Of course there’s always the basic decisions like; where to meet, what time to meet, how many tracts to bring, when to call it a day, etc. Those are normally the easy kinds of decisions to make.
Then there are the decisions where you try to make good judgment calls based on who shows up to witness and the amount of ground you want to cover.
After we prayed I tried to make good judgment calls on who was paired with who and where the plan of attack would be the most beneficial to the number of souls in a particular area.
I’ve always been a sink or swim kind of person and maybe that’s what drives a lot of decisions I make in any situation.
My first time out witnessing was 4 years ago during a 4th of July celebration. It was me…by myself…no training other than watching a few episodes of the Way of the Master on TV. I bought 200 patriotic tracts and set off to hand out the tracts and get away before anyone had a chance to ask what they were. I was scared to death.
Sink or swim.
Nevertheless on the 4th, I paired up, before we headed out, a husband and wife team (no brainer there being we only had one female soul winner join us!), a couple guys who had maybe two witnessing outings between them, a couple of guys who had maybe one witnessing outing between them and then me and my faithful witnessing companion of the last couple years. That left one odd man out (my 22 year old son) who I had come with me.
I had two teams stay in the parking lot of the complex which started out with a few people and ended up swelling with people. I had one team go up one side of the perimeter while my team went up the other. Both sides of the perimeters were lined almost wall to wall with people.
We were quickly passing out tracts and having some brief conversations. The first complete conversation we had was with a couple of employees from the local movie theater. They were pushing a cart full of popcorn, water, soda, etc. to hopefully cash in on the growing number of folks in their parking lot.
We had given them some tracts about ten minutes before when we crossed paths with them again. The young man of the duo asked me if he could have some more of those Celebrity tracts. I asked him what he would do with them if I gave him more. He said he would give some to his friends. I told him I would give him some more if he could answer a few questions first.
When asked where he would spend eternity if he were to die right now, he answered he didn’t know. I took him through the good person test and he answered truthfully without hesitation. When asked if God would find him innocent or guilty on Judgment Day, he said guilty. Would you go to Heaven or Hell if God finds you guilty? “Heaven?” he kind of sheepishly replied.
I told him that, according to the Bible, all liars will have their part in the Lake of Fire. No blasphemer, adulterer or thief shall inherit the Kingdom of God. I told him that he had broken God’s Law and he would have to pay the penalty for that when he died.
He seemed concerned, but not alarmed upon hearing that news.
That’s when my partner asked him if he would sell one of his eyes for a million bucks? No, probably not he said. Ok, how about both eyes for 10 million bucks? No, he would never do that he said. My partner said if your eyes are that valuable to you, how much more should your soul be to you? The young man agreed with that comparison.
That’s when I discerned he was ready to hear the good news. I took him through the Gospel and made sure he understood he needed to repent, what repentance was and to put his trust in Christ.
By now he kept looking at young lady he was working with (she kept her eyes focused on me the whole time) and I got the sense he was done with the conversation.
We asked him if he had a Bible at home; he did.
We told him to read the book of John first and if he had any questions to email us (custom labels on the water bottle!). We told him to make sure, before he put his head down tonight, to get right with God before it was too late.
I happily gave him a few more tracts to hand out to his friends –
More tales to follow; stay tuned!
Dawg
That was an interesting conversation. I think it certainly planted seeds and had a profound impact on them, whether or not that is prevalent to either party involved just yet. Hopefully fruit will bear.
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