Today, as usual, I was out doing business and by 5pm I realised hadn’t shared the gospel with anyone.  I was near a mall, so I decided to duck in and find someone. As I parked the car I prayed for grace. You see, today I didn’t have any Bible reading, prayer or Bible study. I have established this habit in my life and it has made a huge difference to my evangelism and my life generally. When I spend quality time with those three disciplines, I find my day just goes better.  Anyway, today I felt like I needed God’s grace to cover me because I hadn’t ‘connected’ with Him in the usual way.  It was a simple prayer ‘Lord, would you cover me today. I feel like something is missing but I am going to go any way and ‘love’ someone with the gospel.  I put the headphones into my iphone, and cued the gospel presentation to the right place.  When I walked into the shopping centre, I was on the second floor and right ahead of me was the Vodaphone shop.  I remembered I had met the guy behind the counter before about six months ago because I had asked him if my iphone could play videos   – I was thinking of  THE GOSPEL PRESENTATION (which you can no see at www.biblein11.com by the way) .  He said it couldn’t and I found out later it could! So I thought, ‘Lord, I want to talk to that guy again but what angle do I take to start the conversation?’ 

I got it. ‘Hi, how are you I said’ as I approached and we got eye contact.  ‘Do you remember me? I saw you a few months back  about getting a Christian video on my iphone  – do you remember?’  He said he did.  ‘Well, I did get the video to play on my iphone – do you want to see it? It tells you how you can be sure of going to heaven at death!’ (enthusiastically).  ‘How long does it take?’ he asked and I said eleven minutes. He looked at this watch and said ‘Look, I would like to but I have to balance the til and stuff before 5:30 closing. Do you have a web address?’ I said ‘Sure’ and wrote it out for him. As I was doing this this young lady popped up seemingly out of nowhere and said ‘I heard that – I’d like to see it!’  She’d been putting stuff away below the counter which is why I couldn’t see her. I didn’t ask any questions but simply said ‘Sure’. She put the headphones in her ears and pushed the ‘play’ icon on the iphone. She was riveted. The other guy stood right next to us, seemingly oblivious to what was happening right beside him. Let’s call the lady Mary. Mary was riveted all the way though. I thought ‘thank you Lord, something good is happening here. I can feel it and see it!’  At the end, I said ‘what did you think?’  She said it was great. Then I said ‘Mary, why were you so keen to see the presentation?’ She replied ‘I became a Christian when I was at high school and I used to go to church. I haven’t been for three years.’  ‘So,’ I said ‘ if you died tonight, where would you go?’ She said ‘hell’  Apparently, she’d never heard the gospel before.  I prayed with her there and then and the Holy Spirit gave me a prophecy for her about being a lamb he’d been searching for.   

I always feel a righteous anger coming on when I hear this kind of thing – people who become Christians without hearing the gospel.  How is this possible? The short answer is, it’s not. Without hearing the gospel, in what are they believing? Who are we believing in? How will weknow the cost? The conditions? I am telling you, it’s a croc! A person can no more be Christian without hearing the gospel than a plane can take off without wings! Yes, some have been saved in unusual ways, like seeing a vision of Jesus at the end of their beds in the middle of the night, but this is not normative. It’s a special work of Grace.  Those who work with teenagers in High Schools and youth groups – for heaven’s sake, proclaim the gospel.  Fun and games and entertainment have their place, but make them peripheral. Make Jesus and His mission central.  Make study and reading the word of God your food, not McDonald’s, jelly fights and ice cream.  And if they find that boring, ask them to come back when they are ready. Jesus never pandered to the crowd, and nor did Paul.  Raise the bar! Above all else, preach the gospel, and don’t tell anyone they are ‘saved’ unless they have heard and understood it.  Now back to Mary.  She told me the reason she doesn’t go to church now is that she knows absolutely no Christians!  I asked her where she lived, and she said ‘Brown’s Bay’ which is a suburb of Auckland. Amazing thing is, I know another lady who goes to our church, who is a really cool person and only a little older than Mary. Marywillingly gave me her cell number so now I can connect her with my friend!  You know, when I left that shop, I was literally floating. I was so elated I went into Star Bucks and had a coffee and read the paper to celebrate.  What are the lessons? 1. A man plans his way but the Lord directs his steps (Proverbs 16:9).  I thought the man in Vodaphone was ‘the one’ but it turned out to be someone else. 2. God did cover me with His grace. Don’t think you can’t do evangelism because you have had a bad start to the day. It’s a lie from the enemy 3.  Don’t tell anyone they are a Christian until they have heard the gospel. If you do, you’ll just be creating backsliders. 4. I gave the web address to the other man in Vodaphone. Always look for how you can maximise the situation for the Great Commission.  5. Be prepared for anything.   She was a surprise pop us, like a jack in a box! 6.  If you take the phone number of someone the opposite sex, tell them you are getting it to connect them with another lady in the church.  I could have just given her my phone number but I have found it it better to get there’s so you can be sure of connecting again.  We don’t want to lose any fish through the mesh of the net 7. God’s sovereignty is amazing. I believe He will guide people who are keen to share the gospel to people who need / want to hear it – try it! Having said that, sometimes he will allow you to connect with some hard old rocks, to test you and work on your character! We learn to take the good and the bad and to keep going forwards either way.

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