evangelism

The word evangelism used to give me the chills like nothing else. I would be absolutely terrified anytime anyone even brought it up. Until last week.

It was a Saturday and I was walking home from a coffee shop with two of my friends, Maddie and Danielle. As we were walking home, a man on the street started asking for us..."Hey guys, could you just stop and listen to me for a second?" said the man sitting on a ledge on the street. We all stopped and turned around to hear what it was he wanted. We were a little afraid to approach at first, but we ended up just going up to him and letting him tell us his story. He's an American that's just been going through a really hard time..his family fell apart, he just got in a bike wreck a few days before and was really wrecked up. While he was laying unconscious on the street after his wreck, someone came and stole his passport, all of his money, and other forms of ID. He was broken. Completely. With no hope. Just trying to get back home to Texas.

After the story, we just asked him if we could just each individually pray for him. "Of course! I need all the help I can get!" said Reed. He went on to explain he wasn't religious at all, but he did believe there must be a God out there somewhere. So we just went for it and started praying for him...I don't even remember what each of us were saying but the Holy Spirit just came in and gave us such a love and compassion for this man. Such joy filled each of us as we continued to pray for this mid forties man. He started crying really heavily as we kept praying, and afterwards he just sat there tearing up and just embarrassed saying, "you guys really hit a spot". From there, I don't even know what all we said but we knew it wasn't us. The Holy Spirit spoke through us as we shared the gospel and answered all of his questions about God. We prayed for him two more times (the whole time he was crying so we kept giving him tissues) each time he opened up more and more.

He kept on asking, "why are you still here?" All we could say was, because Jesus loves you...so we love you too. "why are you being so nice? why do you care? why do you keep offering me things?" he'd ask, and all we could say was because we're trying to live like Jesus. He loves His children..we are all His children, and so we want to show His love to everyone.

After praying for him two more times, we gave him a Bible and some cash. He just completely broke down at that point, so confused why we've just spent over an hour just sharing Jesus with him and listening to his story. He just kept crying and hugging us and asking us how he could pray to God, and when he was ready, to accept Jesus into his heart.

The experience was absolutely incredible. I want this story to completely give God all the glory. He did everything. I have such fear of man, I definitely couldn't have done this on my own. None of us could. God just set the divine appointment, and we just obeyed.

People are open all over the place just waiting for someone to take some time to listen and love them. And when you love them with the small amount of God's furious love that we can capture, He can do incredible things through us. Please be encouraged to spread God's gospel to the world. If God can use little old me, He can use you to..all you have to do is say yes.