Street Light Ministries

Recent Happenings

2008-10-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated the blog in a while.

Many a good witness encounter has been had lately.

Last Saturday evening Rick Harman and I went to Lower Greenville. I obtained some new tracts recently for our witnessing crew and was eager to use them. I ordered them from the following website --> http://www.customtractsource.com. (I found this website via Mark Cahill's website. http://www.markcahill.org. ) These are a good alternative to living waters gospel tracts, they're very creative good quality tracts with a sound gospel message. (Covering law and grace)

A friend of mine who recently moved near Lower Greenville offered to let us park at their house whenever we come to witness. This friend lives several blocks from Lower Greenville. This was nice because I tracted most of the cars parked in the neighborhood as we made the walk into the heart of Lower Greenville. There's a tract that looks just like a parking ticket I was using which works great for putting on cars. (http://www.customtractsource.com/Parking-Ticket_p_0-68.html).

Lower Greenville was an absolute zoo on this particular night. The Texas OU game had taken place ealier in the day and the revelers were saturating the streets and the clubs.

Once we got into Lower Greenville, we struck up a conversation with a group of three guys. They were college students attending SMU. I gave each of them a tract (http://www.customtractsource.com/What-If-Im-Pretending_p_0-152.html). One of the three had a Christian background. He was very open and stayed and talked with us at length, even after his other friends left. He was very honest and told us that he was enamored with the pleasures of the world and really felt like he was falling away from his Christian upbringing. God must have been bringing conviction on him, because although his other friends left pretty quickly when they found out we were Christians and that we were out witnessing, he hardly noticed when they left and was very drawn to our conversation. One of the things that he kept saying was that we needed to come to his Campus (SMU) and witness to people there. I told him that we could and we might, but if he really cared about the others on his campus, then HE ought to repent, get back on track with God, and then reach out to those on his campus himself. Jesus never stated that we lack a harvest because the "right" laborers aren't present in a particular place. There is a potential harvest everywhere, but where are the laborers to reap that harvest?

We had a VERY good conversation, because he was so OPEN and God had obviously already been working on his heart and doing a lot of humbling. When I spoke to the nature of the Ten Commandments and talked about how we use them to show people what sin is, he listened very intently and earnestly. I am always encouraged when people's eyes are locked on every word you are saying . I'm convinced that this is an outward indicator that the Holy Spirit is doing something inwardly, convicting the person of sin righteousness and judgement (John 16:8). In those kind of situations I also wonder who is praying, or has been praying for this person, because it's certainly not due to any of my own wisdom or eloquence in speaking that people are impacted in such a manner and so focused on what you're saying and the scriptures that you're sharing. After much encouragement and exhortation for him to act on what we had talked about, we prayed together and then Rick and I headed back to my car. One the way back we were able to tract all the cars on the OTHER side of the street with the parking ticket tract! (http://www.customtractsource.com/Parking-Ticket_p_0-68.htm)

As always, pray that the seeds we planted will bear fruit to the glory of God!

Friends don't let freinds go to hell

2008-08-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

Another interesting night of witnessing was had on Saturday night.

We had 5 people on the team night. Mark Maclean, Emmanuel Zeli, Rick Harman, Sarah Graham, and myself.

I went with Rick and Sarah. We ended up talking to a guy named Jeremy the entire time. Jeremy had been raised baptist. Jeremy was a church goer. Jeremy was disillusioned by the divisions he saw between different denominations. The contrasting ideas of pre-destination and free will were a stumbling block for Jeremy.

Jeremy had friends who were non-Christians. He thought the best way to reach them was to live one's life as a Christian and eventually people would want to know why you are different and why they needed God.

Although that sounds nice in theory, I've never heard a good biblical argument to justify that approach to the EXCLUSION of a verbal proclamation of the gospel. I incessantly hear this line when witnessing to people who profess to be a Christians but show an implicit disdain for the spoken gospel, which they will try to equate with "shoving religion down someone's throat."

What Jeremy speaks of is commonly (and I would say erroneously) called "friendship evangelism." The problem is the way the Bible defines "friendship evangelism" is not the way that people often definie it.

I tend to agree with Tony Minao from http://thelawmanchronicles.blogspot.com . The gist of his argument put plainly: "Friends don't let firends go to hell". I quot a portion of his post below:

Let me stated it plainly. Those who read this blog and who practice what is commonly referred to as "friendship evangelism" (which, according to how it is most commonly practiced is a contradiction of terms), and who find it unnecessary and even offensive to talk to lost people about God's wrath, judgment and the reality of hell are neither a friend nor an evangelist to sinners bound for the very place about which they are afraid to speak. If this is you, then you are merely one among the throng of professing Christians who, in the end, care more about what the lost think of you than where the lost will spend eternity. In the end, you care more about the personal benefits you derive from your friendship with the lost than you do about your lost friend. In the end, friendship evangelism is about you and not your lost friend.

Think about it, please.

The rest of the post, from which the above is quoted, is also worth the read. http://thelawmanchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/06/talk-about-hell-its-loving-thing-to-do.html

Regardless of where Jeremy Stands with the Lord, we were able to challenge and exhort him that if he is a true Christian we will fully embrace God's word as the authority that trumps all the opinions of men and live his life accordingly. I also gave him a CD with the message "Hell's best kept secret" (http://www.wayofthemaster.com/mp3/tape01.m3u) and "What does od Owe you" ( http://www.deliverancebiblechurch.com/podcast/media/2007-05-07_01_what_does_god_owe_you__(11-05-06).mp3) and encouraged him to listen to it, whcih he said he would.

Curtis and Kevaugn

2008-08-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

It had been a while since we've gone witnessing in Deep Ellum, so Saturday night Rick Harman, Mark Maclean, Emmanuel Zeli and I made a trip down there. We met at the Maclean's house, and Sarah Graham, who is in the bible study that both Luke Maclean and I are a part of came and prayed with us (along with Mr. Maclean) before we left.

I paired up with Rick, and Mark paired up with Emmanuel. I should mention that Emmanuel will be leaving in a few short weeks with his family as they return to the Ivory Coast in Africa( where they are originally from.) His family came over here about 7 years ago and his dad just completed some sort of pastorate degree, so they are going back to their country. I'm really going to miss him when he's gone, I've gotten to know him through working with the youth group that I work with, and recently through his coming with us to Deep Ellum. It's going to be hard on him to leave, because he's leaving just as his Senior year in High School is beginning.

The first group that Rick and I engaged was a group of about 5 or 6 people. We started through the good person test, but got sidetracked on issues of the reliability of the scriptures. They had probably seen the Da Vinci code ( a total joke in itself) and so they had similar arguments against the bible, such as Jesus' supposed relationship with Mary Magdalene,as well as the typical "the bible has been corrupted and changed." My attempts to reason with them weren't very well received, a rational discussion certianly didn't ensue. Although their primary arguments were weak, they really only seemed interested in mocking the bible. I think we probably would have kept two of the guys in the group engaged, however the girls that were with them that weren't already engaged in the conversation, (except to occasionally mock) essentially convinced them to go and pulled them out of what could have eventually been a profitble time of contending for the faith.

Later on we ran into a guy named Kevaugn. I gave him the "Are you a good person" tract. (http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=256)He professed to be a Christian after I told him what the tract was, and what followed afterwards was a long and interesting conversation. He was one of those people whom it was difficult to discern where he really was at spiritually. There were several reasons for this. He freely spoke about God's influence on his life, and he knew a good number of scriptures. He said God always came through for him when people set traps for him, trying to make him stumble. I started having questions in my mind about what he really beleived when he started having underlying tones of a prosperity type message in what he was saying. There was an implicit message he seemed to be communicating that if a Christian suffers, or is slandered, etc, that this is a bad thing and something God wouldn't purposefully allow in someone's live. One question that always reveals a lot about what a "professing" christian believes about God, (and I ask this question a lot of those who say they are christians) is the question, "What would you tell someone who doesn't see a need for God's forgiveness?". I asked Kevaugn this question. His answer had little or no mention of sin, God's righteousness, judgement day, the cross, repentance or hell, so we brought up the 10 commandments, explaining that God gave us his law so that we could see ourselves and our sin in truth. I'm not sure how much this sank in with Kevaugn, but around that point in the conversation, I got side tracked by a homeless person (Perhaps the real reason we where there.) who was walking by asking for money. His name was Curtis.

Rick and Kevaugn

As I usually do with Homeless people who ask me for money, I asked him how he ended up in the situation that he was currently in. He said that he had recently got out of the "corrections facility". When I asked him what had put him in the correction facility, he mentioned some business dealing that I didn't understand, but apparently it had been illegal. I asked him whether he had family (he did, but they were all grown, and he was divorced from his wife). I then told him that we were Christians, and explained why were out here (to witness, and minister to people). I asked him if he thought he was a good person, and he said he was for the most part, so I went through the good person test with him. (http://www.goodpersontest.com/) After my presentation of 3 of the commandments, and he openly admitting he would be guitly before God if judged by the 10 commandments, he was very uncomfortale with the conversation and it was pretty obvious that he wanted to leave. He said one of the reasons he was going to leave was that I was making him feel guilty. I asked him if rather it was his conscience that was bringing up the guilt, and stated that there was nothing wrong with someone FEELING guilty before God if they ARE guilty before God. As true Christians, we know the biblical precedent is that guilt is revelaed in us through the application of God's law to our consicence, but the law will naturally drive us to the gospel and to Christ. (Galations 3:24). Also Romans 3:19 tells us that one of the functions of God's law is to demonstrate the reality that the entire world IS guilty before God. It should be no surprise then that someone who has sinned agains the creator of the universe would feel guitly when presented with the law of God. Several times Curtis indicated that he was going to leave, saying he just wanted to get a little money so he could buy something to eat and he didn't need this right now. At one point I really did think he was going to leave, but I pleaded with him not to. I told him it would be awfully sad if he left under the condemnation of the law, because I hadn't yet had the chance to share with the gospel or the good news with him. At this point he was not justifying himself, so I was convinced that he had been humbled enough by the law that he was ready for the gospel. I should also mention that during the conversation Curtis professed to be a Christian, but initially he was very uncomfortable talking about the things of God. When I finally did share the good news with him, it made a huge impact on him. The message of Christ's atoning sacrifice by taking his punishment for him seemed to strike a chord with Curtis. There was finally impact, I could see it in his eyes. I pleaded with him to repent and get right with God today, declaring that today is the day of salvation, I told him that Jesus said a man must be born again in order to see the kingdom of heaven. I asked him if I could prayer for him, and he willingly obliged. I spent several minutes in prayer asking that God would reveal himself to Curtis, and after praying gave him some money to be able to get some food. After I had finnished praying for him, he turned to me, on the verge of having tears in his eyes, and gave me a hug, and told me repeatedly "Thank you. " I could tell he wasn't just thankful for the money, but had clearly been impacted by my persistence in sharing Word of God with him. I was very encouraged.

After Curtis left I rejoined the conversation that Rick was having with Kevaugn. After about 5 minutes, we realized it was time to go meet Mark and Emmanuel back at the car. Kevaugn didn't really have anywhere he needed to go so he said he would walk back with us.

Earlier I had mentioned that when we first started talking to Kevaugn it was difficult discerning where he was at spiritually. On the walk back to the car he was talking about things that were very strange and off the wall. He claimed that he had been some sort of high profile sporting scout/recruiter, and that he had made some really major contracts, and because there was such a potential for so much money, that the goverment kept tabs on him, and then he pointed up to the sky and started talking about how they had satellites tracking him and listening to every word he said. My reaction to this was along the lines of "Oh give me a break, you're not serious are you" because up to that point he seemed to be quite articulate and with it mentally. However my skepticism didn't phase him, he kept on going talking about satellites and the goverment being interested him, as though he he really believed it. I figured I would play along, so I started sharing the law and the gospel with the "people who were listening via the satellites" so that Kevaugn would have another chance to hear it :). When we got back to the car, I gave him a little information card about my church ((http://www.rockharvest.org/ ), my cellphone number, and a CD with the following two messages on it, (which he said he would listen to ):

1. What does God owe you? http://www.deliverancebiblechurch.com/podcast/media/2007-05-07_01_what_does_god_owe_you__(11-05-06).mp3

2. Hell's Best Kep Secret
http://www.wayofthemaster.com/mp3/tape01.m3u

As we said goodbye he seemed to be more serious and had stopped talking about his "out there" theories that the goverment was watching him. I thought was a good sign. I still don't know what his deal was. Most of the conversation had been rational and logical, up until he had started going off on some very strange tangents. Pray for Kevaugn.

Kevaugn and I

Foolishness and Witnessing

2008-07-26T03:56:00.001-07:00

It was a small group last night, partly because we were helping our friend Anne move from her house into an apartment earlier in the evening and I didn't have time to coordinate a bigger group.

Luke Maclean, Rick Harman and I went to "Uptown Village" in Cedar Hill last night to do some witnessing. Uptown Village is a fairly new outdoor Mall and none of us had really been there yet so we decided to give it a try. Recently we've been looking for some place where we can go regularly to witness that isn't as far away as the downtown areas of Deep Ellum or Lower Greenville. I still want to go to the downtown areas, but just not every week.

Mark didn't come tonight, but he has suggested paying for a Daily pass on the Local Dallas Transit train/bus system and riding it for a few hours and sharing the gospel with the people who are in Transit. He and Luke have been taking the Transit to get to the YMCA where they are both working this summer (because it saves them money in Gas, and because as Luke said "We can Witness along the way" :) ) We'll probably try doing that soon as we explore different Streetlight ministries fishing trip possibilities.

We arrived at the Mall and scoped it out by driving around the perimiter (however we didn't drive around 7 times, and we didn't shout at the end :)). There weren't all that many people walking or milling around since it was past 10 PM. Barnes and Nobles and a couple of the restaurants were still open so we parked and headed to Barnes and Nobles. As soon as we got in the store, Luke seemed to dissapear on some sort of beeline towards the back of the store. I wasn't sure where he went, but Rick and I began to browse the store. A teenager with an interesting T-Shirt was walking by, and I decided wanted to ask him about his shirt. His shirt had a graphic image of the Mount Rushmore monument, but instead of the faces of the presidents, there were skulls. Rick hadn't seen the shirt or the guy, so I was trying to describe what the shirt was like, but I couldn't remember what the Monument was called. Rick couldn't either. There was a guy and a girl (late 20's, early 30's) just across from us so I leaned over and asked them "What's the name of the monument with the heads of the four presidents? We're trying to recall it but can't remember it. " They knew what we were talking about right away, and said "Mt. Rushmore!" Bingo! We were now in a conversation with the two of them. (The Guy with the T-shirt ended up going to the checkoutline anyway!) Perhaps sometimes God allows forgetfulness as a way to nudge us into initiating conversations with other people. :)

I always find that the most challenging part of any witnessing encounter has always been the transition to the spiritual and the things of God. I imagine that Satan could care less if we're great conversationalists, because that serves as no threat to him, but when we determine to bring up the things of God, he goes on overdrive on the counter attack, because the very message of the gospel is a threat to him. I think this a very real part of what happened last night.
Amy and Matt were more than happy to talk to us. They mentioned near the end of our conversation that they often go to places like Barnes and Nobles, etc , but they had NEVER
just stopped and chatted with strangers like this before, and Amy thought it was very cool that tonight had been different.

Back to my original thought. Satan doesn't want the things of God brought up, he doesn't want to you to hold up the mirror of the Law of God, he doesn't want Christ preached. So he brings his influence through discourgaement, fear,lack of boldness, etc. I felt like we breached on the things of God several times, but we didn't get much farther than a breach. I have this image in my mind as I'm writing that the Gospel is like a huge resivoir of water, stored up behind a Dam. When the Dam is released, the full power of that water can be unleashed. While we had our conversation, there were several opportunities where the floodgates were about to be opened, but instead we only managed to breach some water over the dam via the dams spillway. A little breach might draw someone's interest, but it doesn't unleash the stored power of all the water behind that Dam to completely wash over the person you're talking to. With Amy and Matt, this sort of "spillway" breach happened several times. They were both schooled in Philosphy, as it had been a significant part of both of their college experience, so I had asked who they thought was the greatest philospher of all time. Matt said Plato. After Matt explained why he thought why, Amy asked me and who I thought was the greatest Philospher. I meant to come right out and say Jesus Christ (John 7:46 They Answered "Never did any man speak like this man) but I hesitated, and the topic of conversation went elsewhere. An example of another breach: Somehow we had gotten on the topic of tyranny and I had asked Matt if he thought governmental tyranny was present in the United States. He said in many respects it was, and made the point that our society was in the process of transitioning from the "Rule of Law" to the "Rule of Man". This was another perfect opportunity for me to bring up the Law of God, and talk about how the deeper problem affecting humanity was not the exteranl governance of men, but was that the law of God needed to rule in men's hearts, and this could come only through what Jesus Christ did on the cross. Again I hesitated. (Argg!). A third breach example was when I asked the question what they thought was out there when we die. Amy really liked this question (and so did Matt) but didn't elaborate because she said it wasn't something that she could discuss in 5 minutes because it needed hours. She said if I gave her my e-mail address, that we could continue a discussion via e-mail. (So we did exchange e-mail addresses later). So instead of responding to that with something like "Well I think this is such an important topic to discuss, because none of us know the day that we will die. Why don't we take you guys out to I-HOP so we can discuss this further?" I just said ok, why don't we exchange e-mail addresses. " :(

So I don't want to make it sound like the conversation wasn't really awesome , because it was, and I don't want to make it sound it won't be used by God, because I know he blesses our efforts to be faithful, even if we feel like we missed an opportunity to really preach the entirety of the gospel. It's my own self reflection on why I wasn't bolder in pursuing to the full extent certain subjects we talked about which were natural and obvious springboards to the gospel. After all on the Drive down to the mall, I was the one who had brought up the verse "The Righteous are as Bold as a Lion" ! (Proverbs 28:1). So when I got home last night I did a search of my bible for the term "philosphy". I wanted to see what the Bible said about Philosphy, becuase our conversation centered a lot on the subject of philosophy. I think in doing this I kind of found my answer. (And knowing a lot more about Philosophy is not he correct Philosphy)

Here's the verse, with quite a bit of context: (1 Corinthians

" For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written: " I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philospher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since in the wisdom of God the world through it's wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world, and the despised things-- and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of Him that you are in Chrsit Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption "

My answer to the my above mentioned dilemna? I need to continually embrace the "foolishness of preaching". You see, there remains in me too much of a desire to be a man-pleaser, I don't want to appear or come across as foolsih to people, and as a result I can neglect to consider that what may APPEAR to the world as foolishness, is in reality, the wisdom of God. God's in the process of teaching me that a continuing part of dying daily to myself is dying to what anyone else thinks about me, and rather embracing what, though it may appear as foolishness to so many, is actually TRUE wisdom. This is especially a relevant verse in the real of personal witness, because many people are going to think our message is foolish by it's very nature, but as Christians we know that the preaching of the gospel is, in truth, the power of God unto salvation. (Romans 1:16).

That'll be $140 sir

2008-06-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

Witnessing cost me $140 this weekend.

Who went?: Myself, Daniel Lamiman, Mark, Anne and Anna

How did you split up?: Mark and Daniel as one group, and Anne, Anna and
I as the second group.

How did the witnessing go?: As always, there were those who were receptive, and those who rejected the message. One particular individual, Chris, had a lot of knowledge of Christianity and what the bible teaches, but he was incredibly hard hearted and clearly rejected the truth.

Did you run into anybody you already knew?: We stopped and talked to Victor, who I met the first time we came to lower Greenville. Victor runs a hot dog stand and is a Christian. I stocked him up with some more tracts, and also gave him a CD with the following messages on it:

Hell's Best Kept Secret --> 1. http://www.oneplace.com/common/download-free.asp?fn=/rc/hbkscdnm01.mp3
What does God Owe you? -> http://www.deliverancebiblechurch.com/podcast/media/2007-05-07_01_what_does_god_owe_you__(11-05-06).mp3

Challenge of the night: Witnessing to Chris the Episcopal Athiest. Chris was steeped in knowledge but he rejected the Bible. His objections to Christianity were mostly founded on the premise that the bible wasn't trustworthy, i.e. it had changed through the ages and that the council of Nicaea (When the N.T. was canonized) was a farce where a bunch of power hungry Catholics came together to decide how they could best use the scriptures to control the people. Having studied that period of church history myself, I knew this was a blatantly false statement, and what he was presenting was his own interpretive opinion of what happened, not the facts. (And I repeatedly told him so!). The council of Nicaea was simply an assembly of church leaders to determine which books/letters/epistles were ALREADY in use by the churches and already considered authoritative, and bind them together (as it were) in ONE book (Canonize) . Unfortunately Chris wasn't willing be reasonable in discussing what the historical record clearly demonstrates. Throughout the entire conversation Chris also mocked the concept of hell, God's justice, righteousness, the scriptures, etc. The sad part was, as he mocked, he was "nice" about it! In other words he wasn't visibly angry or emotional, which are are usually signs that people are under conviction and are uncomfortable or angry that their sin is being exposed for what it is, ( anger cause by conviction is actually a good sign.) People often get angry when their sins are exposed for what they really are under the light of God's law! I consistently attempted to refocus the conversation back to the Cross of Christ and reaching his conscience, as he tended to bring up a lot of rabbit trails. The smokescreen he continually propped up and stood upon was that the Bible had changed down through the ages. However, he never provided any examples of this other than his opinion about the council of Nicaea and he continued to be unreasonable when I presented the historical facts that contradicted his opinion. We spent about 30-40 minutes going back and forth talking with him, Anne and Anna occasionally jumping into the conversation. I had to chuckle when Victor (The Hot Dog Stand guy) who had been listening in the whole time proclaimed "Man, that was way better then the Presidential debates!" :)

What was the most unexpected occurrence of the night?: Heading back to where we had parked and realizing that my car was nowhere to be found in the parking lot.

What was the highlight of the night?: The people I witnessed to after coming back to our parking spot and discovering that my car was gone. Here's what happened. While we were waiting for my friend Luke to come pick us up and take us to the towing yard where my car had been towed, about 6 high school age guys on skateboards showed up in the parking lot. (By the way, my car getting towed is why witnessing cost me $140 :) I wasn't about to pass up witnessing to them since they were just skating around the parking lot olleying and doing kickflips and stuff (I used to do a lot of skateboarding so I can relate :) and we certainly were'nt going anwywhere:) . So I approached them and showed them the curved illusion tract. One of the guys had seen it before, but the rest of them were all really impressed. I then took one guy through the good person test while the entire group listened in. They all appeared to be very convicted. After taking them through the law and then presenting the gospel, they had some great questions, which I tried to answer. One guy had some really good questions about the story of Job in the bible. One his friends asked me a question that I've been asked before, but the genuineness in which he wanted to know the answer was so very different than the mocking demeanor in which I have seen the question asked by others. His question was "What if you are lying to us and there is no judgment day and there is no afterlife and it's just not true?" Being taken aback by the sincerity in which he asked the question, I complimented him on asking a good question. Usually people ask this in a mocking way, and they really don't want to know the answer, their real intent being evident in the tone in which the question is asked. Not so with this guy. I told them that if what I was presenting was not true the implications were that " we(humans) can do whatever we want, and as long as Man's law doesn't catch us, or catch up with us, as there will be no consequences or ultimate Justice in the afterlife. Justice can only be in this lifetime. The Nazi's who committed horrible atrocities in their lifetime but simply never got caught won't face any Justice for their crimes. The 100,000 murders that are committed every 10 years in the US, where the murderer is never brought to justice will never face any consequences for their crimes. All the lies, stealing, adultery, greed, pride, malice and slander that people have done will be of no consequence. I told these skateboarders that I would not want to live my life in such a universe where all the evil in the world and in us would never be brought to judgment. I encouraged the entire group to check out the bible themselves and see if what I was saying was true, and I told them I had no motive to lie to them. By this time my poor groggy friend luke had shown up and been waiting to drive us to the tow yard. So Anna (who had joined me in witnessing to the skateboarders) and I thanked the guys for talking and listening to us and exhorted them to soberly consider their eternal outcome, reminded of theirneed for repentance to God through Christ, and proclaimed to them that TODAY is the Day of salvation, and that Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross was the ONLY answer to the (and thier ) problem of sin.

A new fishing hole - Lower Greenville

2008-05-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

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!

The eternal skeptic and the sentimental sinner

2008-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Another night where God has blessed us with two carfulls of laborers. Tonight was a good night.

Here's how we paired up.

Bill and Jason
Luke and Michael
Vince and Mark
Emmanuel and Daniel

It was cool to see Vince come out, since he's getting married next weekend.

It was Bill's first time joining us. he went with me, and I thought he did a great job and demonstrated a great deal of confidence in talking with people.

Which was good because most of our conversations seemed to be with people who at least to some degree or other, mocked the word of God. Our first conversation of any length (we had handed out tracts up to that point) was with three guys who were on their way to their car and we stopped to talk to them. (Getting their attention using tracts). One of the guys obviously had some knowledge of the bible because he knew quite a few scriptures, but If I remember correctly, they had all been drinking pretty heavily. As we shared the gospel and contended with the most vocal guy (whose philosophy seemed to be eternal skepticism ) the guy who knew some scriptures seemed the most convicted, while the other guys mostly debated and mocked and rejected the word of God. It seemed that the light we were exposing through the scriptures we were sharing eventually bothered (convicted) them enough that they re-iterated they had to leave. I was saddened to see the guy who knew some scripture and appeared to actually be under a good amount of conviction seem to almost be dragged away b his friends (not physically, but via their peer pressure).

The other conversation I remember (I'm writing this a good while after the fact) was one we started with about 3-4 guys outside one of the tattoo parlors. This conversation was unique, because one of the guys simply could not reconcile his own concept of love with certain truths of scripture and the God revealed in scripture. He also seemed to equate his "feelings' with his "conscience" as if they were one and the same, and then attempted to justify things in his life and use that as his bass to took issue that God would hold him accountable for his feelings. I kept trying to break apart his presupposition and premise that his feelings and conscience were one in the same. We went back and forth on this in a round robin fashion for a while, until I finally concluded that simple reasoning with him wasn't getting us anywhere, and so I said something along the lines of

"Look, The Bible says that you're without excuse for your sin, whether you call it a feeling or not, and if the Bible is true, then what you're saying is just a smokescreen for the real issue, which is that you love your sin and you simply don't WANT to repent and put your trust and faith in Jesus Christ, and I'll show it to you straight from scripture. "

I then proceeded to read the entirety of Romans 1 starting with verse 18 and going to the end of the chapter.

18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

At this point after I had read the scripture, we only had a few more minutes before we had to go, so we exhorted them to search out the truth and to each consider the Word of God themselves and what it claimed, especially the claim that God commanded them to repent. Acts 17:31 "..but now (God) commands ALL men EVERYWHERE to repent, because he has appointed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness... " (Emphasis mine).

I was encouraged that Bill was there because he did a great deal of talking and bringing up scriptures. Often I'm partnered up with someone younger from the High School youth group that I work with, and so often it's more of my partner shadowing me and being mentored/discipled by me until they gain the confidence and boldness to initiate witnessing to people on their own perogative, so it was cool to be with someone who did more talking.

Artfully avoiding the real issues

2008-05-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

"Come after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men".

We had two carloads tonight, which was exciting.. I was stoked to see such a big group. The group included Myself, Mark, Emmanuel, Sarah Jo, Kenny and Michelle, Luke, Spenser and Daniel.

Since we had 8 people, we split into 4 groups, and Sarah Jo and I teamed up. She wrote up a great report of the people that we talked to.

Here's Sarah's report (in italics)

Friday, we hit the streets again. I can officially say "again" since I am now a repeat offender. ;-) Two car loads went. Luke, Mark, Daniel and Immanuel were in one car, Kenny, Michelle, Jason and me were another car. We split into groups of two. I went with Jason since I’m still learning and didn’t need to say much. I was surprised to see that an area that had been teaming with people on my first trip was now lifeless. Jason told us that a lot of the clubs and parties have moved to another area so we might try witnessing in that area in the future.

We ran into a group of people outside an art gallery. Jason handed them a track which they started reading. Part way through one girl said rather accusingly “Oh, are you church people?” to which we had to wonder, ‘what exactly does that mean?’ but Jason told them where we went to church and then proceeded to have an in-depth conversation with two of the guys present. He started out talking mainly with Paul using the “good person test”. Paul believes that everything is chaos and that no outside moral standard exists nor is one written on our hearts (Romans 1). He readily agreed that he did bad things but tried to argue that we only think it’s bad because our culture has pre-conditioned us. He tried to use rape as an example saying that we define it a certain way and think of it a certain way because our culture, and that in ancient days what we consider rape was accepted. A girl in the group refuted him suddenly by saying it was wrong no matter how you put it. That was an encouraging surprise. About this time the group left except for Paul and another guy whose name is Robert? The conversation was all over the place but you could tell that Paul had some knowledge in the scriptures and was familiar with Christian terms. He revealed that his parents were Lutheran but seemed to have a big problem with the way Christians acted and used it to argue his point that there was no outside moral standard. He talked about the crusades, etc. It was really depressing. Jason made a good point to him that God hates hypocrisy, that God will judge righteously, and that He will take care of all those people who did wrong while proclaiming that they were doing right. Paul didn’t want to admit that he would have to answer to God for his own behavior. He didn’t want to admit what was written on his heart – the law of God – and that his own conscious testified against him.

Paul left and we ended up talking with the guy who was hanging around. He seemed a lot more open to the gospel. He talked about believing in Jesus and how it was all about how you feel and there’s forgiveness and grace. It almost seemed like he was using that as an excuse to say that he was okay in the scheme of things because he believed Jesus was real (not because he had repented). Jason pointed out that even the demons believe in Jesus and that, as a righteous judge, God may understand that you feel sorry but He can’t just let you off the hook. If a judge in our courts had a murderer, no matter how contrite and no matter if he realized what he did was wrong, the judge would not be considered “just” if he let the murderer go without consequences. Jason was trying to get at the point of Jesus and his death but we never quite got there. Robert kept veering to the topic of how you felt. He didn’t want the consequences, they didn’t feel good. I wanted to say, God cares about how you feel but He cares about your soul more. At that time the group came back (but not Paul).

Robert’s? attitude towards us was really positive and it was just as hard to see him come so close as it was to see Paul be so far away. The night ended on an awesome note because we asked Robert? if we could pray for him and the girl who spoke up earlier, Shannon, came over and was like – let’s do it!- and then she talked about how messed up her sister was and started telling us all this stuff that we could pray about. It’s amazing how open people are sometimes. I don’t think she was a Christian but when we prayed – she seemed really grateful and said “People still care.” I told her God cared- which may sound cliché but it’s true and the truth will stay with her far after we’ve left.

Valet Parking

2008-04-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

I love the words in the following song from Gospel Rapper Lecrae:

Send me I'll go,
Send me I'll go,
Send me I'll go,
lemme go lemme go!
(repeat x4)

I seen it with my own two,
there's no way i can show you
a perfectly poverty stricken people with no view.
And i bet you can't believe this,
they never heard of jesus.
Heard of young buck, lil wayne, and young jeezy.

No one's signing up to go on missions this summer.
Rather sit at home and watch Xzibit pimping a hummer

while a nine year old is shot down.
No one's screaming 'stop now!'
no bridge illustrations for criminals who on lock down.

People deep in africa
looking for an answer bra'.
In china man,
they're dying man,
until they know who died for sins.
So look what grace did.
Not for us to stay hid

inside our comfort zones
at home in mama's basement.

Get out on the grind y'all.
Ain't no better time dawg.
I know y'all read the great commission.
Let me just remind y'all:
make disciples of the nations.
Teach em to obey the Lord.
Hate to never lead someone to Christ before I face the Lord.

So we went to Deep Ellum on Saturday night (instead of staying "hid inside our comfort zones at home in mama's basement" as the song says ) Daniel, Mark, Spenser, Emmanuel and myself were in the carload that came. After we got down there we split up as normal, and Spenser and Daniel came with me, and Emmanuel and Mark went together. Spenser and Daniel and I spent most of our time outside of one of the clubs that has valet parking. I recognized the guy who was working as a parking attendant because I had made small talk with him on a previous occasion, but had not gotten a chance to share the gospel before because he had been too busy working. It was a different situation tonight as he wasn't nearly as busy this time, so I was SET on sharing the gospel with him this time. And it happened! I was able to thoroughly present the law, righteousness, judgment, hell, repentance, and faith with him over the course of the evening. I took him through the good person test (http://www.goodpersontest.com/). He thought he was a good person but after failing the test saw that he wasn't according to God's standard perfect standard in the Ten Commandments. I then thoroughly explained the gospel. I saturated it with scripture after scripture. I told him near the end of the conversation that if we were to meet on the day of Judgement I was free from his blood (Ezekiel 3:18, Acts 18:6, Acts 20:26-27) There is no way that Dan can say now that he hasn't heard the Gospel explained clearly, and Dan understands fully what his responsibility is in responding to what he's heard.

The conversation with Dan was periodically interrupted by people coming to get their keys for their cars, or cars full of people pulling up on the street and asking Dan for directions. I had the perfect tract along with me for this, because as Dan would give them directions, I would thrust the "You are here" tract (http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=254) into the open window of the car and say things like "Make sure you know where you are, Here's a map." or "Don't get lost again, here's directions" etc. I also had the curved illusion tract(http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=222) along with me, and while Dan would explain the directions to the driver, I would show the other passengers the curved illusion tract, which they found highly entertaining. One guy liked it so much he took the tract and started demonstrating it to Dan.

Throughout my entire conversation with Dan, I noticed that just down the street, a guy I had tried to talk to several weeks was leaning up against a building talking to another guy, and he kept looking over at us the entire time. This was the same guy who wouldn't tell me his name several weeks ago, and who mocked me when I was sharing the gospel. (See the previous post where I describe "nameless guy" http://streetlightministries.blogspot.com/2008/04/although-weve-gone-witnessing-in-deep.html)
I'm sure he knew exactly what we were doing and I imagine our presence there could very well have been bothering his conscience. By the time my conversation with Dan was over, he was gone, otherwise I would have made a second attempt to talk to him.

We also saw God's provision in that a few minutes after we left in the car to head home , it started pouring rain. I noticed that west of Dallas it was raining, and I noticed just south of Dallas it was raining, but we had stayed dry right up until we left. I realized later how much of a blessing this was, because I had stuck my camera in the bag that I carry tracts in, and it would have certainly gotten wet had we been caught in the rain.

Witnessing at Sonic

2008-04-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Just a little post about a witnessing encounter last night.

Last night, after Youth Group I went to Sonic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Drive-In) with some friends. I had intended to order something, since was about 9:30 PM and I hadn't had a chance to eat earlier, but there were a couple of guys there just hanging out, so I struck up a conversation with them using the curved illusion tract. (http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=222). I never ended up getting anything to eat because I had such a long conversation with these guys that I forgot to get any food. :) Both guys had a catholic upbringing, and both guys considered themselves to be good people, but after we went through the ten commandments and the good person test(http://www.goodpersontest.com/), I think they both saw that according to God's standards, they fell far short. I believe the fact that they needed Christ's righteousness was really hammered home to their hearts. The two guys names were Carlos, and Germany (yep, just like the country). Carlos actually worked at the Sonic, so he had to leave partway through the conversation, but I was able to talk to Germany for a good 30 minutes. Both guys showed quite a bit of conviction, and Germany thanked me for the conversation as we were leaving. Germany is 17, and attends Duncanville High School. Another person to keep in your prayers.

To this man will I look

2008-04-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

Although we've gone witnessing in Deep Ellum since last time I posted, I haven't posted about those times, but we did go last Saturday night.

Luke, Spenser, Daniel and Myself were the "fishermen" tonight. I went with Daniel and Spenser went with Luke. This was the weekend of the Deep Ellum arts festival so all the streets were closed off and there were display tents everywhere, but by the time we arrived (at around 11:00PM) all the tents were shut down for the night.

After we parked, we immediately ran into several people from Deliverance Bible Church. They were just leaving, and had also been down there for the purpose of witnessing. We were greatly encouraged by talking to them. I felt kind of like it was a tag team, and we were taking the next shift. :)

Before I go on, just a note about Deliverance Bible Church. It's a church that's located in Hurst, here in the metroplex, near Fort Worth. I first heard about the church a couple of years ago when Luke and I met a couple of guys from the church while they were witnessing in Deep Ellum. That night we had joined up with them and spent the night witnessing with them. They were using tracts from living waters, and also had some of their own tracts, which I was very impresed with. Since that first time running into them, I think we've probably run into people in Deep Ellum from their church once every couple of months. I've also visited the church several times and gone to their Sunday service. I don't know that I've ever met people more geniuine and zealous in their faith then the people I've met from Deliverance. The pastor, Cleetus Adrian, is very unique. I was describing him to a friend the other day, and the way I described him was that "he's kind of like Napoleon Dynamite, but with righteousness". If that instills in you a bit of curiosity :) , I highly recommend that you check out their churches podcast. --> http://www.deliverancebiblechurch.com .

Although the night started out really slow, eventually the conversations came, and came on strong. Jimmy was standing outside a club on street waiting for his friends, so I offered him a tract. It was the Worlds Most popular things scratch off tract. He took the tract and told me that he probably wouldn't be able to do it because he was kind of drunk. I was like "ok" and then told him it was a christian tract and asked if he had a christian background. He had a baptist background. He said he was a good person so I led him through the good person test. After the test, when prompted whether he thought God should send him to heaven or hell, he said heaven, and when asked why, he stated that it had been a long time since he had done those things and he had done a lot of good and reformed his ways since then. After reasoning with him, he agreed that a judge wouldn't let a criminal go for those reasons, and agreed that God shouldn't either. At that point he said that he had to go so I quickly summed it all up with the fact that Jesus had died for him, and sacrificed everything, much like somebody walking into a court room after selling everything they owned to pay an undeserving criminal's fine for him. I thanked him for talking to me, and as he left, his facial expressions showed that he was thinking deeply about what we had just talked about.

I started up a conversaton with the guy running the hot dog stand. The Hot dog stand is right at the two main intersections in Deep Ellum, right in front of one of the more popular clubs, so there's always quite a bit of activity in that area. Tonight was actually a slow night for him (probably because of competition from other vendors due to the Arts festival) so I struck up a conversation. His name was Sydney, and he claimed to be a Christian. When he wasn't working there in Deep Ellum, he drove a school bus. and he had 4 grown kids. I asked him if he was satisfied with how his life turned out, and with how his kids turned out. He said a lot of things could have been better, but he couldn't complain. One of his kids was permanently confined to a wheel chair after having his spine shattered in a tree cutting accident, and he certainly wished that was different. I asked him when he became a christian, and he said that he had been a christian all his life, as that was how he was raised. I inquired how his life was different or had been changed due to his faith. He didn't really have a whole lot to say in answer to this question, so I explained how when I was born again and truly repented of my sins during my college years, everything about me changed. I had an entirely new focus and direction, things I used to love I hated, things I used to hate I now loved. After that he appeared slightly more defensive, as he swung the conversation to how there are so many diffferent ways to share one's faith, and he wasn't one to push his beliefs on other people. I did a great deal of reasoning with him and explained that if one of the most loving things that we can do is warn people of the consequences of their sin and the consequences of sinning against a holy and just God and warn them what the word of God says, so they can see the awesomeness of the glorious gospel, and that we shouldn't shrink back if people are offended by the truth.. I mentioned 2 Corinthians 5:11 that "knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Right around this point, Luke and Spenser showed up at the hot dog stand. Luke started to order a hotdog and a drink, which I thought was odd, because we don't usually get food when we're up there, but then I realized that he was buying it for a guy that he was talking to. Luke gave the guy he was with a the food, then gave some money to a guy who Spenser was talking to and then that guy gave
Luke a transit ticket for the Dallas bus system. The ticket was still good until 3:00am that night. I realized that Luke was buying the ticket to give to the guy he had bought the hotdog for, apparently because the guy didn't have a way of getting home and had asked him for some money to be able to get home. However when Luke attempted to give the guy the ticket (instead of just giving him money), the guy freaked out on him and said that the ticket wouldn't do him any good. The ticket indicated in bold print that it was good until 3:00 AM and the guy Luke had bought it from even tired to reason with the guy Luke was giving to, but the guy was freaking out, acting like we were trying to swindle him or something. At that point it became pretty obvious that something else was motiviating him, and his lashing out in desperation at Luke's act of kindness was likely because he was being motivated by a serious drug craving. He wouldn't take the ticket, and was making such a fuss that the hot dog guy, who was observing this whole thing take place told him to leave. He left, without taking the transit ticket, and we sat there saddened at the whole affair. The guy who Luke had bought the ticket from was really impacted by how Luke responded graciously to such ingratitude expressed toward his act of kidness. We continued to talk to him for quite a while. The Holy spirit had obviously been making an impact on this guy, as he told us about his aunt who was a Christian, who had suffered a lot on his behalf and for others in his family because of her faith. He mentioned during his life his aunt had prayed for him constantly, especially during a period when he was in and out of Jail, and he had seen the tangible results to her prayers. One of the examples he gave was when he was about to make a decision that would have likely resulted in him ending up in Jail, she had prayed that God would do whatever necessary (e.g. break his legs) so that he would be unable to do what he was planning on doing, and he described how he had immediately become very sick and weak, and had been unable to carry out what he had been planning on doing. He was very humble and had alot of genuine questions. He asked us whether we thought if someone who was a Christian and commited suicide could still go to heaven. I told him I didn't know the answer to that question, and that I couldn't come to a verdict and had to remain silent on that question, as only God knew. Then he dropped the bombshell that revealed why he was asking that question. Apparently the aunt who had prayed for him for so long was the only Christian in his family and he described how they had put her through such hell, that she had become so discouraged and despairing that she had ended up taking her own life.

Luke and Spenser continued talking to the guy, but I was distracted by someone who came up to our circle and humbly told me "Thank you guys so much for being out here witnessing and sharing your faith". He looked SO familiar, and after a few seconds I realized that he was a Christian we had talked to about a year ago, whom we had helped out with some money and had given him a ride. I remembered his name, which was Robert. He had a huge bruise under his eye so I asked him where that came from. Apparently he got paid for some work he did the other week and some homeless guys saw him get paid and ended up mugging him and took his money. He asked us to pray for him, which we did, and I willingly gave him all the cash I had in my wallet in order to help him out. He asked me where would be going to church the next day, so I told him, and he asked if I would be willing to come pick him up so that he could visit my church. (It didn't work out the next day, but I got his e-mail address an he got my phone number and e-mail address as well so we might be able to swing it next week. ) A year ago when we talked to him i remember how encouraged I was at his confidence in God, and I felt the same sense of encouragement this time.

Since the four of us were all together now, we decided it would be good to head out because it was getting late. We were walking past a club, and I offered a tract to a guy who was sitting on a bench outside the door. He had obviously been drinking and said mockingly, " why don't you tell me why I need this from you or should take this from you.". I told him I would be glad to, and asked him what his name was. He replied, "that's irrelvant, you don't need to know may name". I told him that my name was Jason, and that I like to know the name of the person I'm talking to but if he didn't want to tell me his name, that was fine. At this point, another guy who was standing there seemed interested in the conversation, and he was like" yeah, why don't you tell us why you think we need this." He was willingly to tell me his name, which was Bryan, so I addressed my next statements to both of them. I mentioned that I had just given them a Christian tract and asked the nameless guy if he thought he was a good person. He said he was, so I started questing him using, of course, the standard of the Ten Commandments. Nameless guy was a little too hiked up on alcohol and beliggerent to have a good conversation so I addressed most of what I was saying to Bryan while nameless guy listened in.

I had a very long conversation with Bryan. Luke and Spenser and Daniel were also in and out of our conversation in the midst of talking to other people who were milling about. Bryan had a Christian upbringing, and knew a lot about the Bible, but kept saying things like "Jesus came to be an example and show us a better way to live" and didn't seem to think sin was a very big deal, and also he had some very strange viewpoints philosophically(that contradict bible believing Christianity) . Although he respected the Bible and used it to talk about Jesus, at the same time he questioned the validity of the Bible. It seemed that he was picking and choosing what he liked and what he didn't like. He was very open to discussion of just about anything though, so we talked at length. One of his major hangups was he couldn't reconcile the justice of people spending an eternity in hell. I reasoned with him that in a system of Justice, the severity of the punishment given is a gauge of how heinous the crime comitted was, and that God is so infinitley holy and good and just, and sin so heinous that hell is the only just punnishment for sin. By this time it was getting really late and we really needed to go, so I told him that I didn't know what was going on in his heart, but that if he knew he wasn't right with God (after I had led him through the ten commandments) , he should do something about it, and that If his eyes and my eyes met on the day of Judgement, I would be free from his blood, for I hadn't ceased to warn him to repent. (See Ezekiel 33:7-9) I concluded by sharing this verse with him and exhorted him that these words from Isaiah 66:2 described the kind of person God would not despise --> "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word." We thanked him for talking to us, and he did the same, and then after he gave us all a hug, we left.

2008-01-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

Wow. Wow. Wow. What an interesting night. It was so great.

We met at the Macleans as usual, and tonight we had 3 people who haven't gone before. Bob A, his sone Ryne, and Anna, from Bob's church. Bob directs The youth group that I volunter on staff with at SIL, along with a youth group at his church.(Two Youth Groups altogether). We've been planning a a combined missions trip to Jamaica in March, and it was Bob's desire (and mine) that all the kids that will be going on the trip are presented with experiences beforehand that demonstrate that our aim as Christians is to foster a lifestyle of being intentional about sharing our faith and witnessing whether we're in Jamaica or at the grocery store down the the road, to the extent that we might fully learn the truth in the following statement. "One doesn't have to cross the sea to be a missionary, one merely has to see the cross."

For the next several weeks, Bob will join us and with several kids from his church on Friday nights. Tonight he brought his son Ryne, and Anna a girl from his youth group.

I went with Ryne. Things were a little slow going at first, partly because we went down one of the side streets, where there weren't as many people. I talked to one girl who was standing outside a bar/cafe. Her boyfriend was the drummer of the band that was playing inside the Bar at the same time we were speaking. I handed her a tract (World's 10 most popular things) and made some small talk with her. I let her know that it was a Christian Tract and asked her if she had a religious background of any sort. She said she kind of did, but she wasn't real forthcoming as to what, it didn't seem she was too keen about religion. So I asked, " Religion aside, what do YOU think happens when we walk out of this place, what's out there waiting for us after we die? She responded by saying that everyone individually decided what they would experience in the afterlife. So I asked her where exactly she got her information from that caused her to come to that conclusion.Her answer was essentially, "well, from myself and my experiences". What she seemed to be implying was she and everyone else chose how thier afterlife's would be played out. I was going to say at this point that I disagreed (that my belief was that everyone ended up in one of 2 places, and then ask her if she thouhgt I was wrong, of if she would be willing to even say she thought I was wrong (to see where she was on the postmodern scale) , but one of her friends walked up to her and it seemed that Satan pulled in whatever distraction he could to distract her. Since she was distracted and headed back inside, I wished her a happy night, and encouraged her to read a tract, and Ryne and I continued on.

We also came upon a guy who was outside a bar/restaraunt sitting down up against the outside wall of the restaurant facing the street. I handed him a Worlds Ten most popular things tract, and he took it and looked it over breifly and started laughing. I wasn't certain what he was laughing about at the time, later when he was talking on his cellphone to his friend(girlfriend) from his comments to her he was laughing because he had never been handed a scratch off pamphlett before. Admist the laughing, he started looking over some of the questions and attempted to answer them. He kept looking at me when he would answer to see if his answer was correct,and I told him no cheating. We eventually got into discussing whether he viewed himself to be a good person or not. We went through the good person test, and I'm not sure if he was too happy about the results, as he had many objections, objections which I answered. Often when you answer people's objections, they sometimes respond and say that you didn't answer their question, and I usually reply that I actually did answer their question, they just didn't like my answer. This seemed to be the case with this guy. After hitting him up with the law of God, I touched on grace, but he really wasn't ready for it and hadn't been very humbled by the law. He eventually had to go so I emphasized repentance from sins and his accountability to God, and he went on his way.

We also talked to John, who had recently been released from Jail, where he had served a 13 year sentence. When I asked what he had been convicted of, he told us this long story about how somebody had mildly assaulted his mother, and he had confronted the guy who did it. When he confronted the guy, the guy gave him a good punch to the head. John had a gun with him so he used the gun and shot the man in the head at point blank. I could sense in the way that John talked that he thought of himself as largely the victim in this situation, and that he was at least somewhat justified in taking a life. I knew that John needed to see himself in light of the truth of God's law, as he didn't truly see the gravity of what he had done, so I led him through the good person test. As I walked him through the law and made many comparisons between God's justice and civil law, he was convicted and humbled. I shared with him the good news of Grace, that God could pardon him, but first he needed to realize the sinfullness of his own sin, and confess and forsake those sins and put his full faith and trust in Jesus to save him (from death and from his sins) . I shared how God is just and all those who deserve justice (all of humanity) will recieve justice if they forsake and refuse God's gift of grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. John was deeply impacted and humbled by the law. The concept of Jesus taking his deserved punnishment really softened him. Having been through the prison system, John was also pretty familiar with the bible and Christianity, but I don't think the truth had ever made as much sense to his conscience and his reason as it did on this particular night. As we were about to part ways John gave me a big long hug and thanked me so much for sharing with him. He was so impacted by what Jesus had done for him, as we has walking away, he proclaimed to some of the people across the street in a loud voice "Jesus loves you!" Ryne and I were both in awe at the change we saw in him from the beginning of the conversation to the end of the conversation, simply from having the Word of God shared and explained to him. Praise God!

A Panthiest, a Buddhist, a Catholic, and the like

2007-11-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

It was a good, but short night. For some reason only 1 lane of I-30 was open so we sat in traffic for a good half an hour on the way down to Deep Ellum. Deep Ellum seemed a little dead, although there was a big crowd at one of the clubs.

*Anne, Dara, Daniel, and Jason*

Dara went with Anne, Daniel, and Jason. Dara has come once or twice in the past so she has a little familiarity with Deep Ellum. She and Anne were able to talk to a Pantheist name Jose. Here’s a summary of what he believed. He was a pantheist so he believed that everyone and everything is God. His beliefs were really conflicting, because he said that we’re all Gods, and Jesus, Mohammad, and Buddha were all good examples. The path to spiritual enlightenment was to feel less and less guilt. And Jesus was a good example of how to love. (Comment from Luke : If we’re all Gods, why does it matter if we feel guilt or not? Isn’t God the highest being that there is?). Hell to him was when we feel bad and our conscience is bothering us. (No afterlife, just re-incarnation) . So once you’re like Jesus (or one of the other good religious teachers) you have heaven on earth. To him, Jesus wasn’t really a person, but an entity. One of the biggest influences in his spiritual journey was his gay friend, who was the person “the most like Jesus” he had ever met. Anne asked him if he had a Bible, and he said no. He had a small amount of familiarity with the Bible, but said he got confused when he read it. So Anne gave him hers, and told him to read the red-lettered portions because those were the words of Jesus and he could find out what Jesus REALLY said and what he was REALLY like. (and not based on his gay friend). All in all, they talked to Jose about 40 minutes. Near the end of the conversation they asked if they could pray for him.

Jason and Daniel started a conversation with a couple of guys, but the guys had to leave halfway through it. There were not as many people down in Deep Ellum this week as some other weeks so neither of them got into any big conversations. Since Jason and Daniel went with Dara and Anne, they stayed in the vicinity while Dara and Anne were talking to Jose. They Handed out lots of tracts and got in some brief conversations. We trust that some good some good seeds have been planted.

*Spenser, Mrs Maclean, and Elizabeth *

Spenser had a great night handing out tracks and encouraging the recipients to read them. When his group, which consisted of Mrs MacLean, Elizabeth, and himself, would happen upon the unfortunate soul who would stop to talk to them, Spenser gave the Evangelism questionnaire. This questionnaire consists of two questions: “If you were to die today, would you go to heaven, or is that something that you are still working on?” and “If God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven,’ what would you say?” They encountered three girls while they were walking down the street, one of whom lagged behind, so they picked her off. As they went through the evangelism explosion presentation, the girl understood that she was trusting in herself, but she didn’t pray the prayer of salvation because she had to catch up with her friends. Lizzie described her as more interested in the cares of this life than spiritual things, and that she was trying to act cool, and acting like she really wasn’t interested. They also talked to a couple of guys who were both raised in the church, but had developed their own sense of truth and of God. They didn’t want the tract because they were environmentalists and didn’t want the paper to be wasted on them because they would just throw it away. When confronted with sin, they were offended and felt as though they had been judged, so they ended up walking away. At that point, one of the guy’s girlfriends walked up and was very engaged in the conversation, and had questions that she genuinely wanted to know the answers to. Elizabeth was able to ask some questions to this lady, and actually engage her in conversation. (Yay Elizabeth!) Though the lady was a catholic, she had given up on the Catholic faith and instead had a “multifaceted” view of entrance into heaven. (All paths to heaven are valid.) Finally, in their last conversation on the way back to the Car, they encountered two young men that were high, who said they they were good people and had kept the Ten Commandments.

*Joel, Andrew, and Mark*
The night for Mark’s group started off with a bang after trying to talk to one guy, who flat out rejected the Gospel. Mark then talked to a Buddhist. The Buddhist guy respected Christianity and thought Jesus was a very good guy. However, Mark surmised that the Buddhist was very very confused in his beliefs. While Mark was talking to the Buddhist, Joel and Andrew were talking to a guy named James. James professed to be a Christian, but he had “got into drugs, and left God.” He wanted to come back to God but he doesn’t know how. James said he would e-mail Joel with more questions that he has. Joel described the whole night with the phrase “made me feel good inside." They also tried witnessing at Club One but they got the standard, “Now is not the time for us to hear the gospel” response. Mark saw the police Officer who had told him a few weeks ago that he needed a “religious permit” to be able to hand out tracts or share his faith. Mark wished him a happy Thanksgiving :) .

Video Report

2007-11-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a video report from our witnessing in Deep Ellum on 2007-11-09

A night of fishing

2007-11-05T22:29:00.001-08:00

***Jason***

New people on the team tonight. I was staying with Joel Roberts for the weekend because his parents were out of town so he came, along with Joel Woodward who was spending the night at J.R.’s house. My current housemate Johnny, also came. There were 7 of us altogether.

We split up into teams, I went with the 2 Joels.

We met a guy who was wheeling a trash can down the street. Gave him a tract “You are here” (http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=254) but he didn’t speak much English. He was originally from Mexico. Only able to talk to him briefly (in some rusty Spanish) because he said he had to work.

Skull Cane Man
Stopped and talked to a guy who was sitting outside one of the clothing Shops in one of those little foldout chairs.. Had a cane with him that had a skull on the end so I asked him why he chose that cane with the skull on it when he was “cane” shopping.. I think he said he liked skulls or something. After some small talk and finding out a little bit about him (He works as a web designer, has a family with two teenage girls. He was sitting outside the clothing shop cause his friend worked there, and he was also working on their website, and He went to a Catholic school when he was young.) I asked him what he thought was out there waiting for us after we die. Said he wasn’t sure, so I asked if he had any leanings toward anything. Said he had been studying some world religions, look at re-incarnation, etc. He said he believed in Heaven and Hell, but somehow everyone ended up going to heaven and he was going because God is forgiving. (He was really stuck on this idea for most of our conversation) Then he asked what I BELIEVED (with genuine interest) , so I explained what I believe (without using anything from the bible at that point), that there was a God because of creation, that in exploring world’s religions Christianity made extraordinary claims that no other religion made, that a personal God would by nature care about justice and righting the evil in the world even more than Man would, etc. Eventually asked him if he thought he was a good person and once he said he was, what he thought “Good” was. We went through the Ten Commandments, and he admitted to being a Liar, a Thief, an Adulterer and a Murder at heart according to God’s standards. He still thought he would go to Heaven if God judged him because God would forgive, so brought the analogy over to civil Law to demonstrate that a Good judge would not let Sin go unpunished. Explained that if the Bible was true and reliable, and there was stacks upon stacks upon stacks of evidence that it was, that God would not let the guilty go unpunished and that the Bible said that without the Shedding of Blood, there was NO remission of Sins. Said that this should make sense to us, even without the Bible’s testimony, because our conscience wouldn’t be able to get around it. Described how God took Sin incredibly seriously, demonstrated by the severity of the consequences that have come and will come to those have sinned and remain in their Sin to the point that they die in their sin. James (His name) became real quiet and couldn’t really look me in the eye at that point. He had to help close the clothing shop at that point, but I thanked him for talking and told him to check out for himself if what I was saying was true. (One the things he said was that the Bible had been corrupted and changed by Men. ) Praise God that a seed was planted and pray that God might cause it to grow.

Homeless Donna
A homeless Lady named Donna stopped us on the street and asked us for some money because she hadn’t eaten in a long time. None of us had any cash on us. She pleaded with us, and I told her that I was telling the truth that I didn’t have any cash on me, but If there was an ATM around, I could help her. There was a 7-11 around the corner so we went there. Her story was pretty tragic (She had been married with kids, her husband had left her, then she got re-married but that husband left her and took everything, and she became homeless because she didn’t know how to do anything besides be a housewife.) I bought her a hot dog and water, and while she was munching on that we talked a bit. I told her that we were Christians which is why we down there, to share the gospel. She said she could tell, which is why she came up and asked us for help. She said she was a Christian as well. Since 80% of the homeless people tell you they’re Christian, I asked her a question that I think every Christian should be able to answer.  “What if I came to you as a Non-Christian friend, and said ‘I don’t see a need for God’s forgiveness’, what would you tell me?”. It’s always revealing to see what people say. It also gives us a chance to use the questions and objections that we always get from people, and see how another “professesing” Christian responds to the typical objections. She did ok. I asked her about the 10 comandments, being a good person, and led her through the commandments, and talked about God’s grace in Christ. Then I gave her some money, and she was so surprised and excited and said “This will buy me Breakfast and Lunch!” She was so happy and grateful and she gave all three of us a hug, and then got quite and very soberly admonished us to NEVER ever ever ever get involved with drugs because they would ruin our lives. I asked if we if we could pray for her, which we did.

**Mark**

Porn Man, the sequel. Mark saw the Porn man, who he talked to last week. Porn man didn’t want to talk this week. In fact he kinda ran away. However God seemed to arrange it so Mark and he crossed paths several times during the night. His conscience must have been bothered him, because he told Mark to get away. Yup, Jesus pretty much summed it up when he said “Light has come into the world, but men loved Darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Pray for the Porn Man. None of us are really any different, we ourselves were once lost and slaves to sin, and God came and forgave us and rescued us from the same.

Mark also talked to some guys who already “knew the Gospel”. Since they knew the Gospel already, Mark’s sharing it with them was annoying to them, even to the point where one of the guys got angry and essentially said “Get away from me”.

Mark’s experience most of the night with the people who he talked with was the “Right now is not a good time.” Vibe. It’s a typical response. Thinking about Death, Eternity, God, having their conscience stirred, is not what they came down to Deep Ellum to experience. “We’re just here to have a good time…we don’t really want to hear about that right now. ” We realize, however, that we are fishing for men, and fish don’t always, (actually they rarely) jump in the boat out of their own volition. On a side note, Living Waters makes a great tract for giving people who don’t want to think about or face the stark facts that they will one day die, and they don’t know when that days is, and should consider eternity and what’s on the other side now, not later. You know, the kind of people who say they will get right with God on their deathbed, or they will repent later.  (http://www.livingwaters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=251&Category_Code=)

**Joel and Joel**
I (Jason) am wiriting a third hand report so if I’m a little off on the details, Joel or Joel can straighten it all out. While I was talking to skull-cane man Joel and Joel had a conversation with a guy with a Catholic background. He was disillusioned with the Catholic church, because of all the bad things that have happened within the Church in recent times. They discussed a little bit about going through a priest vs going through God. He was interested in spiritual things and was going to think about some of the stuff that Joel and Joel brought up.

**Anne and Johnny**
Anne was able to reconnect with Odie(Club Owner) and Matthew (parking attendant), both people whom she has witnessed to in the past. She told me that Odie wasn’t doing so well, but she was able to talk to him for a long time tonight. Johnny got to talk and pray with several people. I don’t have more details about their experience, sorry about that, but I wanted to get this report out.

2007-10-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a report from last night. You can read reports from Luke, Mark, and Myself (Jason) below Thanks for your prayers!

**Mark**

Rebuked the Porn man. He was sinning and is damned to hell if he doesn’t change. (Note from Jason: This guy was handing out porn on the streets!)

Talked to another guy who had to run, but I was able to fit in the whole message. That he was going to hell and he needed Jesus because I knew he was because of the way he answered the questions I asked concerning salvation.

Talked to Oedie, manager of Club Hush told me how Deep Ellum was closing down.

Went to club one and witnessed Sodom and Gomorrah on the other side of a black fence.

Saw that William was no longer at his normal hot dog stand. Another man had replaced him either temporarily or permanently.

**Luke**

Talked to Tom, (Tom is a parking lot attendant who we’ve grown to know over the years) Tom passed the news on to us that Deep Ellum was in the midst of a lot of change and many of the clubs were closing down and were slated to be replaced by restaurants)

While Jason was talking with the another parking lot attendant (here after mentioned) further down the street, I talked with people passing by and prayed with a few that were Chrisitians and encouraged them (We talked about how when Jesus went to the Temple when he was 12 it demonstrated from very early on that he knew he was God.)

One of the clubs was having a Halloween party so there were lots of interesting people in strange costumes to talk to . I tried passing out tracts to the people standing in Line but that wasn’t well received. So while Jason was talking to the bouncer, I talked to the “watcher”. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was “watching”. He said that he really didn’t want to talk about Jesus at that point in time. I asked him when a “good time” would be, and he said that was a very good question! Thought provoking at least. I mentioned that my World view centers around Jesus Christ and so for me, all the time is a good time to talk about it because he’s the center (He’s the Lord) of my world. I asked him if he thought that world view was incorrect. Then I asked him what He thought the True world view was . He responded with something along the lines that everyone creates their own reality. I tried to make the point that Truth is defined by what’s real, not by people creating it. At the end of the conversation he mentioned that this had been a real good conversation. Please pray that God would grow the seed that was planted.

Talked to another guy, Mike. He grew up in the baptist church. He had a thurough knowledge of the Word of God. He had definitely paid attention in Church when he was young, but he had stopped going in 9th grade. Although he was very knowledgeable about the bible, he had a callousness towards sin that became apparent in the conversation.( although he didn’t come right out and say that) Certain things that used to bother him no longer bothered him, especially in reference to how he dealt with the opposite sex. Because of his church background, Mike did agree that there was definite right and wrong. He even asked the question at one point whether it was wrong for him to go into the club. (We often answer this kind of question by saying it all comes down to your motive, and there’s probably only one reason to be in an atmosphere like that, and that’s if your intention is to share the gospel with everyone there. ) Please pray for Mike, that God would soften his heart and grow the seeds that were planted in his youth.

**Jason**

Parking attendant dude (I can’t recall his name at this point, but he's different than the Tom mentioned above) and I had a chat. People from our group have talked to him several times in the past. It seems like he knows many facts about the bible and the church and Christianity and has an interest in spiritual things, but at the same time he remains spiritually dead. Luke and I were talking about it afterwards and agreed that it was really hard to gauge where he was spiritually. He mentioned that he had been thinking a lot about re-incarnation and pondering if that was possible. Since he was familiar with the Bible, I asked him what he thought about the verse from Hebrews, where it says “For it is appointed unto man ONCE to die and after this the Judgement.” We didn’t really get to discuss that further because a stream of cars appeared at the point and he had to attend to them.

Then when were were down outside of the club where the halloween party was going on, I talked to one of the bouncers that they had hired for the night. It was kind of obvious that they had hired him for the night because he was older and didn’t look like a regular bouncer. . He was bouncing just for the night, because they needed extra people because of the Halloween party the club was having. I was really struggling swinging any of my conversations to spiritual things, so I prayed and asked God to lead my to someone where that would occur. Lo and behold he answered my prayer above and beyond what I had asked, because I was making small talk to the Bouncer, and HE brought up stuff about heaven and hell, and HE brought up the Ten commandments, which kind of blew me away, because it's not usually the case that someone brings up those things. At one point I asked him what he thought the purpose of life was, and he didn’t really have a clear answer. His basic philosophy was “you live a good life, then you’ll be accepted by God. All you have to do is ask for forgiveness and you’re good to go with God because none of us are perfect” I asked him how bad does someone have to be to be sent to hell? Did he think God was angry sin? What was the purpose of the ten commandments? (since he had brought it up) He maintained that he wasn’t perfect and God wasn’t expecting perfection. (I immediately thought about the verse where Jesus said “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect”). So I told him that in 1 10 year period in the United States 200,000 murders were committed, and only 100, 000 had been brought to justice so far. Was that something God cared about? I pointed out that if we were made in God’s image and we have a passion for justice demonstrated by how much time and money and resources people will spend seeking out Justice, then how much more would a perfect God who created us have a passion for Justice! I had started asking him whether he thought he was a good person, and quized him on several of the Ten Commandments, but unfortunately at this point he was distracted because he was manning the exit door and a ton of people were coming out, and then he disappeared inside the Club for a break. I didn’t have another chance to talk to him, but I was able to leave him with a curved illusion tract, and told him that it had more information about what I had been talking about.

I then approached a big group of people that had just come out of the club and were hanging out on the street. I showed several of them the curved illusion tract and they loved it, so I gave them each one, and this one girl was really open to talking. She seemed a little bothered about something and said something along the lines of “I really need to get out of here, it’s bad in that club with the drugs and the drinking and stuff.” I was intriuged at why she said that so I asked her if she had a religious background, and she definitely had a church background and was very open. I told her that we came up to Deep Ellum almost every weekend to share our faith. She said she attended a church, and mentioned having read Rick Warren’s book “The purpose driven life”. Whenever I meet someone who professes to be a Christian, one of the questions I usually ask is how they would respond to a friend if a friend told them “I just don’t see a need for God’s forgiveness, I think I’m good with the 'Man upstairs' already" She was like, 'wow' that’s a good question. She was really thinking hard about it. I then answered my own question by sharing my testimony describing how I grew up in a Christian home and my parents were missionaries in an organization that did Bible Translation. They spent 20 years to translate the bible for 3000 for people in a langauge group most people have never heard. I personally came to the point while attending a CHRISTIAN COLLEGE where I realized I didn’t have even the slightest desire to read the Bible for even 5 minutes a day. For the first time in my life I really asked some honest questions about what this book said, but even more important, why I didn’t have a desire to read it if it was so important that my parents and so many others would dedicate their lives to the truth they believed was inside it’s pages. I had to face the question that if this Book was true what did that mean for me? And then shortly after that I heard a sermon were the preacher (Ray Comfort ) was talking about the ten commandments (The Message was called “Hell’s Best Kept Secret) and I was very convicted by it, by the fact that under God’s standard of the 10 commandments, I was a liar, thief, and adulterer at heart, and I realized if I died at the very point in time, it would be just of good God, if he existed, to send me to hell. I had been convinced I was a Christian because of my upbringing., but knew at that point that without God’s Grace and Mercy I would go straight to hell. I realized that the Word of God was true and Jesus really meant what he said when he said “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.” She basically responded saying, “Wow that really answers the initial question you asked me.” She was so open and seemed very impacted and agreed with me that so many people didn’t see sin the way God saw sin, and that "by the commandment, sin became exceedingly sinful" as the scriptures say. One of the things she had mentioned earlier was that people took God’s grace for granted. And after our conversation she was even more convinced of that. She was really deep in thought at the end of the conversation, and I was very encouraged when she said that what we were doing was a good thing, and said “Keep coming here and talking to people about these things.” Please pray that God would continue to reveal himself to her!

The long and short of it

2007-05-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of conversations from back in December.

I ran into Larry when he tried to sell me some flowers. I was able to witness to him for a few minutes, but then he came under conviction and disappeared into the club, which cut our conversation short.

2006-12-08 Larry

Jason and Brandon were hanging out on the street and since I had the same name it was easy to get in a conversation. Brandon was somewhat drunk, but very amicable. He had a Catholic background and theologically he agreed with everything that I said, however the fact that he was drunk and his favorite adjectives were four letter words (unedited in this audio) was pretty inconsistent with his profession of faith. This was a fantastic conversation. My dialouge with Jason gets a little sidetracked occasionally when Brandon decides to talk, but the whole conversation is definitely worth a listen.

2006-12-08 Jason and Brandon

Audio is coming

2007-05-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

I've decided to transition most of my posts from the writing medium to the audio medium. As a result, the blog has really been neglected lately. It's taking me some timeget a system down to edit and post the audio files amidst all the other busyness. The next several posts will be audio from the last several months, as I get it edited, all the way back to December of last year. Hopefully this will get things caught up and we will start doing weekly updates again.

Here's a conversation I had with a gentlemen named Reggie who was a bouncer outside one of the bars. The audio quality is pretty weak, but this was a very interesting conversation with someone who professed to be a Christian.

2006-12-08 Reggie

Ice

2007-01-13T18:51:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since we've posted. I wish I could say that there was a really good reason like my house burned down and I didn't have a computer, But alas I have no such reason. We have missed going out to Deep Ellum to witness and share our faith alot in the last couple of months, mostly because different people were sick, or two or three people in our group weren't able to go. The times that we did go, none of us wrote about it in the blog.

Tonight, Dallas is in the midst of a potential ice storm. It's not likely many people will be out partying or clubbing in Deep Ellum, and with the potential of 1/2 to 1 inch of ice we've opted to stay home. This gives me a good opportunity to catch up on the blog.

On one of the recent witnessing trips, I was able to capture some audio of some of my conversations with people, which I'm going to post here.

Tony asked us for money so that he could go to the shelter. I ended up giving him some money but not before we presented the truth to him.

2006-12-01 B Tony - Final.mp3

The second clip is a conversation with a group of people outside a club. The audio is a little distorted during the first two minutes because of the loud music booming from the club we were outside of. The guy I was primarily talking to was named Ray. Just a warning, Ray was colorful with his language, and this clip is not censored. (I haven't figured out an efficient way to do that yet.)

2006-12-01 C Ray.mp3

The next two clips are of the same conversation, with a Lady named Toni. This was a very intriguing conversation. Tony seemed as though she was oh so close to having the truth, but I perceived she still seemed to be trusting in her own works.

2006-12-01 D Toni Part 1.mp3

2006-12-01 D Toni Part 2.mp3

Jim and Catherine were husband and wife and homeless and asked for some help. This was my favorite conversation of the night. They were SO open. Jim had recently started reading the bible, and it was obvious that God was opening up his heart.

2006-12-01 E Jim and Catherine.mp3

Late Night

2006-09-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

Hello Brothers and Sisters
Well Saturday came and Jason, Mark, Luke, and myself (Anne) headed out again. Greg has been very busy with work and battling health issues so he has not been able to come in awhile. Please pray these issues will be resolved soon.
Anyway, we got down to Deep Ellum around 11:15 p.m. which is pretty early for us and as usual for that early in the evening there were not that many people around. We prayed and then Mark and I headed down one side of the street and Luke and Jason took the other side. It was kind of an international night for me and Mark. First, we got to talk to some guys from Croatia. These guys were here to play basketball and let me tell you they were huge. I am five two and a half and Mark is about five seven, I guess, and I don't think Mark even reached their shoulders so you can imagine how big they were to me :) Any way, I started by asking Marin if he had a christian background which he replied to that he had been raised Catholic although he was didn't really practice it. He said that he had attented a baptist church for the last two weeks here in the U.S. and he did not really see the difference between them and Catholism. This I have to say was a great lead into a conversation about Christ. I began by talking about the main difference between Catholism and Christianity by saying that in Catholism when you sin you go to a priest and confession, the priest then tells you to do this and that and you will be forgiven. I asked Marin to confirm that what I said was correct and he said yes. I don't remember that exact words of what I said next but basically I said that we can't do anything in order to earn forgiveness, that we are not good enough nor can we do enough to desire forgiveness. I then asked him to take the good person test and we went through the ten commandments and the courtroom illustration. Marin was attentive and seemed interested in what I was saying. Mark meanwhile was talking to Marin's friend whose name I don't know. I love to talk to people from different countries who are going to go back to those countries. You never know if they will get saved and go back to their countries and start spreading the Gospel. It is very exciting.
Mark and I then started talking to one of the parking attendents and he was from Ethiopia. He said he was saved and then he told us talk to one of his co-workers because he was Muslim and needed to hear about God. He tried to get his co-worker to come over but he refused. Muslims will not usually talk to us or take any tracts.

The last guy Mark and I talked to was Bobby. Bobby was Japenese, although I think he has lived in America his whole life, and he is a Buddhist. Mark and ended up talking to him for over an hour. It was a great conversation. Bobby did not seem convicted throughout the conversation but it was a great time of debate and question and answer time. Neither Mark nor I had ever talked to a Buddhist and we knew nothing about the religion so I was also a great time of learning for us. Bobby's main thought was that Buddhism and Christianity have the same basis when you get down to it and that is love thy neighbor as thy self. This I thought was very interesting because it completely takes God out of religion. I replied that I disagreed because the basis of Christianity is love God and a natural outcome of that will be a love for your neighbor. Bobby also said that the main difference between Buddism and Christianity is that Buddism is internal (the strength comes from you), while Christianity is external (the strength comes from a being outside of yourself). I can't remember how Mark and I replied to this. Anyway, another point that Bobby had was that marriage was a man made structure which I again disagreed with. I said that marriage was an illustration of how our relationship with God should be. In a marriage, the man is the provider, protector, leader, and should love the woman as himself, this is God's role, and the woman in the marriage is to respect, honor, obey, and love the man in return and in response to how he loved us. The woman in the marriage represents how we as christians are to respond to God to which Bobby replied with disbelief that "I was going to take that in this day and age and haven't I heard of women's lib", to which I replied that yes I was going to take it and I didn't believe in women's lib. Bobby looks at Mark and goes " I like this, no wonder you like this" (this referring to Christianity). It was frankly very humorous. Throughout our conversation we also talked about evolution, death, eternity etc. At one point during the conversation some guys, Jordan and his friend whose name I didn't write down, who were also passing out tracks stopped and gave us some but then kept walking. Later near the end of the conversation they came back and Bobby decided to draw them into the conversation. I was concerned as you don't know what other people's beliefs are and they might be a hinderence but God was faithful and these guys were on the same page we were. They joined the conversation which was a blessing and they had a Bible which they convinced Bobby to exchange some of his information on Buddism with them for the Bible and they would both read each others papers and then e-mail each other and talk about it. We left Bobby with one last thought. There is a God and one day he will have to stand before Him and give an account.

Saturday was a lot of fun and very encouraging especially after the rough time I had the last time we went. We were out there for four hours until 3:15 p.m. so we didn't get home until almost four. Thankfully, God had allowed me to get a three and a half hour nap before going so I felt pretty good and energized. I actually wanted to go to Denny's on the way home but the guys were about to fall over so we didn't go.
Some of the other people Mark and I talked to were Mordecai and Andrea, Chris and Matt, Erin, and Damon. Please pray for all those mentioned and for others that I may not have mentioned because I can't read Mark's handwriting.

God Bless

Tommy Boy!

2006-09-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

Jason's report:

A note on last week, we didn't go to Deep Ellum because Mark, Anne and I were at youth group retreat. (Anne and I are both staff volunteers and Mark is in the group) While at the retreat Mark and I were even able to do a little witnessing role play in front of the youth group to demonstrate how we could use our retreat T-Shirts as an ice breaker to share the Gospel. Good Stuff.

This last Saturday, (September 9th) we returned to Deep Ellum. After a time of prayer at the pole(a telephone pole on the corner of the street where we park) Luke and I grouped up and set off. Anne and Mark grouped up and will relate their experiences in their own posting.

We passed a few tracts to passerbys in the first few minutes. We always park our car for free on a street that Greg managed to find about a year ago when he first began coming, but it's a couple of blocks away from where the nightlife is. One of the first parking lots on our route is where Tom the parking attendant works. I mentioned Tom in a previous post. Tom has always been friendly and nominally supportive of what we're doing, however tonight he couldn't stop talking about witnessing or how God had been teaching him and showing him so much about how he needed to share his faith. I saw a humility and a heart for God in his conversation and demeanor that I hadn't seen before. He was genuinely impressed that we had been coming out faithfully every week to Deep Ellum and wanted to know how we managed to do this every week and what we did to muster up our courage. He told us how he had seen and heard some material from Way of the Master and now he was really fired up about sharing his faith. He had already tried to do so but was a little discouraged because of not seeing much of a response, and so we encouraged him that the important thing was to just be faithful to God and his Word since results are so often unpredictable. It was so encouraging and refreshing to see Tom so energized for God's glory. Tom lives a couple of miles away from Deep Ellum so I got his address and phone number, and we will plan to go visit with him to fellowship and perhaps watch some of the Way of The Master Episodes with him.

When we reached the main intersection in Deep Ellum, Luke and I were able to have some really good 1 to 1's with people. Luke was talking to about 3 or 4 guys and I joined in the conversation and started talking with two of them. I think their names were Andrew and Brad(?). They were both open to talking about spiritual things. Andrew had studied a number of different religions and Andrew admitted that Christianity had more evidence to back it up than any other religion. We were able to talk about the incredible creation that we see around us, and at one point they asked me what had convinced me that it was true. I was then able to share my testimony with them and talked about how I had grown up in a Christian home but didn't get saved until I was in college, and it was being confronted by Jesus's words along with the Ten Commandments that brought me to repentance. They had to leave to go to a show, but they were both appreciative of our conversation and seemed impacted by my testimony, especially when I was talking about the Ten Commandments.

I saw a lady who appeared as though she was homeless, and gave her a tract. She (Michelle) asked me for some money so that she could pay for the bus fare to get a ride home to Mesquite. I told her that I didn't give away money to people without getting to know them a little bit and if she would be willing to talk to me for 10 minutes, I would help her out. I had to go into a corner store and break a bill, and while in the cornerstore, I ran into Stephanie, who works as a clerk there at the store. I had witnessed to her several weeks ago so I asked her if she had thought any about what we had talked about, and she said no. Keep her in prayer. I went back outside and found Michelle so we sat down on the curb and started talking. Eventually we got to the things of God, and she professed to be a good person, saying that she had never lied and never stolen, even once in her entire life. First person I've ever talked to who has adamantly said they had never done either of those things. However when asked if she had ever hated anyone, she admitted she had and I showed her how God's word said that if you have hatred in your heart, God sees it as murder. That struck a profound chord somewhere, but she had to leave in order to catch her bus, so I gave her some money to pay for the bus, and I quickly told her that, though deserving of God's justice, God had instead re-directed that justice to his Son out of sheer love for her, and provided a means of forgiveness through repentance and faith. She seemed thoughtful as she left.

I handed out tracts to a group of about 4 or 5 guys and one of them said "What's this about?" I responded that it was meant to be entertaining but it also had a serious part, which was the Christian message. Travis appeared annoyed at first, but I drove him on with the good person test, and by the look on his face after it was all explained, he was hit hard. Since there was no justification whatsoever coming out of his mouth, I just began to expound on the love that God had demonstrated to him in the cross, and let me tell you, it's not often that a guy who is with 4 or 5 of his friends looks like he might start crying, but Travis did. I urged him to receive God's unmerited gift of redemption, to repent, and put his faith in Jesus since this would be the most important thing that he could ever do with his life. I didn't want to just lead him in a prayer, because I don't think the impact of God's word on his heart had fully bloomed, but the expression on his face was evidence that his mind and his convicted spirit where in quite a struggle. He needed to leave with his friend shortly after that so we weren't able to talk much more, but your prayers for him would be greatly appreciated. It's so hard not to know the outcome of such a heart rending conversation.

- "Cowards never won heaven. Do not claim that you are begotten of God and have His royal blood running in your veins unless you can prove your lineage by this heroic spirit: to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils."
William Gurnall

Anne's Report

2006-08-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

Hi
Well Saturday night came and the regular crew (Jason, Luke, Mark, and myself), headed down to Deep Ellum. Frankly, it was a very frustrating night. The devil was definitely working hard against us, not only on the people down there but on myself. It seemed like everyone we talked to was very closed off and unresponsive. Jason and I teamed up and we talked to several people one of whom was named Rene. Jason stopped to talk to her and she asked that we not talk to her because she had had a bad experience with someone that night who tried to talk to her about the Gospel and they were very abrasive, hard, and unkind. It reminds me that the Word of God is like a double-edged sword but that we should speak the Truth in love. I don't know the people who talked to her and whether they were truly abrasive or she was just convicted by the Holy Spirit. Either way it was a good reminder that we represent the Gospel and how we come across to people leaves them with an impression of how Jesus is. That doesn't mean we can be afraid of hurting people's feelings or sugar coating the Truth but that we should speak the Truth in love.
Shalom

Witnessing to Elvis

2006-08-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Jason's Report:

Four of us last night, Mark, Luke, Anne, and I. We were all kind of tired and none of us felt like going. Feelings however, can be quite misleading, as every single time I have gone down dragging my feet, I always come back with something to click my heels about. Tonight was no exception, although it was frustrating at the same time.

Anne and I joined ranks, and Luke and Mark set off together. Many more people on the streets tonight than there were the last couple of weeks. After passing out quite a few tracts, we struck up a conversation with Jacob and Sonny, two guys hanging out in front of one of the tattoo parlours. Jacob didn't seem too keen on the tract that we had given him, but I pressed on and took him through the good person test. He still didn't seem to be all that enthusiastic about the conversation, but a little ways into the conversation he did claim that he was a Christian and that he was born again. Keeping in mind that it's extremely easy to call oneself a Christian in our country, and being convinced from experience that many people that profess Christianity don't actually know God, or they have an idolatrous concept of God, I went on to talk about the essence of what it means to break the second commandment.(Idolatry) The teaching of scripture would be that it's humanity's nature to commit idolatry by shaping a god in our minds (the place of imagery) that we feel comfortable with, a god that has our moral standards, a god in our image, but a god that is not the God of Truth. (Romans 1:18-25). If our concept is in conflict with the God's character and nature, which he has revealed through his Creation, through his word, and through our consciences ( the word conscience means "with knowledge") then there are only two options: We are wrong about what God is like, or the Bible is wrong. The God revealed in the Bible is a God of Justice (Due 32:4), Righteousness (Psalm 111:3), Holiness (1 Samuel 2:2) and Truth (Psalm 119:160) (I didn't have these verses at the time, looked up the scriptures while writing this) How in the world could God change simply because you or I conceive him to be a certain way? Idolatry is just a way to be comfortable with your sin. A golden calf has no moral dictates so when that's your idea of God, you can do what you want. Tragically, it's the oldest sin in the book, and the bible warns that Idolatorers won't inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9, Ephesians 5:5) I think that was laying it on pretty heavy, because he responded with a slight amount of contempt by saying " Do you have any idea what you're talking about?. I cheerfully told him I did (if only because it agrees with the bible) .

Sigh.Sometimes conversations with people who profess to be Christians are the most difficult since it's often where we experience the most opposition when trying to share the biblical gospel. You would think that a Christian would rejoice that the Gospel is being preached, but many whom we talk to that profess to be Christians often have nothing but scathing criticism about the method or the spirit in which it's being done, which runs contrary to what Paul said in Philipians 1:15-18

Phi 1:15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.
Phi 1:16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.
Phi 1:17 The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.
Phi 1:18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,

Even if we were preaching Christ for the wrong motive, according to Paul, just the fact that Christ is preached is occasion to rejoice, yet so many in deep ellum who profess to be Christians don't see it that way. That's where saturating our points with scripture can be so effective, especially with someone who is making the claim that the're a Christian. I often see two reactions to this. Either the person becomes really agitated or critical of what you're saying (convicted perhaps?) , or the word of God begins to really command their respect. I believe the latter was the case with Jacob at the end of the conversation. Please pray for him, since it was really hard to discern what the sate of his heart really was. "For out of the mouth speaks the abundance of the heart." (Matt 12:34)

We also talked to people with the following names. Elvis (hence the title of this post), Rene, Will, Fred, Derrick.

Verbose Religiosity

2006-08-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Report from Jason:

Deep Ellum wasn't nearly as busy as normal. Just three of us tonight, Mark, Dorothy, and myself. Dorothy is from Germany and was here in Dallas as a foreign exchange student a couple of years ago, and she's been back to visit this summer. She went out with us a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to come again before she returned to Germany.

Last week on the drive back from Deep Ellum we had a discussion about what being led by the spirit means. One of the main points of discussion was, how much a person should be led by the spirit when witnessing or sharing the Gospel? Before we set out on the streets we always stop to pray and ask God to give us boldness and courage and trust that he'll be with us to lead us to the specific people that he wants us to talk to. You see, I don't very often experience a situation where I see a person on the street and I feel aware of a distinct impression that God wants me to go talk to that person. My assumption is that everyone needs to hear and understand the truth, and so I operate off that assumption, and trust that God will honor the faithful sharing of his word. I assume this because one of the fundamental doctrines of orthodox Christianity is that the Spirit of God isn't going to contradict the scriptures, and with that in mind I read Matthew 16:15 and it tells me, "Go into all the World and Preach the Gospel to every creature." This is a very straightforward statement. You could say, "Well, but Jesus was talking to his 11 disciples at the time," BUT, if we claim the name of Christ, then WE ARE ALSO his disciples. The word "Christian" is just a name that people eventually started using to refer to anyone who was a disciple of Christ. (See Acts 11:26) Mark Cahill puts it best: "If they're breathing, they need Jesus."

That still leaves the question when witnessing to someone. How much is the spirit of God involved in the matter, and futhermore, how much will we or should we tangibly perceive the spirit of God's involvement or prompting? When we had our prayertime before we set out last night, I kept some of those questions in mind and asked God to demonstrate his faithfulness by using his spirit to guide us and prompt us, and impress us to say something off the wall if necessary, so that we could see evidence of his faithfulness.

Usually we split up into groups of two, but since there were only three of us, one of whom was a girl, we all stuck together. Mark got in several conversations right away, so Dorothy and I mostly passed out tracts (e.g. 1, 2) while we waited for him. I passed out a tract to (Brandon?) and immediately he told us that he was a pastors kid and he knew he shouldn't be out in Deep Ellum that night. I told him that we were also out in Deep Ellum and the important thing was our reason and motive for being there. He was so affected by our small act of giving him a tract that he thanked us several times with this stricken look on his face, as if God had been prompting his conscience all night and all we had to do was give him a tract at the just the right time to complete the process of the holy spirit breaking him down. Pray for Brandon

While Dorothy and I were standing passing out tracts, a fairly large guy dressed in black with slicked back hair walked right up to us and asked us what we were passing out. He was the bouncer for the club that we were near and was concerned that we might be passing out literature about another club and stealing their customers cheerfully told him that it was a gospel tract and placed one firmly in his hand. As soon as he found out that we weren't out to steal his customers he walked away satisfied, unfortunately before I could initiate a conversation, but still with the tract in his hand.

That's when the people we talked to started to get weird. We encountered some people who were quite "religious", and QUITE talkative. The first one was Alan. Alan was a black fellow who was by himself leaning up against a tree on the street, so I popped up in front of him and asked him if he wanted to see a magic trick and held up the curved illusion tract. His enthusiasm about seeing the trick left something to be desired, but I preceded anyway and he was mildly entertained by the optical illusion. Alan considered himself to be a good person, so I started questioning him with the good person test. Right about the point where I asked him if he would be innocent or guilty before God if were he to stand before him on judgment day, Alan immediately began to steer the conversation away from that topic and onto Dorothy and I. He began spouting this nonsensical theory about Adam and Eve and the interrelationship between Man and Woman and how woman could perceive and see things that man couldn't, and because of that Dorothy was "Wisdom" and I was "Knowledge" and a lot of other really far out wacky things. I'm finding it difficult to recall the gist of what he was trying to say now, since Dorothy and I were and still are at a loss as to what exactly he was going on about. It was very difficult to get a word in edgewise, since he kept asking us questions and didn't give us a chance to question his incredibly convoluted premise. I kept trying to swing the conversation back to his responsibility before God, and at one point he told me that I just didn't give up and that I was a fighter, so apparently he was hearing some of what we were saying, but we were unable to really get a dialogue with him after that point. He didn't claim to specifically be a Christian, but he mentioned God's forgiveness several times and claimed to be forgiven by God, but we could sense his unwillingness to discuss that with us, since that was "between him and God". Apparently our tenacity in sticking with the guy through all his incomprehensible religious philosophizing won his respect because he FINALLY wanted to hear the rest of the explanation of the Gospel and the analogy I had started about a good judge in a human court being bound by the law to do justice, but, unfortunately some of his friends arrived right at that moment and ruined any further chance to continue explaining what it was all about. I believe Alan was under the influence of alcohol, and so were his friends that arrived, and the whole conversation made me think of this verse from proverbs. "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has fighting? Who has babbling? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who tarry long at the wine, those who seek mixed wine. Proverbs 23:29-30. Pray for Alan, he did keep the tract(s) that we gave him.

Then there was Raymond. Raymond saw us handing out tracts and decided it was his duty to ensure that we had the "anointing" to be out witnessing on the street. He reminded me of some of the televangelists that you see all the time on T.V, yet he had a sense of sincerity about him that the majority of televangelists lack. Raymond monopolized the time to tell us everything he had learned about how necessary "the anointing" was and how your your witnessing would fail without it. I suspect he initially thought that we were just some kids out doing our duty for our church and not necessarily really all that committed. As the conversation wore on and we kept agreeing with him (at least with the things he was saying that were clearly scriptural), I think he realized that we esteemed God's Word above anything that he was telling us. Then he calmed down a little bit and the one-way conversation became more of a dialouge.

In addition to the anointing, Raymond was very much into prophecy and so he had something of a "prophecy" for each of us. This was how his "prophecy" for me went.

RAYMOND: You've had thoughts about becoming a pastor recently, you know that you're going to be a pastor don't you.
ME: Actually that's not something I've put a great deal of thought into, and I wouldn't say that I've ever really actively considered it.
RAYMOND: Err...But the thought has crossed your mind, right?
ME: I suppose it could have
RAYMOND: I can see that you're going to be a pastor.
ME: Oh..OK...Well if that really is God's desire then he'll certainly open the doors to make it happen.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that God doesn't have a plan for me to a pastor. All of my delighting in him just hasn't produced that desire yet. (Psalm 37:4) Perhaps I'm just jaded by all the of-the-wall "prophesies" coming from Tel-evangelists. Or perhaps what I understand from scripture presents the idea that in order to be a true prophet who speaks on behalf of God, the things you prophesy MUST come to pass. Otherwise it's plain you're not speaking on behalf of God, and under OT Law there was a severe pentalty for falsely speaking a word in God's name. (See Duet. 18:20-22 below)

Deu 18:20 But the prophet who shall presume to speak a word in My name which I have not commanded him to speak or who shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
Deu 18:21 And if you say in your heart, How shall we know the word which Jehovah has not spoken?
Deu 18:22 When a prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah, if the thing does not follow nor come to pass, that is the thing which Jehovah has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.

But back to the report. By this point it was getting to be quite late, so in order to close out our conversation with Raymond, Mark asked him if he wanted to have some of our tracts, since OUR main purpose for being there was to be witnessing. Generally with the long-winded relgious types, we've found it often helps determine whether their heart is where their mouth is by offering them tracts and/or asking if they would like to join us in sharing the gospel. After all, if they've got all this time to talk to us, then surely have the time to share the gospel with someone. :) Their response to that offer gives us a good idea of how concerned they are for the lost and how willing they are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to seek that which is lost. Raymond did take the tracts from us, which was a good sign, and before we left we all prayed together. Please pray for him, he is a Katrina Evacuee and is on his way back to Lousiana to return to his home and his sister (who is already there.)

On our way back to the Car, a guy approached us and just began to pour out his heart. Apparently he could tell we Christians, he must have seen the tracts in our hands. His name was Terry and the way he spoke indicated that he was under so much conviction about his sin. He had been drinking at the time, as indicated in his eyes. He asked us to pray for him and then walked with us all the way back to our car. The best comparison to describe him would be to liken him to the Tax Collecter in Jesus' Parable of the Tax Collecter and the Pharisee. (See below)

Luk 18:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-collector.
Luk 18:11 The Pharisee stood and prayed within himself in this way: God, I thank You that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector.
Luk 18:12 I fast twice on the Sabbath, I give tithes of all that I possess.
Luk 18:13 And standing afar off, the tax-collector would not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, but struck on his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner!

Until next week.....

2006-08-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

Jason's Report:
Mark and I started off by having our weekly chat with Tom, one of the parking attendants in Deep Ellum. He is a Christian and he shared with us a great story about God's provision. Earlier this week he didn't know how he was going to be able to afford gas because most of his income is currently going to pay off some debts. A day or two ago a friend just randomly showed up at his door and offered to fill his car and pay for half of it, (i.e. a$1.5o a gallon for gas). The friend had no previous knowledge of Tom's financial situation nor that Tom wouldn't have been able to afford a full tank of gas. (Which he desperately needed) Tom was beaming as he shared God's provision with us. Mark and I were, of course, greatly encouraged by this.

We stopped outside of a restuarant to talk to a guy and his friend David. I gave them some tracts and used the optical illusion tract to strike up a conversation. It became apparent that David was a Christian (or professed to be - he had a beer in his hand and I couldn't tell if he was partly drunk. Whenever people I talk to people who profess to be Christians, I've learned to withold judgement, because often later in a conversation a person will let off a string of profanities when we start talking about sticky things like the ten commandments, or they'll intently oogle every scantily clad female that walks by during our conversation without any qualms of conscience at all, which isn't strong evidence that God is living in them.) David was, however, extremely receptive to what we had to say, and agreed with just about everything we said, and all the scriptures that we shared. He acknowledged the need for a Christian to share their faith as much as possible, and mentioned that he shared his faith with all his friends. The guy with David had to leave in middle of our conversation but I managed to get several tracts in his hand and took him most of the way through the good person test.

I approached Stephanie, a girl who was sitting outside of one of the novelty shops and started up a conversation with her using the curved illusion tract. The tract really broke the ice and then she agreed to go through the good person test. She answered yes to the four questions I asked her (Have you ever told a lie, have you ever stolen something, have you ever looked with lust and committed adultry in your heart, taken God's name in vain and hence admitted to be a liar, theif, adulterer, and blasphemer according to God's standards.) Stephanie had strong convictions against stealing from someone she knew, but had no qualms about stealing from a store where no one was directed affected personally. I reasoned with her about God being a righteous judge and used the analogy of her standing before a good judge who was bound by the law to inflict the punishment the law demanded, which really made sense to her. She seemed somewhat relucant to talk more after going through the Ten Commandments but when I described what Jesus had done for her, comparing him to a friend who had come into her trial and sacrificed everything he had in order to pay her fine, her demeanor changed and I noticed that her eyes were beginning to become teary eyed and when I asked if what I had said made sense and if she understood. I encouraged her to read the Bible and see if it backed up the truth of what I was saying.

The most incredible conversation of the night was with Jamal and D'shane (I think that's his name, but we'll just call him "D"). They were sitting at the side of the street just hanging out so I approached them with the curved illusion tract which was a big hit which allowed me to get into a great conversation. I made the point that our senses and our eyes can be fooled by little things like optical illusions, but none of us want to be decieved about big important things, such as what happened after we die, to which they agreed. I discussed with them how the scriptures talked about mankind being deceived, and how so many people believe that they are good enough to go to heaven or good enough to earn God's favor, and then went right into the Ten Comandments and the good person test to show them that as Scripture says, "there is none good, not one" and that Jesus was the only perfect sacrifice to pay for their sins. It's an apt descritption that the eye is the window to the soul because the change in D's eyes halfway through the conversation conveyed that the Holy Spirit was using our words to have a deeply profound impact on him. A person's eyes can convey so much of the temperment of their heart. Often when I' witness to people and conviction sets in on the person, they start to divert their eyes as much as possible because their conscience is shouting at them and it makes them uncomfortablebeing that vulnerable. I can often sense, however, that something is happening in addition to conviction when their eyes lock on to every word you're saying and they convey in a way that can't be described with words, that they're really stricken and sobered by the truths that you're presenting. (the more scripture I use, the the more often this happens ). D seemed so humbled by what we were saying and when we offerred to pray for him, he was more than willing to comply. I just poured out my heart right there on the street for God to reveal himself to D that night and grant repentance and change D to make him a new person in Christ. Please pray for him!

Mark and I also talked to two black guys, one of whom had quite an extensive Christian background (Baptist) . We actually got in this conversation somewhat by accident, since just prior, Mark had been across the street from me talking to some people near a couple of the clubs that were blaring realy loud music . When we re- joined ranks he was describing to me how he had to basically shout at the people he was talking to because of the music was so loud. He then imitated how loud his voice had to be. This distracted the two black guys in front of us, who thought Mark was shouting at them. I guess we figured they might already be mad at us so we hurried to catch up to them, quickly apologized saying we weren't shouting at them, and then asked if they wanted to see a magic trick, which they did. I showed them the curved illusion tract, and they loved it, so then I brought up Christianity by asking if they had a Christian background, and this opened up the opportunity for us to share for about 5-10 minutes with them. The one who had an extensive Christian background was familiar with all the scripture that I mentioned, and he told me flat out that he knew it but was not living it at all. It was like he knew the truth, but woudln't come to terms that the truth really could and would set him free from his sins. He was very open to everything we said, I think God had done ALOT of sowing in his life, since he certainly had a certain amount of respect for the word of God. I encouraged him as much as I could to sell out all to God, since he agreed and admitted to us that he was in the luke-warm category. Iterestingly enough God put him in our path because we passed him on the street about 3 more times during the night.

Wow. What a wonderful night, I'm really in awe of God's faithfulnness. Thanks for praying!

2006-08-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hi! We are Gregg, Jason, Anne, Luke, and Mark. Every weekend we go down to Deep Ellum, in downtown Dallas, to witness and share our faith on the streets. The purpose of this blog is to journal our experiences so that you, our brothers and sisters in Christ, can pray for the people that we interact with each week. May this blog and the work that He has called us to do honor and glorify God.

Anne's Report:
Last night we went out around 11:30PM, prayed, and set out down the streets of Deep Ellum two by two. Luke and I paired up and Jason and Mark paired up. Every week we talk to multiple people but there's always that one person that God sends your way who makes the whole night worth while. Last night that person was Peter. He is 21 and a Jew from Russia. Peter and a group of friends were hanging out and Luke and I stopped to give them tracts. We waited while they read them and Luke started talking to some of the guys while Peter asked me a question about the tract. We began to talk and soon Luke joined the conversation. Peter was very open and we talked for about a half an hour. He seemed convicted and at the end of the conversation I asked him what he was thinking. Peter replied that he has recently had multiple people in his life talk to him about God, such as a fellow soldier during basic training, a coworker, and now us. I responded that I did not think that it was a coincedence to which he quietly and thoughtful replied "yeah". It was a great conversation and I could see God working in his heart and wooing him. Please pray for Peter that God will continue wooing him and that Peter will soon become part of the family.

2006-08-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Streetlight Ministries blog! Join us from week to week as we share our experiences from the streets of Deep Ellum, illuminating hearts and minds to the true Light of the World.

Mat 10:27 What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.

Joh 8:12 Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."