One Purpose

4/22/13         Nathan      early 20’s

After our early morning elders meeting and before our church service I went out for a walk, hoping to initiate a Gospel conversation.  I ran into Nathan (his American name), a Mechanical Engineering major at IIT from China, on his way into a laundromat.  Nathan grew up in an atheist household in China and doesn’t believe in God, saying he believes in science and would need to see evidence of God’s existence.  I acknowledged that, bottom line, the Bible is clear from beginning to end that it does take faith to believe in God, but I began to explain how this could be a reasonable faith.  “When you look at that building there, it is reasonable to believe there were bricklayers who put those bricks in place.  You can see the effects of the wind on tree branches, and it is reasonable to believe in the wind even though you can’t see it.  When we think about creation, what brought all these atoms and molecules and energy into existence, it is reasonable to believe there was a primary cause.  The Bible begins with the first five words ‘In the beginning, God created’”  - Nathan had never heard this before -  “That means that the Bible teaches that God existed before everything was created.  God would be that primary cause that has existed forever”.  Kind of deep for a lazy Sunday morning, but Nathan was very interested and asked about my church.  It turned out that he has been reached out to by a Christian student group on his campus, and has recently gone on an out of state trip with them.  There are many types of evangelism – invitational, relational, initiative – but there is one Holy Spirit orchestrating them all, and one purpose – to cooperate with God in making fully devoted fruitful followers of Jesus Christ.