Nick & Buds in the Breezeway

What Was I Thinking?

I naively thought that the last place on earth I would be handing out tracts would be in our own church breezeway. I don't know why that thought had never occurred to me before, but today it did.

Pardise on Earth

A gal from our church who lives in a nearby town has teenage boys. This nearby town is man's plan of paradase. This is a planned community, targeted at families with all the amenities that a modern unit of individuals living under the same roof could ask for. (You do realize that the FAMILY is the next creation of God that our nation has embraced since it's inception that will be redefined after our courts get done with the institution of marriage.) Among these amenities are a state of the art community center with a huge water park, basketball court, rock climbing wall, all the latest exercise equipment, children's play area with safe jungle gyms (do the even use that word anymore) that reach to the sky with more slides, stairs, ropes, bridges, etc than an adolescent could dream of, and even their own train.

The problem with any paradise on earth is the same problem that all communities on earth currently share. They are plagued with sinful human beings.

That brings me to Nick and his friends who came to our church today.

Satan's Plan (Run Baby Run)

Our high school group was scheduled to be in the main sanctuary with the adults today, and I went to the high school room to notify the students of this. Soon after giving out this news however, 5 of the same students were hoofing it down the street away from the church.

Anyway, not to drag this story out into oblivion, after I rounded up the kids and got them into service, God kept urging me during the sermon regarding the plight of these unsaved teens. Every point in the sermon, although not probably intended that way, kept my attention on the students and their obvious rebellion towards their parental authority and their lost state. I had to do something. You might be thinking and rightly so, "weren't they going to get the Gospel in the service?". The answer would be yes, however it was obvious by their closed eyes and elbow to knee stature during most of the service, that they were not listening intently, and were probably even completely asleep.

I determined not to miss an opportunity to share the Law and the Gospel with this group that I knew may never darken the door of a church again, and I was determined to do so before they made it off the property.

Hurting High School Kids from AZ hear the Gospel

So, as soon as the church service ended, I bolted for the door, as I knew they would be doing and caught them in the breezeway and gave three un-churched kids a million dollar bill tract from Living Waters Publications.

Nick was the talkative one, he is 16 and apparently has lived a really tough life. He told me that he has lived and provided for himself (by stealing before he was old enough to work) since as far back as he could remember.

Chris was a tall troubled looking young man, quiet, but pensive. You could tell he was really taking everything in, although he said nothing. The girl in the group was Haley, and she seemed somewhat engaged, but my focus really was on Nick.

As I shared with them, they all 3 admitted to failing the good person test, although were not visibly concerned with the idea of standing before God in their sins. Nick just kept saying that he didn't believe in God, and there was nothing I was going to do to convince him otherwise.

I Dare You!

I spoke to them the things of eternity for 20-25 minutes as church people milled around until I basically ran out of analogies and scripture to try and make the Gospel make sense to them. I ended the conversation with a dare from me to Nick to passionately pursue the truth. I invited him to come back for in depth conversations on evolution and other subjects that I touched on briefly in the discourse, but I really was trying to get him to commit to at least investigating the truth of the claims of the Bible to a greater extent than he had up to that point, which he admitted wasn't all that much.

At one point I did ask Chris if he was at the same place in his mind as Nick, of total unbelief, and he said that he was not. Praise God!

Although it would be easy to be discouraged at this witnessing encounter, I really am not. Nick and Chris and Bailey are in God's hands, and I did my very best to passionately explain the Gospel. I will be praying that God will soften their hearts and lead them to other encounters with Christians, even that they would show up back on our property where I will be obedient to share with them again. I hope that you will pray with me for their salvation.

Please Pray

Please leave me your comments on this post. I cherish your prayers and appreciate you reading this long post.