The Fair and Witnessing

Sorry about the timeliness of this post, things have been hectic for me these past few weeks. But about the fair. It seemed that we were not going to have a booth at the fair this year for various reasons, so Jenn and I and some others from church were going to hand out tracts on our own independently from each other.

Someone from church (Paul) did have a booth at the fair for his home business and the spot next to him was vacant. When one of the people in charge at the fair noticed the spot next to him empty the guy told him that if he wanted he could expand his booth. The man said that it looked bad to have empty booths. Well, when Paul's wife Vicki heard this she asked if she could set up a table for our church, and the man said that is was ok.

We now had a booth at the fair. This was encouraging, I had wanted to do some evangelism at fair and was kind of disappointed that we did not have a booth, but God had provided a booth for us. Since the church was not expecting to have a booth, the church did not have many tracts on hand. Providentially, someone had ordered some tracts through the church and did not want them any more, the problem, there were only a few packs. Jenn and I, not knowing we had a booth or that there was a need for tracts, decided to go back to the fair and I happened to grab the two packs I had. We decided to go back and see Paul and Vicki, they told us the situation and we happily handed over the tracts. Because God had providentially set this all up, the tract table had plenty of tracts for the fair.

Like I said before, I had the desire to witness at the fair and we now had a booth. (I know I could have still witnessed, but due to my sinful fear I was going to just hand out tracts.) I had rolled the idea around for months in my head (witnessing at a fair booth), but as soon as the opportunity presented its self, I got sick to my stomach and fear entered my heart! Vicki told us that she needed help to man the booth, so I volunteered to help, my stomach dropped even more. How hypocritical of me, here was the opportunity I was hoping for and once it presented its self I wanted nothing to do with it!

Despite my fear, I helped out at the table. Let me make this clear, it was only by the undeserved Grace of God was I able to overcome my fear and anxiety. I have witnessed one on one in the past, but I have never been able to find a consistent, clear, and concise way of sharing the Gospel. I submitted myself to God in prayer before showing up and in spite if my flesh God used me to clearly proclaim His word.

PLEASE NOTE: I am not searching for any accolades, pats on the back, or atta-boys. I am not trying to draw attention to myself. I am merely showing what God do even through a sinful excuse-filled vessel. I am boasting only in my weakness, that God may be glorified in my weakness. (2 Cor 11:30, 12:8-10)

God gave me the opportunity to share one-on-one, with two to three and once with a small group. Over all, I directly shared the Gospel with about twenty different people. God gave me a clarity that I have not had before. I was able to finally put into better words and analogies that made sense. God opened the recesses of my mind where I had stored all of the witnessing encounters that I have heard and He helped me assemble it together to form a clear Gospel message. at one point there were six or seven people all gathered around wanting to know the Million Dollar Question. It turned into a mini open-air (preaching.) I had to lift my voice so they could all hear, and as a result people walking by stopped (thankfully God caused me not notice them, I would have been thrown off.) After I was done a kind lady encouraged me with a quick "good job," which was very kind.

One more experience I will share was what I call a drive-by. I asked an older lady if she could answer the Million Dollar Question. Paul egged her on and suggested that she could not. So, she asked what it was.

"If you were to die right now would you go to heaven or to hell?"

She leaned over the table and gently touch my hand and said, "I know where I am going, too bad you don't." And she started to walk away!

I replied, "How do you know that I don't?"

"Because of the way you are preaching this!" And she took off!

Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I sat there trying to find words to say. But God knows what He is doing. Sin entered my heart and I wanted to have a "discussion" with her. But God knowing my heart caused her to walk away. Thank you Lord for saving me from soiling Your name!

My evangelism flame before this, was flickering and on it's last bit of fuel. I had let sin overtake my heart and allowed myself to slip into complacency. God used the fair to reignite my flame and passion for the preaching of the Gospel. "Do you see, do you see, all the people sinking down? Do you care, do you care, are you going to let them drown?" Do we really belive that if poeple do not come to a saving repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone, that they are going to hell? Do we REALLY believe it? If we do how can we stay silent? Why do I care If I look like a fool if it is to be a fool for Christ who is the only one who can save them from their sins and Hell? Where is my urgency, my compassion? People are dying everyday! I am preaching to myself as well as all you fellow Christians. We are all called to evangelize (Matt 28:19-20.) We may not all have the gift of being a full time evangelist, but are our lives marked with going out of our comfort-zone to share the Word of Truth? Remember, we are no better than the lost, just better-off. We are just fellow beggars trying to show other beggars where to find the Bread of Life!

Please pray for all of those who heard the Gospel! Pray that God may save some!

Update Coming Soon!

Once I rest up and spend some well needed time with my family, I will post an update about the Gospel sharing at the fair. Please pray for the souls that hear the Law and the Gospel and for those who left with the Spirit convicting them of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Conviction...From a Sunrise?!

Well as the title says, I was deeply convicted by the sunrise this morning. I will explain my thought process that I had this morning and it will weave in to my conviction.

As I was driving to my first stop this morning I was preparing myself to start my time of prayer (I have about a forty-minute drive.) One thing I really enjoy, is seeing God's handiwork in each of His sunrises. Today's was magnificent, as usual. The clouds looked like they were drawn across the sky by a wide brush. The color of the sky near the horizon was a fiery orange, with reddish hues being cast on the clouds. When the sun broke over the horizon it came with blazing glory.

I started to think about power of God and how creation unfalteringly obeys His commands to create such a masterpiece. God commanded the earth to be tilted at the perfect amount for their to be different seasons. God commands the earth to be at a perfect distance in orbit around the sun to allow for life to thrive on the earth. God commands the sun's explosions to produce life sustaining energy and light. He commands all this and the creation obeys. He commands the earth to rotate, which produces the sunrise. The atmosphere refracts light just as commanded to shine through the dust that has perfectly obeyed to give the sky its fiery color. God gave wisdom and knowledge to the person who made my glasses that allow my eye to clearly see all that I saw. This is where I paused and came to see my sin, weak and feeble faith in God's faithfulness.

I was planning on confessing my lack of faith, but God brought it to the forefront of my mind right there and then. A little background, I have been starting to stress a little about some changes coming up. We have another little one on the way, we will soon need to find a better and or bigger place to live and to top it all off, my work is reorganizing everyone's jobs and I have to interview for some positions this week. Their is a lot of uncertainty coming up, one thing I do not like. I already knew that God has always provided for my little family. We may not have an abundance but we have always had enough and have not lacked. I had no reason to worry and I was going to confess and repent, until the Holy Spirit wanted to give me a better perspective.

At this point I was crushed and tears came to my eyes. God saw this vile, small, God-hating, blasphemous rebel and instead of snuffing out my little meaningless and God-opposing life, He caused me to be regenerated and born again! And yet He still puts up with my sin as I struggle with my flesh everyday, oh wretched man that I am! But I know their is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, He sees us as perfect even though we are not yet perfect. What right do I have to worry?! How arrogant of an attitude. Look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field are they not clothed and fed? Will God not take care of those that He has adopted as sons?


Father, forgive me for my lack of faith!

Does This Offend You? It's Truth...

God's Loving and Sovereign Hand

Well I thought I would start off with the highlight of the summer for our little family. About a week ago we found out that God has blessed us with another little life! We are so very happy and surprised about this.

Jenn and I have been incredibly blessed. For those of you who do not know our story, I will give you a brief overview. We tried for four and a half years to conceive our son. We went from one heartbreaking month to another. Every time Jenn was late, our hopes soared only to have them come crashing back down shortly afterward. We scrounged up money when we could and went to the doctor to try to figure out what the issue was. The doctors were never able to give us a definite answer about what was causing us not to conceive. (We were not saved at this point.) We thought we were never going to be able to have a child, so we tried putting it out of our minds as best we could

In the fall of 2007, God caused Jenn and I to be born again. In November we found out that God blessed us with a child! Please note, I am not a proponent of "Come to Jesus, and life will be better." We were, and still are, convinced that God had kept Jenn's womb closed until the preordained time, namely our salvation. Looking back, we are convinced that that we were in no position to have a child. We struggled to stay married, to eat, and pay bills.

So, now coming back to the present. God has again shown us his sovereignty in our lives. It took us four and a half years to conceive, we always thought that to have another child might take just as long, or never happen. We sure were wrong. I have come to see that this can not be anything but God's hand at work in our lives presently and in the past.

Will Be Back Soon!

I am very sorry to all of you who follow my blog! I have had an quite an eventful summer. Virtually every night I am exhausted, my job gets very busy in the summer (and hot.) I have many things that I have been wanted to blog about but have been too tired (mentally and physically.) I have some big news that some of you already know. I will try to get a new postout by Sunday!



Thank you for your patience!

Give Us Some Men...

Effects of Sin

To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:16-19 (ESV)

These verses from Genesis poetically describe when our Lord God pronounced judgment upon the whole of creation (for the purposes of this post, I chose only the verses in which the Lord speaks directly to Adam and Eve.) I am sure most of us are familiar with these verses. Chapter three of Genesis is a very important chapter, it is here we get an explanation for all the decay, pain, turmoil and ultimately death that we see in the world. Adam and Eve did not guard themselves from the temptation of the serpent, which then became desire and their desire then brought forth sin and sin then lead to death (James 1:14,15.)

We are all well aware of the curse. For women, pain in childbirth and rearing and conflict with her husband (her wanting to usurp his authority and him ruling over her.) For men, hard work to provide food for our family. Not only do we have hard work, but the very ground is going to fight back with thorns and thistles. Our lives are now to work the dirt we came from to live until the day that we return to the dust from whence we came. Now, according to Dr. John MacArthur, these were special curses (on top the the general curse that fell upon all of creation) that are to remind us constantly of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and how God hates it so.

As of lately my eye has been drawn to another effect sin. I was recently flipping though a magazine and I suddenly stopped and could not pull my eyes from what I saw, a picture of a little girl with a cleft pallet. Sorrow filled my heart. As of recently, that has been happening more and more. I see mentally handicap children, children with deformities, babies dying in the womb and my heart breaks. I shake my head at how sin has permeated even our DNA! I also see the mentally challenged adults and my heart breaks for them as well. When I see these effects on the "innocent" it actually causes a tear in my eye, and I am not one who crys. Maybe having a child myself has caused me to be more sensitive to such things.

I have also been sensitive to people who are suffering from degenerative diseases. I was talking with a manager at one of my stores today who has rheumatoid arthritis, she is only 45 and was diagnosed 20 years ago. She is currently almost completely crippled in her hands and has virtually no wrist joints. Her knuckles are very inflamed and she says she is in almost constant pain. She has been offered wrist replacement surgery, but she has opted out for now (they would have to remove her hands!) When she walked way to help a customer, I could not help but fight back a tear! This is just one example of physical disease in our world not even counting sicknesses. Oh how sin has buried its tentacles in everything!

I recently watched Visual Bible: Matthew in which Bruce Marchiano portrays Jesus in fashion that I have not seen in any movie made about Him. Most movies of Jesus we see him as stern and fairly unemotional except for anger. This movie portrays Jesus' softer and compassionate side with out compromising His hard and stern language and emotion. In the scenes when Jesus is healing people you can see the pain in His eyes. Who could see the incredibly disastrous effects of sin? Mr. Marchiano does an amazing job conveying the sorrow and compassion that Jesus must have felt toward his fallen creation. How merciful of a God it is we serve! Not only do we have God's common grace all around us (the mere fact that we are all still alive,) not only did he heal people (when He was here on earth,) He also willingly died on a cross to atone for the elect's sins for complete spiritual and eventual physical healing!

I really had a lot more to say but that would have gotten me WAY off topic. Listening to John MacArthur's sermons on chapter three of Genesis has given me grat insight into those verses that i will explore in another post!

The Mirror of the Ten Commandments

Normally I would not post pictures here that I take for another website (Digital Photography School,) but the latest assignment made we think of a spiritual concept: abandonment of sin. The theme for this week was Abandoned, here is the description that I posted along with the photo:

I had to sit for a while and think about this assignment. Of course the idea of an abandoned building came to mind, but I wanted to go for a more abstract idea of abandonment. I started thinking about my life as a Christian and the things that I have abandoned. I came up with this composite photo. The mirror represents the mirror of the Ten Commandments (here are just four: lying, stealing, taking God's name in vain and adultery.) By looking through this mirror we see ourselves God sees us as lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterers at heart and that is only four! The reflection in the mirror is what I am in light of the Commandments a filthy, wretched, God-hating sinner. The close up portion represents how though Christ's death on the cross I can turn my back on, forsake, ABANDON my sin.

Memorial Day

With today being Memorial Day, I thought I would get back to writing some blogs. I know as of late my posts have been few and far between, for that I am sorry. Life has a way of getting in the way of things, as well areas of sin that need to be dealt with.

Traditionally, today is the day we remember our service men and women who have died in service to their country. It has also, over time, been a time we memorialize loved ones who have gone into eternity before us. Today is one of those days where we confront the fact that we are all going to die and their is nothing that can stop the flow of time. For some of us that end comes sooner than others; for some, the thought of what happens after we die terrifies them. If everyone is honest with themselves, it is plain to see why most people are terrified to die.

According the the Bible (Romans 1:19-31) all men know that God exists, and not just a god but the true God. And all men know that they have transgression against God. All men know that God is Good and Just. So Good and Just that He will not only punish murderers and rapists, but liars, thieves, adulterers (mental fantasies and physical,) the covetous, and those who dishonor their parents. God will not only judge them, but will also judge those who pay homage to other gods, who have fashioned and worship idols both physical an in their minds (by having an false view of God,) and those who blaspheme the name of God (with their mouth or by they way they live their life.) I think it is easy to see why most all people are terrified to die, they know that when they die they will face the Just Judge of all the earth and will have to answer to Him for what they have done. Most people will be found wanting that day, they will not have a payment for their crimes and will be punished.

However, their are some of us who may be frightened of the dying process,it be painful or slow, but not afraid of death. We are still just as guilty of everything that the first group is, but we have one more thing than they do: payment for our sin though the atoning work of Christ's (the Just Judge) death on a cross. We have responded (only by God's immeasurable Grace) to our sin and the cross in repentance (a contrite apology and turning from all sin) and faith in our Savior, Jesus Christ.

If you are one of those people that are afraid of death, you do not have to be. Look at God's Law the ten commandments, you have violated every single one in spirit if not in action. Let those commandments crush you, see yourself though God's Holy eyes. you know God should crush you but he is willing to forgive. God is also Loving, he Sent Jesus, who is fully God, to pay the penalty for sin for all those who respond in repentance and faith.

As I said before, Memorial Day has become more than just remembering our fallen soldiers. So I propose to all Christians today, let us remember those who have fallen to give us freedom to worship our God, but let us also remember the ones who have preceded us into Glory. The great Heroes of the Faith. Those great men who dedicated their whole being to the Gospel, some died of old age, and most died for the faith. Let us also remember the persecuted Church. Our brothers ans sisters who daily are being beaten, tortured, and martyred for the name of Christ.

I humbly ask you all today, first if you are afraid if death, please follow what I said above and ask God for forgiveness, secondly I ask you all to pray and thank our God for all of those who have preceded us in death and for those who suffering great torment because they are faithful witnesses to Christ's Name.