Battle Log
Friday 3 July 2020
Posted 4 July 2020, 8:04 AM by Glen Richards. Permalink
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We finally get some sun in Christchurch (NZ) - and rainbows to boot!
Andy & I were able to do full outreaches at Northlands and Eastgate on Thursday afternoon.
But in the morning, I did my usual stint of online outreach which included conversations with people from the UK, Egypt and Brazil. The highlight was a conversation with two teen girls who came to grasp the gospel (had to run through checking questions quite a few times). One of them said, “I’ve learned more from you in this conversation than I have from my RE teacher!”
At Northlands I had a couple of highlight follow up conversations.
The first was with a guy who was drunk the last time I talked to him. He remembered our previous conversation, and he was a whole lot more reasonable now. It was fascinating getting the other person's honest insight into a previous conversation. I wasn’t able to talk to him for long as, sadly, he was heading to meet someone to buy drugs. But he took a tract. I hope to see him again.
The next was with a guy who had alcohol on his breath. Because of our previous interactions, we fell into an easy conversation. To my surprise, out of the blue he came to tears over his sin of drunkenness. I told him of the hope of the sacrifice of Jesus to pay the fine for our sin, and if we trust in Him, God won’t leave us as we are. He opened up about his past involvement in the church and that there was a point in his younger life where he was like me - telling people about the gospel. I gave him my contact details, and I hope to see him again, also.
At Eastgate I had some fascinating conversations with a guy who believed in Norse mythology (closed, resistant), and a kid who believed in Greek mythology (open, switched on).
Andy and I then had a very interesting conversation with a guy and his daughter. Believe it or not, he worked in the paranormal - getting rid of bad spirits (or something like that). And he said something amazing: “they hate the name of Jesus Christ”. You’d think that would be a clue, but this guy hadn’t looked into who Jesus Christ is. We worked on changing that for them this day.
I spoke to two kids who went to Christian schools and went to a local church - sadly, they thought keeping the 10 commandments would get them to heaven. I did my best to share the gospel in the short time I had with them.
Friday was a difficult day for me.
It started with the gospel + abortion outreach outside the hospital. You can read about it here.
We then moved into the city for open air preaching and one to one gospel conversations.
My time that afternoon was focused on a conversation that started with a guy walking up to me and said, “Hi Glen!”. My face was blank, so he said, “we talked for about half an hour in Riccarton a while back”. I apologised that I didn’t remember him, but then asked, can you remember what I said you have to do to go to heaven? (I assumed I would have shared the gospel with him.) He went with, basically, “be a good person”. (if I had shared the gospel, it certainly hadn’t stuck). We feel into a deep conversation where we pretty much disagreed on everything (just like with the guy I talked to on Tuesday), yet it was a very amicable conversation. At one point I thanked him for being so nice about what we were disagreeing on - a refreshing change from the usual way people talk to me.
With the intensity of the discussion, I became very tired. I told him this, yet he didn’t want to stop. I wonder if he was trying to prove something to himself? He brought up a controversial subject and wanted my opinion. But I refused to answer saying that we needed to resolve what the basis for right and wrong was. He then started to lose his cool, “I don’t want to talk about that!”, and then very subtly he went into attack mode. I stopped him. And I said, “you’re slipping”. He was confused. I reminded him of what I said earlier. “You’ve started doing what other people do, attacking God and me” (rather than the argument). And the conversation finally wrapped up then. We parted amicably. But I was exhausted.
As I reflect back, just like with the guy I talked to on Tuesday, I was able to address his conscience with the law - and he didn’t argue. And I was able to explain the gospel (yet he certainly didn’t appreciate it). I just have to leave him in God’s hands. Oh God, please have mercy!
The day finished with an evening outreach with Mike. And it was a highlight on a tough day. There were lots of people out and about, even though it was a really cold evening.
I only have time to talk about the highlight conversation (but there were many wonderful conversations). A lady walked past, and I offered her a tract and asked her what she thought happened after life. She stopped, took the tract, and looked at me. She said she had been thinking about that a lot, especially in the last few days. Her dad was a Christian, but her sister and she were not. She didn’t understand the gospel, and it was my privilege to share it with her. I ended up sharing with her from Matthew chapter 6, about how we don’t need to worry. I talked about how God feeds the birds - how much more valuable are you? And then I remembered the big new bird mural behind me - she was looking at it! I said that I don’t believe in coincidences - that we were meant to meet so she could hear the gospel. She thanked me, and moved on. She said she would study the tract. God, change her heart, and save her for your glory. This is the part only you can do, Lord.
View previous Christchurch (NZ) report (1 July 2020)
Christchurch (NZ) Team
Weekly outreaches:
Tue 3:30pm - 5:30pm - Riccarton (corner of Riccarton Rd and Rotherham St)
Fri 1:30pm - 3:30pm - City (Bridge of Remembrance)
Sat 11am - 1pm - Riccarton (corner of Riccarton Rd and Rotherham St)
Sun 1:30pm - 3:30pm - City (corner of Colombo St and Cashel St).
Contact Glen Richards or Andy Barlow for more information.