30 July 2010

Mike "The Beast"

I was going through some of the footage from our trip to New Orleans and found a witnessing encounter that features Mike and a gentleman on Bourbon Street.

The second day of our trip found us near a park on the waterfront in New Orleans. I broke out The Cross and decided to hold it awhile while my partner handed out tracts. This location was a perfect spot as hundreds of people were passing by every five minutes.

While I was holding the cross a guy comes up to me and introduces himself as Mike and explained that he too was down there on an evangelism trip during Mardi Gras.

Mike had heard about folks who had been making and holding crosses and asked if he could hold the cross for awhile. No problem...I gave him my cross and he promptly jumped up on the retaining wall and started preaching like nobodies business!

We stayed there with Mike for the rest of the evening until dark. Mike told me in conversation that he was going out to California in a few months to start helping with the Ambassador's Academy...I just looked at him. Mike, I said, I am going to be a student at the Academy in August!

Talk about a God thing!

The next morning Mike found us (how did he do that in New Orleans during Mardi Gras anyway?) and hung out with us the rest of the day. The three of us wandered the city handing out tracts, witnessing with folks, and, the best part, me getting to pick Mike's brain on all kind of evangelism related topics.

Well after the day was over we said our goodbyes and never saw Mike again. That is until I saw Mike preaching in a promo video put together by "Go, Stand and Speak".

Click here to watch the promo and watch for Mike. He will be in the first clip after the speaker introduces the video. Mike is on the right hand side preaching in what looks like a subway area.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, here is the witnessing encounter I filmed as Mike gives the Law and Gospel to a dude on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.



I have been having problems with video and voice syncronizing while uploading this video... If those problems are there this time after uploading I will keep trying to get it corrected.

21 July 2010

Brother Steve gets a splash

Here is Steve Sanchez from Stone the Preacher getting a splash while preaching the gospel!



God bless you Steve!

17 July 2010

My most famous recipient of a tract yet!

I was a solo fisherman at the Canton Car Show today. The weather had been threatening all day and I wasn’t sure if there would even be a car show.

When I arrived and started unpacking tracts, I took a quick look around and noticed that there were not many classic cars in the parking lot as usual…uh-oh.

I waited at the meeting spot hopeful that a few fishermen would join me today but it soon became apparent that I was flying solo on this particular afternoon.

No worries.

I prayed up and headed out and started handing out tracts to the few people that were there after the big rain storm that sent most all cars and car enthusiasts scrambling for an early exit. I talked with one gentleman who was there with his son and their classic Chevy’s and he told me that even the judges called it a day and split early.

As I was walking around handing out tracts I saw a tractor-trailer un-loading some drag cars. I went over to look at them and saw the words, “Glanville Racing” on a couple of the cars. It was then that I saw Jerry Glanville, former head football coach of the Atlanta Falcons.

Evidently, the man is into racing cars now.

Mr. Glanville was talking cars, motors and drag strips while surrounded by people who wanted to get close to him. I walked on over and listened in for awhile while he pointed to this and that on his cars. There were way too many people talking and asking him questions to try to get a Trillion Dollar Bill into his hands at that point so I just walked around and handed out some more tracts until the crowds died down a little.

After about 30 minutes or so I spied him talking to just one fellow so I made a dash to get over there before he left or was surrounded again by more folks. “Hello Mr. Glanville, did you get your Obama stimulus money yet?” I asked him. He said hello and asked what it was. I told him it was a TDB that had a gospel tract on the back. I asked him if he would autograph one of them for me.

He said absolutely as long as he could keep one for himself. I told him I wouldn’t have it any other way! He signed a TDB for me and I gave him one to keep. Here’s the cool part…

He hollered at one of his crew members to come over because, “There’s a guy here handing out Obama stimulus money”. Well, he hollered it loud enough to turn everybody’s head that was in the immediate area and folks started coming over towards us. I handed his crew member a TDB and then another guy, and then another guy and so on and so on.

Pretty cool… Jerry Glanville just became a tool for me to get more TDB into more people’s hands!

No, I didn’t get a chance to go one to one with Mr. Glanville but he did put that TDB into his pocket. He thought the TDB was pretty cool and I’m sure sooner or later he’s going to read the back of that tract!

15 July 2010

Car Show Event

This Saturday, July 17th, will be yet another Car Show in Canton.

Every third week of the month until September, hundreds of people will gather to show off their cars and even more will be there to look at those cars at the Riverstone shopping center.

This is a perfect opportunity to witness the gospel to those who are perishing.

This month I am making a change to our normal starting time.

Time: 5:30pm-7pm
When: Saturday, July 17th
Where: Riverstone Shopping Center (Meet in front of Hibbetts)

The atmosphere at these car shows is pretty laid back. So even if you have never handed out a gospel tract before, this is the perfect opportunity to get out of your comfort zone and share Christ with someone.

Please consider joining us this Saturday!

13 July 2010

Evangelism

Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms. Confusion here is fatal.

J.I.Packer



Being an extrovert isn’t essential to EVANGELISM–obedience and love are.

Rebecca M. Pippert



Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell.

C.T. Studd

10 July 2010

Three people...Gospel Preaching...7000+ tracts...Priceless!

From the ministry of Paul and Kim Latour over at The Word Street Journal:

08 July 2010

Monergism vs Synergism

From Defending/Contending

Monergism:The doctrine that the Holy Spirit is the only efficient agent in regeneration – that the human will possesses no inclination to holiness until regenerated, and therefore cannot cooperate in regeneration. Monergism is when God conveys that power into the fallen soul whereby the person who is to be saved is enabled to receive the offer of redemption. It refers to the first step (regeneration) which has causal priority over, and gives rise to, the spiritual ability to comply with all the other aspects of the process of being united to Christ, (i.e., the ability to apprehend the Redeemer by a living faith, to repent of sin and to love God and the Mediator supremely) It does not refer to the whole process that it gives rise to (justification, sanctification), but only the granting of the spiritual capacity to comply with the terms of the covenant of grace.

Synergism:“…the doctrine that there are two efficient agents in regeneration, namely the human will and the divine Spirit, which, in the strict sense of the term, cooperate. This theory accordingly holds that the soul has not lost in the fall all inclination toward holiness, nor all power to seek for it under the influence of ordinary motives.” This unscriptural view is the greatest threat to a true understanding of salvation in the Church today.


From R.C. Sproul -

Monergistic regeneration is exclusively a divine act. Man does not have the creative power God has. To quicken a person who is spiritually dead is something only God can do. A corpse cannot revive itself. It cannot even assist in the effort. It can only respond after receiving new life. Not only can it respond then, it most certainly will respond. In regeneration the soul of man is utterly passive until it has been made alive. It offers no help in reviving itself, though once revived it is empowered to act and respond.


From John Hendryx

Monergism simply means that it is God who gives ears to hear and eyes to see. It is God alone who gives illumination and understanding of His word that we might believe; It is God who raises us from the dead, who circumcises the heart; unplugs our ears; It is God alone who can give us a new sense that we may, at last, have the moral capacity to behold His beauty and unsurpassed excellency. The apostle John recorded Jesus saying to Nicodemus that we naturally love darkness, hate the light and WILL NOT come into the light (John 3:19, 20). And since our hardened resistance to God is thus seated in our nature and affections, only God, by His grace, can lovingly change, overcome and disarm our rebellious disposition. The natural man, apart from the quickening work of the Holy Spirit, will not come to Christ on his own since he is at enmity with God and cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor 2:14; Rom 8:7).

Shining a light into a blind man's eyes will not enable him to see, for sight first requires healthy eyes or some restoration of his visual faculty. Likewise, reading or hearing the word of God itself cannot elicit saving faith in the reader (or hearer) unless the Spirit first "germinates" the seed of the word in the heart (1 Thess 1:5), which then infallibly gives rise to our faith and union with Christ. The problem here is not with the Word or God's Law but with man's corrupt and prideful heart. As an example of how the Spirit uses the means of the spoken word to disarm closed hearts, the Book of Acts records the work of the Holy Spirit during the preaching of the apostles and, in one instance, states that "the Lord opened her [Lydia's] heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul," (Acts 16:14). The Spirit must likewise give all His people spiritual life and understanding if their hearts are to be opened and thus respond to Christ in faith.


For more information on the biblical view of Monergism and the unscriptural view of Synergism, see the following links:

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/whatismonergism2.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/monergism-vs-synergism.html

http://defendingcontending.com/2009/03/28/monergism-vs-synergism/

http://www.reformationstudycenter.com/Monergism.html

http://www.cpr-foundation.org/resources/essays/177

06 July 2010

Another 4th come and gone

Another 4th of July has come and gone.

This year we didn't have as many laborers for the gospel as we did last year, but what we lacked in numbers we more than made up for in heart, spirit and prayer.

Here is a great shot of our gang -



We handed out at least 1,216 tracts and talked to several people in just over a couple hours. We had some fantastic conversations that went in several different directions.

We talked to people who believed they were going Heaven because they were good people, we talked to people who were absolutely crazy as a loon (no, really), we talked to people whom the Holy Spirit was working on their consciences and we didn't talk to people who didn't want to be talked to.




I always want to mention how important it is for prayer during an outing. The fellow standing next to me below in the cowboy hat deserves special recognition.

He is a warrior among warriors. He was physically not able to walk the distance we were going to be covering in such a short time span, but he devoted himself to constant prayer the entire time we were witnessing...literally.



For more than two hours this man "held the rope" as we shared the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost.

I cannot fully express my gratefulness for this....thank you Sir!



Thank you to everyone who came out and gave up some of their evening for the kingdom!

Father I pray for every single person who received a tract and for those whom the gospel was personally shared with. I pray that you draw them to Jesus and give them the faith to repent and trust Christ for their salvation.

Thank you Father for those who came out and shared the everlasting gospel and for the prayer warriors who interceded while we shared.