely, the Lord's return is imminently close.

The apostasy is so generalized, so pervasive (2 Thessalonians 2:3). So many clinging to doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1) and wicked conjectures to excuse their wickedness (2 Timothy 4:4). The same embrace wicked men (Romans 1:32), heaping them up as great leaders/teachers (2 Timothy 4:3), and now words like "morality" and "uprightness" have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

Then there's the church.

There is a Bible doctrine that supposes that the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 are actually seven ages or time periods that the church will go through prior to the return of the Lord. I will let you read these chapters, dear readers, and will let you tell me which of the seven churches best describes the modern church and where that puts us in church history.

These thoughts rolled around in my mind continuously tonight, and the souls I dealt with only helped my "imminent return" inclination. From the young lady (who couldn't have been more than 15 years of age) who gave me the finger, repeatedly (her parents right there next to her!), for simply holding up a Bible sign, to the man who claimed to have read the Bible and "believed in God", but who was drunk as a skunk, to the young lady who hadn't the foggiest (nor cared really) what sin and repentance really was... they all together drew a picture of generalized, chronic apostasy and ungodliness.

Anyway, there you have it. I think it's all coming down soon. Maybe I'm wrong. One thing is for sure, the Lord knows. A second thing is for sure, the day will come, sooner or later, that Rand will no longer be freezing on a street corner, preaching the Gospel to an ungodly and untoward generation; Rand will be at peace with his Lord.

------------

In closing, I'll share a couple of absurd conversations I had tonight.


Absurdity #1:

I hadn't even started preaching. Not one word had come out of my mouth. I was getting my Bible tracts out of my pocket with one hand, and with my other hand I held a Bible sign with John 3:36 on it. A man walked by me and said:

"The Bible says: 'Judge not lest ye be judged.'"

"Okay, well done, you know Matthew 7:1," I replied. "Do you know what the verse means?"

"It means God will judge, and you're not to do judge me," the man replied.

"Fair enough," I said. "For the record, I didn't say a word to you, much less judge you."

The man quickly walked away, probably realizing that the only person judging him, was himself.


Absurdity #2:

A man walked up to me, visibly displeased with the sound of my preaching and said:

"I don't want to believe in what I want and not have any one else's religion preached to me."

"Okay, then keep walking," I replied

"You're just writing me off like that," the man said with a shocked look on his face. "I just want to have the right to walk around and not be taught any one else's religion."

"Yep, I just want to have the right to preach my faith," I replied.

The man was in brain-lock at this point. He clearly saw that for him to have a right at the expense of my right was... well... not right.

"You find me annoying, my friend?" I inquired. "Well, I don't want to annoy you, so just keep walking. Then we are both happy."

Still muddled by my logic, and somewhat ashamed of himself, the man tried to make amends by claiming to know God and desired to shake my hand as some sort of peace gesture. I shook his hand to show that there was no ill will, and sadly, he walked away.


And that's the notes for tonight, dear readers. Have a blessed weekend and restful Lord's Day.


Rand

Ps: Pastor Tim was preaching and I was offering tracts on the other side of the street when Dany Heatly walked by me. He tried his best to ignore me and didn't take a tract. You'd think with the way the Ottawa Senators have been playing lately that he'd be looking to Heaven for some help! ;-p

Labels: Friday evangelism