Word on the street in Deep Ellum recently has been that Lower Grenville is where people are going for the night life, so that's were we went last night.
Along for the ride: Daniel Lamiman, Dara Robbins, Emmanuel Zeli, and Joel Roberts.
We spent a bit of time just cruising down the street to get and idea of the area. There were definitely more people here than in Deep Ellum.
The first person we encountered was a guy sitting in a parked car in the MacDonald's parking lot with his window upen. Dara went up to the guy and gave him a tract. After she had walked away I went to talk with the him. I found out his name was Byron and he was waiting for his friend to get off work from Macdonalds. I've found that when people are just sitting around waiting for something you've often got a perfect witness opportunity, because they aren't going to go anywhere, and they're often bored and willing to talk to you. When I showed Byron the tracts I had, he professed to be a Christian . He was at least a church-goer and was familiar with scripture. Whether he was Christian or not, I chose to hold up the mirror of the moral law of God by taking him through the ten commandments in the form of the good person test. It's my conviction a true Christian will have no problem being put under the blazing light of God's law, because a large part of their conversion to Christ would have first involved the conviction of sin via the law (See Romans 7:7) .The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:3-4
"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of
man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself;
yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord."
Note Paul says it was a small thing if he was (1) judged by those he was writing to (Christians), and (2) or by Man's judgement in general (the world). As Christians we know that it is God who judges us, and we know that the very Son of God testified that "every idle word we speak we will have to give account of on the day of Judgement." I think Paul's point is that it's not a big deal to be judged by a mere man when you've already submitted yourself to God's judgment by sheltering yourself in Christ. That's why I'm not hesitant to bring the law before a professing Christian, and I wasn't hesitant to bring the law before Byron. (I would personally be overjoyed if someone witnessed to me with the law of God as the starting point since I've yet to be on the receiving end of being biblically witnessed to :( ) Nonetheless, whether Byron was truly a Christian or not, he was very open to everything I talked about, and he kept mentioning how it was such a good thing that we were doing. I asked him whether his friend that he was there to pick up was saved, and he said he didn't know, so I exhorted him that if he truly cared about his friend, he ought to care enough to share the gospel with him. He also heartily agreed when I brought up the fact that none of us there that night had any guarantee that there would even be a tomorrow for us. He was very appreciative of our conversation, and even said at the end how he ought to be out sharing his faith like we were doing.
Later on we approached four guys in an empty parking lot who were standing next to four really nice motorbikes. These guys were pretty buff. I showed them the curved illusion tract,. They thought that was interesting. One of the guys, Joe, said he had a christian background when I inquired about what they believed, but Joe didn't seem interested in talking about it, in fact he almost seemed ashamed to talk about it with his friends around. One of the guys, J.R. said he had a Catholic background. I led him through the good person test, while his three friend listened on. After he self admitted to being a liar, a theif, and an adulterer at heart according to God's standard, I asked him where God should send him. He said Hell. I expounded on God's justice and how they were in need of righteousness to enter God's kingdom and to be reconciled to God, explaining that God would be just in sending all who have sinned against him to hell. I explained using the analogy of a human court what God did on their behalf through Jesus. I could tell that several of the guys were under conviction, and I think it made them uncomfortable, because suddenly they"had to go". I exhorted them to not just take my word for things, but to check out the bible themselves, and to see if what it was claiming was true. Their names were Joe, Dino, J.R. and Mark.
A litle further down the street, we stopped by one of the hot dog stands. He actually waved us down because he was trying to market the food that we had. We stopped briefly to talk to him, and it became apparent withing a few minutes that he was a Christian. I asked him if he wanted some tracts to be able to hand out at his Hot Dog stand , and he said "sure" so I handed him a stack, and he mentioned how great it would be to be able to give them away. He had some really good advice about where to park along other insights about the area, and we were all especially encouraged to run into another Christian.
I also had a good conversation with one of the owners of a store that sold mostly pipes. He expressly stated near the beginning of my conversation with him that he wasn't interested in talking about religion. I never let that sort of response be a deterrent to me, so I posed the question to hime "What do you think is out there after we die?". He seemed very interested in this question. Which of course led to other questions, like if he believed in God, whether thought all the beauty and design and complexity we observe in the creation could have just somehow evolved, etc. He agreed with me when I reasoned with him about how the creation testifies to the creator. I didn't get to go any further with him because it was time to leave, but I left him with the thought that if there is a creator, then the next thing he needed to figure out is what that creator expects of him, whereby I thrust a "You are here tract" into his hand told him to read it, because there was incredibly important information on the back. He said he would.
On the way back to the car, a guy came and walked along side us. He seemed to have a speech impediment. However when I asked him about it, he told us that his jaw had been broken when he was mugged. I don't what it is these days with meeting the guys who've gotten mugged recently (see a previous post I wrote recently) .It was a substantial walk back to the car so as we walked along we talked to him. He professed to be a Christian. I became convinced that he was a true Christian after I had asked im a lot of probing questions on the way back. While we were talking I picked up that he need help to be able to get into the shelter, so I gave him some money. He asked us to pray for him, so we did, Dara prayed for healing for his Jaw, and I just prayed in general. He also prayed for us. As we were saying goodbye, he had an interesting comment, because he addressed Daniel and told Daniel that Daniel would "teach many people the word of the Lord" or something along those lines. I guess it was kind of like a prophecy or a word for Daniel, which we all thought was profoundly curious, but very very interesting. We've met some pretty interesting peope in the past, who act like Christian so that you will help them out and give them money, or they claim to have a gift of prophecy and start declaring prophecies on your life but I've noticed that we're always in agreement about being bothered in our spirits by those people because we know something just isn't right in the spirit of their interaction with us, but I did not feel at all this way with this guy, everything about him seemed sincere and genuine. It was an Amazing evening.
After this first trip to a new area, I am convinced that Lower Greenville will be a a great spot for a new fishing hole for Streetlight ministries. Thanks for you prayers!
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