On April 15th, the small town of Jasper, Georgia hosted an art festival called, "Artfest". The idea was to have artists and craft vendors set up booths and displays to bring out the folks who appreciate art and give a jolt of commerce to the local business owners.
Unfortunately the weather had other plans.
Main Street Jasper looked like a dark, gloomy and people less town. Instead of the thousands of art and craft lovers that officials thought would be descending upon the little mountain town, maybe there were few hundred spread over the two day long event.
Determined not to let a low crowd turnout and a blustery day deter us, we prayed up and set out to hand out some tracts and, hopefully, engage a few people about the things of God.
One thing I like to do before we start witnessing at an event is to engage the local law enforcement and let them know what we are doing and why we are there. I like to give them the "You have a right to remain silent" tract while telling them the same thing. They almost always laugh and take the tract. Such was the case with the deputy in the above photo.
The deputy was very friendly to us and actually thanked us for being out there.
After leaving the deputy we started walking around and handing out tracts; no one seemed interested in conversation; it was just dead there that day.
God did provide us one young man to talk to, but the 18 year old seemed to have no concern about the things of God. We left him with a tract and much to think about.
All in all we gave out well under a hundred tracts and had just that one conversation.
A bad evangelism day? No, of course not.
We must never confuse evangelism with the fruit of evangelism.
Evangelism is not about how many people we can get saved and how many people we can get baptized and onto our church membership roles.
Salvation belongs to the Lord. God takes care of the results. We have been told by Jesus to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel; we were not told to worry about the results.
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Yesterday His Feet went to the Easter Egg Festival on Main Street in Canton, Georgia.
The flowers were blooming, the weather was perfect and the people were many.
I was uncertain if I was going to be able to join my team for this event due to having lithotripsy surgery the day before. Although I was very sore and, truth be known, should have stayed home and rested, I couldn't stand the thought of not being out with the team.
Our team got to talk to many people and we handed out hundreds of tracts.
We had conversations that went well and some that didn't go so well. Some people were polite and some, well, not so much. Some people listened with interest and some argued at every point of the conversation.
Again, salvation belongs to the Lord and we were the obedient vessels that simply took the message to where the people were.
We thank God for the opportunity to share the gospel in a country where it is still free to do so. We praise Him for the few workers He has raised up in this little part of the world where the harvest is great. We give Him all the glory for how He will use those tracts and conversations to bring His own to Himself!
