5/22/14 Gerardo 21
“Mid-Course
Correction” – Part 4 – After five years of daily witnessing conversations, I’m
thinking I need to make some changes.
I’d like to say I know what I’m doing, but I don’t. I’m not even making this up as I go along
because I’m not sure where it is taking me! What I do know, both biblically and now, I
believe, confirmed by experience, is
that 1.) Non-believers are generally unable to seek after God, despite
what the “seeker-sensitive” church movement tells us. They don’t have the internal motivation of
the Holy Spirit, and our culture increasingly squelches the external influence of
the Spirit through believers or circumstances.
This means that I need to be ready to keep reaching out to people after
I initiate that first witnessing conversation, rather than expect them to call
me back on their own initiative; 2.) If
I keep reaching out to people that I have talked to, I will soon run out of
time to talk to anyone new! What to
do? So far my last few witnessing conversations
have helped guide my path. Yesterday I
spoke with a young man named Gerardo, 21, again out on a sidewalk, again for
about half an hour. Gerardo was
different from the first three people I have written about since considering
these changes - he does not have that “intellectual ascent” to the Gospel that
they had. In fact, he pretty much argued
or refuted every point I made. He grew
up Catholic and believes in God, but his connection with Christianity ends
there. He is very opinionated and prefers
to rely on his own imagination about God rather than on what any outside
authority, biblical or otherwise, might say.
I could see what I was telling him made sense, but also that he could
see that the natural outcome of what I was saying would mean repentance from
his current lifestyle, something he wasn’t about to consider. He showed no signs of further interest in
spiritual things, only in maintaining his current lifestyle. So do I tell a guy like this that I will call
him back in a week to see what he thinks?
Of course God can work in surprising ways, and one needs to be open to
anything. But my faith is not a blind
faith, it is a reasonable faith. I have
a God given trust in the Holy Spirit, but I also have a God-given intellect,
which tells me that Gerardo isn’t even close to wanting to talk further. Something
miraculous needs to happen his life. I
gave him my contact information, but I didn’t ask for his. He needs to know that the initiative needs to
be his; that when it comes to the things of God the ball is in his court. So how does this affect my “mid-course
correction?” It helps me to treat people
more as individuals, just as God treats us.
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