This past Sunday afternoon after church, “His Feet on the Street” was honored to take part in a free clothing/food drive in the Hispanic community in Canton, Ga.
The lady (AKA Firecracker) who put all this together is a mighty witness and prayer warrior who has participated in some His Feet on the Street events in the past. Her concept was very simple yet very ministry oriented in reaching the lost.
Several canopy tents were set up in different locations along a straight line. Within that line were also tables and tables of great condition donated clothing and household items.
The people who came were given three tickets per family member. These tickets were “redeemed” for the clothing or any other item they wanted on the tables. When the people got to the end of the line, we had folks bag up their items. It was during this time that more tickets were given out for the food.
While the people were waiting for the food, the full gospel was delivered. We had lots of Spanish tracts and a couple translators for those who spoke no English. Several people appeared to receive Christ. I say appeared because I don’t know their hearts, I don’t know if they were saying it thinking it was part of getting the free food, or if the Catholicism roots were so deeply held they were just agreeing to whatever we were saying.
But there was this one young man that I got to have a one-to-one talk with after he had been witnessed to by Firecracker. Firecracker had witnessed to him in both Spanish and English and it was very apparent that the Law had done its job and he seemed broken. I took him aside and gave him the good news of the gospel and he wanted to repent right then and trust Christ for salvation.
I told him to pray and pour out his heart to God and when he was done I would pray. He told me that he would be more comfortable praying in Spanish and I told him to go for it. (God understands Spanish, right?) A couple times while he was praying he would stop because of the tears. That started my water fountain. When he was finished I prayed for him and thanked God for leading the young man to us.
He wanted to stay around and get something to eat but he had to be at work by 3:00. I made sure he had a Spanish Bible and told him to start reading the book of John after he got off work that evening. He knew of a Bible preaching Spanish church up the road and I told him that he should go there and let the pastor know what happened here today and request to get baptized.
Thank you Lord for leading that young man to us….thank you for Firecracker’s compassion for the lost people in the Spanish community of Canton….thank you for allowing HFOTS to be part of that experience.
Here are some pictures from last Sunday - - -
The pictures really don't do justice to the amount of people that were there that day; we must have had a couple hundred people go through the tables of free clothes and food.
I just want to remind everyone out there about events like this...If "we the church" hold events like this, or others like it, where we clothe people, feed people, do good deeds for people, entertain people, and never share the gospel of Christ, then all we do is make the world a better place for them to go to Hell from.
Yeah, I said it.
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Below is from Firecracker herself on last Sunday's event!
Look how God works!
Wow, He never ceases to amaze me. He led us to do a Free Clothing Community Drive. Some folks thought the Clothing Drive should have been cancelled due to the 60% chance of rain/thunder, etc... Wayne reminded me to look at things in a different perspective- which meant instead of 60% rain, to look at the 40% chance of sun- and all of the sudden things did look brighter.
Then as I prayed I thought of Nehemiah- he prayed for fire and the Lord answered. So I prayed for the rain to hold off. So, then someone asked “are you still doing the clothing drive- look at the weather- it is looking bad. I said yes, the Clothing Drive is on; my heavenly Father controls the universe and all in it, the clouds, the sun and the rain too.
My Father told me that if the team was willing to, to go ahead with it. God provided the clothes, thank you all who donated! He provided the workers and HFOTS to witness- couldn’t have taken place without you all! He provided the food, refreshments and he used caring and unbelievable generous hearts for this provision- thank you Shawn, Gina and Anne.
He even led us to a church while trying to buy Bibles, Kelly from Family Christian Store who didn’t know us referred us to someone who provided us with the rest of the tables we needed–
Thank you Sutallee Baptist Church- You rock!!
God provided the perfect weather and had many hearts prepared to hear his voice. We serve an awesome God. All we need to do is be willing to let Him use us and He does! Praise God for His Faithfulness and love!
We had hundreds of people come by; as we talked to people we came across many who still believe in traditions and rituals. This was heavy upon my heart because I felt these folks seem to be trapped and in bondage due to ignorant beliefs. That’s like saying the only way to send mail is via post office, when God has made a better provision like email. Why would you opt to only use the old way, if we have a better, faster and more effective way of getting something done. Why do we want to willingly continue to be in bondage with old traditions when the Lord sacrificed His life to free us from it and has given us a better way through Him?
As we witnessed at the clothing drive I came across many folks who were just so ready to hear God, some wanted to turn away from their sins, repent and surrender their hearts to Jesus, but many had doubts of how that worked or had many questions, not all of them came to the understanding that only the blood of Jesus could do a complete and once and for all sacrifice to pay our debt.
This tears me up, because when we don’t accept that his holy blood was more than enough, then we just lack understanding and faith of the holiness and power that is in that blood. We become like the Pharisees and because we can’t read in between the lines we miss Jesus all together when he is right at reach. It’s like the saying goes; you can lead the horse to water, but can’t make him drink it.
The same goes with the Gospel of Christ.
Only you can do that through faith in Him and through repentance, and I strongly emphasize that we are saved by grace, and grace alone, rather than by trusting in our own righteousness or religious traditions.
God is calling us to wake up, to turn from our ways, to surrender to Him and He will spare us from what is to come. Why must we make more complicated that what it is? Why do people think they should wait until their lives are better? We don’t have the power to change ourselves- only God can do that. He call us just as we are, he takes us all filthy and messed up and cleanses us thought that precious blood.
The Bible is God’s Word and people seem to be giving more value to what family/churches traditions say and get caught up in all that instead of grabbing God’s Word and reading it, they will soon see that their traditions and rituals contradict Holy Scripture if they took the time to read it. They have no idea that they are risking losing an opportunity that may never come again.
Some religious people hold to the teachings of their church to be on a par with, or of greater authority than, Holy Scripture. It is therefore often futile to try to convince them intellectually that their trust should be in the person of Jesus Christ, rather than in their own righteousness or in their church/family traditions. That’s why the 10 Commandments help them have a better understanding of how sinful we are. I wish people would just open a Bible, for I am sure it would come alive, in the book of John 16:13 says that if they would seek the truth, they would find the truth and they would be led by the Holy Spirit into it.
If we are open to the gospel, and are interested in what God's Word says then we would seek truth and not just take at a word what we are being taught in our churches, what we have been taught by our family traditions; we would listen to Scripture and ensure that what they say goes hand in hand with scripture.
For example, in Matthew 8:14 we see that Peter whom the Roman Catholic church maintains was the first pope, was married, as were many of the other apostles (see 1 Corinthians 9:5). If man preaches anything but the gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed” Galatians 1:9. Christianity recognizes man as he is- utterly lost in sin, destined for eternal separation from God.
The Gospel gives us glorious news that Christ died for our sin –1 Corinthians 15:1-3 and that we can be saved by grace, through our repentance of sins and our personal faith in Christ, and nothing else- Any religion which teaches otherwise is, to that extent, is false. They need to car about investigating the truth, their lives depend on it.
Some people came to the drive for clothing, maybe for a hot dog, a soda, but some were fortunate enough to leave with more than that, they found eternal life with Jesus, they realized that they had been taught wrong, and found out for themselves what scripture had to say about their erroneous beliefs.
The only way to escape hell and separation from God is through depositing our faith in JESUS.
As I was witnessing to a big crowd while waiting to open a homeless man who had nothing but a bag with a set of clothes and a few personal things was the first one to raise his hand to surrender to Jesus- I looked at him and thought to myself - you may own nothing but what you are wearing, however, you may be the richest man standing in this group right now, for you have Jesus. Then he said he didn’t want any clothes, because others may have greater needs than him…I was amazed – God was already at work in his generous heart. He has no idea that God used him to break the ice with all the others who surrendered without fear publicly to Jesus.
Revelation 3:2-3 says “Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent.”
What completes us? Jesus!
Folks stop pressing the “snooze button” every time God is trying to wake you up, it may cause you to be running too late and you may not make it on time to give Jesus the invitation He is waiting for you to extend to Him.
Praying for lost souls,
Firecracker
Amen Firecracker.....great job. God bless you!!
