We have a monthly outreach at a local community college on the second Thursday of each month. Each month we bring bottles of water to hand out. We have large signs that say “free water” to let the students know that they can get some water. We hand out the water with a booklet, tract, DVD or some other resource. Each month we normally will use some specific resource for that month.
This month we were handing out ESV New Testaments along with the Bible Bookmark. The bookmark provides a simple way to share the Gospel with someone by asking a sequence of questions and then providing one or two Bible verses to lookup to answer the question.
We handed out about 200 New Testaments and bookmarks in about two hours.
One student that received a New Testament received a lot more. He received eternal life! Once I handed him the New Testament I asked him if he was a Christian. He said, “no, not yet.” So I asked him what he was waiting for. He told me that he is in a Bible study at another one of the community college campuses. I asked what he knew about the Bible and he said that he did not know much. Actually, he did not even know how to look up a book, chapter and verse. I don’t mean this in any kind of condescending way. It turns out that many people we meet these days have never had or read the Bible.
The New Testaments (and Bibles for that matter) that we give out at outreaches have both a table of contents in book order as well as a table of contents in alphabetical order. I like to show people both of these.
I show them how to find the book of the Bible in the alphabetical table of contents. Then turning to the book, I show them that the larger numbers are called chapters and the smaller numbers are verses.
My new friend looked on intently as I showed him how to look up a verse in the Bible. We turned to Hebrews 9:27 and I asked him to read it. He did. And then I asked him the question from the bookmark “what happens when you die?”
Judgment – he said!
Very good. I explained to him that the questions were not hard. We proceeded to through the next questions until we got to the chase. Will you go to Heaven or Hell? He immediately said he would go to Hell if he died right then. I asked him if he thought that God wanted him to go to Hell and he said no. I then back up his answer from 2 Peter 3:9.
He knew that Jesus had died for the sin of the world. But he had never personally responded to Christ. I shared the Good News with him that Jesus had lived a perfect life, died on the cross and rose from the dead. I told him about repentance and the need to receive Jesus as savior. He said he wanted to do that.
I told him that if he wanted to pray to the Lord then I would pray for him. After some silence and then discussion again what it meant to recgonize his sin, have remorse for his sin, repent of his sin and then receive Jesus he prayed an amazingly beautiful prayer in his own words and then I prayed for him.
I gave him my business card and invited him to call me, email me and come to church with me. I hope to hear from him again soon!
