Thursday, June 29, 2017
God blessed me and my partner with the opportunity to have
several gospel conversations yesterday. Unfortunately, many of these
conversations ended abruptly. I kept
telling myself that they do not reject me, they reject him who sent me. Fortunately
God allowed for the seeds of doubt to quickly die, but they were replaced with
a sadness.
Being here has made me realize just how many people are
without God and have no true hope in this world. It’s truly crushing! There
were many friendly faces and many people who were easy to talk to, but most
people were not open to hearing the gospel message.
I’ve learned the importance of conversation. Not just
talking, but true conversation. It’s easy for us to approach people with an
information dump approach where we unload all of our years of Christianity into
a 3 minute apologetic for the validity of Christ and the necessity of the
gospel. Unfortunately, facts don’t save people, the Holy Spirit does. Now yes,
he may choose to do this the use of factual statements, but God works in the
heart of man, softening the heart and drawing man to repentance.
A true conversation involves careful listening. I feel like I’m
beating an old drum at this point, but the listening to what people say allows
for us to see areas where the gospel could impact their lives. If we fail to
listen, then we are probably failing to hear the subtle opportunities to
demonstrate the love of Christ and how it could impact the lives of those we
are trying to reach.
I’ve also noticed that the way we ask questions is
incredibly important. Instead of asking questions like, “are you a Christian?”
we should probably be asking more specific questions like, “Who would you say
that Jesus is?” or “What do you think this world needs?” We think of our end
goal in asking questions which often times jumps us ahead in the conversation
to a point that the person just isn’t ready to go.
After all of our conversations we would ask the same
question, “was that clear?” and “was that graceful?” I think those questions
are much hard to answer with a yes than we realize. When people approach
conversations, they approach them with an already established worldview. It is
incredibly difficult to find the objections that a person may have to the
gospel in 3-5 minutes. Most of our conversations have eventually developed into
a point where we ask the gospel truths in the form of question just to get the
people thinking.
Even though I have not yet witnessed God save anyone on this
trip, it has been incredibly beneficial for me. I slip into sermon mode so
easily that it’s honestly scary. Unfortunately, many people on the streets don’t
want to be preached at, they want to be talked to.
Please pray that I would become a better listener and that
God would help me to ask good questions. One student said yesterday, “I feel
like we are just sowing seeds so that the harvest will be plentiful again.” If
that is in fact the case, I will cast seeds faithfully. Maybe we will run across
a stray plant that is ripe and ready for harvest.
Blessings,
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