Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Nashville and Chicago!
Hello all, we had an awesome few days in Nashville working with a church there. We just arrived in Chicago and will be here for a little over a week, we are about to go to the place we are staying(we just stopped to eat) but I will be able to update more later.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Slowly coming to where I need to be & Evangelism
It's been a good week. By good, I don't necessarily mean happy or flowery, but rather stretching and painful. Good not in the "how i felt about the last week" but rather "good for me" kind-particularly in the long run.
Class was shorter last week (approximately 12 hours in class) due to the long weekend. This week in class we went over communication. How to communicate, some don't and do's etc. And needless to say it wasn't in class that most of the growing and learning came from. Though class was helpful this week. We learned and put into practice things that have already been beneficial to me in regards to communication.
One of my purposes in coming to this school was to make myself totally available for God to further develop me into the man I know I need to become. I see areas of my life that require growth to do what God is calling me to do, and so that God can get all the glory out of my life that He can. I almost want to laugh at how often I come to a fork in the road. One path leading to the easier way, and the other, a narrow, hardly traversed way. I admit that I don't always choose the way my soul knows it should because it is not easy. To take captive thoughts, to die to yourself, to choose to Love and to choose to keep going deeper with God and farther from our human nature so prone to depravity is not easy. Satan doesn't like the progress, I don't like the process, but God's pretty smart and not only does He know what He is doing, He does it because to become what I need to be, it's what it takes.
I hope that is a clear thought. It made sense to me anyway.
Other things that have been up lately:
We went evangelizing in downtown Orlando again on Friday night (like pretty much every Friday). The picture above is of what we do when we first get there-Worship and prayer. We do it on top of the parking garage where all the vehicle meet and park. From there we partner up or get in small groups and head out to downtown. This last Friday we went out and each group was given money to go and reach out to all the homeless people downtown. One thing I learned from watching my friend Bobby who has been here for years is not to ignore the homeless. It's so easy to just walk by them and not even say hello. So we went down, bought them food, and listened to their stories-and many of them have such complex stories. We didn't just go to pat them on the back and say here you go, that's it. We went down to both share the gospel (or rather help speak truth to them because many "know" the gospel), and to just give them love and attention. I spoke with a guy named Lee who is originally from Kentucky. He had casts on his left arm and left leg, still had his hospital tag on his wrist from a few days earlier, and was just sitting hating life, trying to hold and flip through a magazine with one hand because the other one was broken also. One of the first things he told me was "To be honest, I wish I were dead". How that killed my heart. He couldn't really walk, so He just sat while I talked with him for over one and a half hours. Deep down I saw he was kind and sensitive, but He had walls built 10 miles high around his heart. So much truth had been exchanged for lies in this mans life, and it seemed like He saw so little light.
He knew much about Christ but He has never had a relationship with God. He believed in Him, even knew what to say about repenting and the like, but there was no transformation, no encounter, and no real relationship with God. I spoke all the love into Him I could, I was open and real with him and he was straightforward with me, but even over an hour and a half, I couldn't break through the walls he had around his heart (not that it is my job exactly). I know however that God's word never returns void. I know that sitting down with him while others had attacked him, yelled at him, mocked him, cursed him (even earlier that night) made a difference.
This is how it is in the lives of so many of the "untouchables" of Orlando. I find myself thinking often of how Jesus would have responded to them. Probably wouldn't just pass them by and ignore their hellos, despite many of their alterior motives. Some lie, some buy booze, some buy drugs, and it's always a balance between using discernment and being foolish in every situation. But Love, choosing to invest and help a change in each of them through process of love is such a balance. And more and more, I am learning that everything in life is a balance-a fine line that has to be tread carefully. Never too much or too little.
God's definitely using our team through evangelism here. There have been several times that I've personally been a part of intense conversations that because of a breakthrough that happens and God moving, end in my partner and I challenging who we've been talking to go, get before God and cry out to him to save them. Often people in this category have "prayed the prayer" before, and it's not at all about simply saying a few words and then being declared "saved" by men. While I have no idea the number currently of people that have accepted Christ through our evangelism, I know that people I have encountered have left the conversation hearing the true gospel and having truth spoken to them. I have learned from my past mistakes-that being to eager to get someone to "pray the prayer" to become "saved" is horribly misguided. If they are really ready to make that commitment to Christ, I will not be able to stop them from doing so. So I will be real with people, because past any sympathetic, truth dodging answers that is what they deserve, and what they truly need to hear. All of this I'm still working on and applying and striving towards.
Anyway, like I said, it's been a stretching week and a good week.
In other news, the outreach planning for Boston is going slowly, and we still gotta get a lot done in the 2 weeks before we leave for outreach! Yikes! The last two months have been such a blur. It'll be August before I know it I'm sure.
Thanks for all your prayers and support!
-Nate
Class was shorter last week (approximately 12 hours in class) due to the long weekend. This week in class we went over communication. How to communicate, some don't and do's etc. And needless to say it wasn't in class that most of the growing and learning came from. Though class was helpful this week. We learned and put into practice things that have already been beneficial to me in regards to communication.
One of my purposes in coming to this school was to make myself totally available for God to further develop me into the man I know I need to become. I see areas of my life that require growth to do what God is calling me to do, and so that God can get all the glory out of my life that He can. I almost want to laugh at how often I come to a fork in the road. One path leading to the easier way, and the other, a narrow, hardly traversed way. I admit that I don't always choose the way my soul knows it should because it is not easy. To take captive thoughts, to die to yourself, to choose to Love and to choose to keep going deeper with God and farther from our human nature so prone to depravity is not easy. Satan doesn't like the progress, I don't like the process, but God's pretty smart and not only does He know what He is doing, He does it because to become what I need to be, it's what it takes.
I hope that is a clear thought. It made sense to me anyway.
Other things that have been up lately:
We went evangelizing in downtown Orlando again on Friday night (like pretty much every Friday). The picture above is of what we do when we first get there-Worship and prayer. We do it on top of the parking garage where all the vehicle meet and park. From there we partner up or get in small groups and head out to downtown. This last Friday we went out and each group was given money to go and reach out to all the homeless people downtown. One thing I learned from watching my friend Bobby who has been here for years is not to ignore the homeless. It's so easy to just walk by them and not even say hello. So we went down, bought them food, and listened to their stories-and many of them have such complex stories. We didn't just go to pat them on the back and say here you go, that's it. We went down to both share the gospel (or rather help speak truth to them because many "know" the gospel), and to just give them love and attention. I spoke with a guy named Lee who is originally from Kentucky. He had casts on his left arm and left leg, still had his hospital tag on his wrist from a few days earlier, and was just sitting hating life, trying to hold and flip through a magazine with one hand because the other one was broken also. One of the first things he told me was "To be honest, I wish I were dead". How that killed my heart. He couldn't really walk, so He just sat while I talked with him for over one and a half hours. Deep down I saw he was kind and sensitive, but He had walls built 10 miles high around his heart. So much truth had been exchanged for lies in this mans life, and it seemed like He saw so little light.
He knew much about Christ but He has never had a relationship with God. He believed in Him, even knew what to say about repenting and the like, but there was no transformation, no encounter, and no real relationship with God. I spoke all the love into Him I could, I was open and real with him and he was straightforward with me, but even over an hour and a half, I couldn't break through the walls he had around his heart (not that it is my job exactly). I know however that God's word never returns void. I know that sitting down with him while others had attacked him, yelled at him, mocked him, cursed him (even earlier that night) made a difference.
This is how it is in the lives of so many of the "untouchables" of Orlando. I find myself thinking often of how Jesus would have responded to them. Probably wouldn't just pass them by and ignore their hellos, despite many of their alterior motives. Some lie, some buy booze, some buy drugs, and it's always a balance between using discernment and being foolish in every situation. But Love, choosing to invest and help a change in each of them through process of love is such a balance. And more and more, I am learning that everything in life is a balance-a fine line that has to be tread carefully. Never too much or too little.
God's definitely using our team through evangelism here. There have been several times that I've personally been a part of intense conversations that because of a breakthrough that happens and God moving, end in my partner and I challenging who we've been talking to go, get before God and cry out to him to save them. Often people in this category have "prayed the prayer" before, and it's not at all about simply saying a few words and then being declared "saved" by men. While I have no idea the number currently of people that have accepted Christ through our evangelism, I know that people I have encountered have left the conversation hearing the true gospel and having truth spoken to them. I have learned from my past mistakes-that being to eager to get someone to "pray the prayer" to become "saved" is horribly misguided. If they are really ready to make that commitment to Christ, I will not be able to stop them from doing so. So I will be real with people, because past any sympathetic, truth dodging answers that is what they deserve, and what they truly need to hear. All of this I'm still working on and applying and striving towards.
Anyway, like I said, it's been a stretching week and a good week.
In other news, the outreach planning for Boston is going slowly, and we still gotta get a lot done in the 2 weeks before we leave for outreach! Yikes! The last two months have been such a blur. It'll be August before I know it I'm sure.
Thanks for all your prayers and support!
-Nate
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