Learning To Fish

After 10 years of being a Christian, I feel like I am just now learning how to be a fisher of men.
Much of this is due to the books I've been reading by Mark Cahill entitled: One Thing You Can't Do In Heaven and One Heartbeat Away. God has been teaching me so much through these books and giving me the boldness I need to put into practice what I've been learning. If you want to be challenged in the area of evangelism, I highly recommend making a visit to http://www.markcahill.org/ as well as reading his books.

Inspired by what I've been reading, I've begun praying regularly for divine appointments with people that would be opportunities for witnessing. God orchestrated two such opportunities this past week that brought great excitement and challenge to my life!

The first one came last Monday morning. (I'd been praying specifically for witnessing opportunities to come to my office since I now work a desk job four days a week. Lo and behold, God answered immediately!) The printer technician who had been finishing up a repair job on one of our machines brought me some paperwork at my desk. He heard me talking with a client on the phone about our services and asked if he could also benefit from our free gifts of baby clothes and diapers. (He has a baby back in Jamaica where he's from.) I gladly packaged up some items for him to take. When I handed the bag over, I also gave him a tract and said, "I don't know what your religious beliefs are, but I'd like to give this to you to read in your spare time. We are able to give you these baby items today because we love the Lord Jesus here, and He is the One who makes it possible for us to have this ministry through the generosity of fellow Christians."

That one statement ended up paving the way for at least a one-hour conversation with this man! I was amazed! He was in no hurry to leave for the next job, and seemed to be genuinely interested in discussing (and debating!) spiritual matters. He was born to Chinese immigrants in the country of Jamaica and has lived in America for 20 years now. With Jamaica being a real melting pot for lots of different religious beliefs, this guy seems to know a little something about all of them and has embraced various aspects of each, finding it difficult to believe that Jesus is "the only way." Needless to say, we had a most interesting discussion. :-) I felt very prepared to answer his objections about the Bible and Christianity thanks to reading the book titles I mentioned above!

Unbeknownst to me, the ladies I work with at Care Net started to pick up on what was happening in my front office and graciously began covering for me whenever the phone would ring or a donation drop off was made. They were so excited to hear from down the hallway this conversation that God orchestrated for me to have with our printer technician, and rallied around me in intercessory prayer as well. It was an awesome day!

After over an hour of conversation with the tech guy, he left for the next job. By then, I had been able to give him two different tracts, a Bible, and the promise of a book in the mail. I plan to send him One Heartbeat Away as it will answer a lot of his questions and also present the plan of salvation in a clear, concise way written especially for the non-believing. Please pray for this man! I sense that he is on a quest for truth but he's not sure he really wants to find it.

The second opportunity that came this past week for a witnessing conversation arrived on my own front doorstep! We had two windows in our kitchen repaired, so I struck up a conversation with the repair man. (He didn't know what he was in for coming to our house!) Amazingly, I discovered him to be a very similar case to the technician at work! Joe was in no hurry to get to the next job, but seemed to enjoy our lively discussion of God, evolution vs. creation, the 10 Commandments, Jesus, salvation, and eternity. Our discussion lasted for probably 30 minutes. I was able to share the whole Gospel with him and found him to be very open, albeit skeptical and confused over many matters. I sent him off with a tract and the book One Heartbeat Away. He accepted both with genuine gratitude. So, pray for Joe too!

God has taught me much through these two witnessing opportunities this past week. While it's been a stretching experience far exceeding the comfort zone I've been used to, I am excited about future learning and growth in the area of this kind of "fishing." Most importantly, I want to be a faithful messenger of the greatest message ever told, with the hope that the seeds God allows me to plan and/or water will bring forth fruit unto everlasting life and rescue a multitude of souls from hell.

To God be the glory, great things He is doing!