Calling all the troops!

Hello to our prayer partners and fellow evangelists! : )

We hope that you all had a blessed Christmas celebrating the King of Kings! We trust God has continued to bless you, as we all celebrate God’s amazingly humble visit!

This is a big weekend for all who are available. We love having the opportunity to go downtown and share the gospel, including this Friday evening and we expect to meet around 9:30PM for some street-witnessing, to speak with those God sends our way. In addition to that, this is the also the weekend for the big Orange Bowl Parade! We have close to a dozen of us who are planning to come so far, but this is expected to be a really big and fun parade and we would be grateful for additional help! They are expecting more than 75,000 excited and curious observers. That is a lot of people, so we are letting everyone know and asking them if they can come, to bring a friend or two. And we ask that whether you are able to join us or plan to pray for us during that time, if you can, please email your friends so they can plan to join us or pray too! This is typically a great opportunity to pass out lots of gospel tracts at a time when people are so receptive. If you have not worked a parade yet, then you are in for a blessing, because they crowds that we have been seeing are unusually open to getting something for free. If you have not met Sean and Marji Kelsey yet, they are the ones who printed up thousands of gospel tracts for the occasion. The plan is to meet at the southwest corner of Orange and Robinson at 10AM Saturday morning. The plan is to interact with the people running the floats and the parade is scheduled to start at 11:00AM. If you are running late, it’s okay, we are glad for your help!
Contact info:
GNNO@cnonline.net

(Steven’s Update)
A brief catch-up because it was pretty interesting! ~ Two Fridays ago, the four of us hung out at the corner of Orange and Central and talked to a lot of people and had some very interesting conversations. I (Steven) worked the flip chart (using the portable sound system) and several times a crowd gathered around, just curious what we were talking about. It was a lot of fun, though very high energy! Also some of the YWAM team (Youth With a Mission) joined us and hung out at our corner – which made it more fun! One story specifically stands out. There were 2 guys who walked up and were curious what the flipchart was, so I took them through the ‘Intelligence Test’ and we had some fun with that. Then I asked them if they knew why I had this flipchart out here and they didn’t know, so I explained that it’s because we can look at something and think we know what we see, but our senses can fool us. Then I pointed out that we can fool us ourselves into thinking we are good people just because we are better than so and so. But are we really good? I then took them through a few of the 10 Commandments and they stopped me and started asking questions. One of them wanted to know if Jesus truly was tempted like we are or if He really was perfect and couldn’t sin. And, I did my best to answer him, reminding him that Jesus was both – Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” He asked a few more questions, but I knew the real issue was that he wanted to go and get drunk and he wanted to blame God somehow. (I also knew there was something else in going on in his head, but couldn’t figure out what…) I was trying to find an effective way to answer him, when someone to my left said, ‘Hey can I answer that?’ I looked over puzzled and saw our good friend Bobby (a leader of YWAM Orlando team). I was much relieved and Bobby reminded this guy that God gave each of us a choice and we are choosing right now, what that choice is, despite the fact that God already knows what choice we will make, we still have to choose whether we will do what’s right or choose to rebel. (Later, Bobby had a chance to talk to this guy more and found out that this guy’s grandma had just died recently and he was struggling with understanding why… That’s painful and explains why he was asking these questions.) My prayer is that God will not let either him or his friend rest until they give all of their heart and life to Jesus Christ.

This past Friday, we were delighted to have a group from Metro join us as they usually do! I set up the flipchart as we typically do, but the winds were blowing hard enough to knock it over, so we moved it out of the wind (and the pathway). So, then I prayed for our fellow evangelism teams and for wisdom and started talking with anyone I could. I talked to a homeless man named Tony and we had a good conversation about some things I thing he needed to remember and think about. I also had a chance to talk with an old friend from a church we used to go to. I felt the Holy Spirit pressing me to challenge him that he had no business being downtown because he was coming looking for trouble, so we had a heart to heart talk. I’m praying that God keeps working on him and showing him that he needs to give Jesus control of all of his life. I also got to briefly talk with a Muslim guy that Scott, Brittany, Kayla, and Rebecca had been talking with. And from the other conversations I heard about, it was a very interesting night! There are so many people downtown and many more like them who think they can believe in Jesus and live the way the want. My fear for them is that I don’t want them to hear “I never knew you, depart from Me you who practice lawlessness [rebellion]…” ~ (Matthew 7:23)

In the last couple of weeks, I had a chance to watch a couple ‘Way of the Master’ online messages and to watch a Mark Cahill message and I realized one thing I have been missing. So, I tried it this past Friday, and noticed more effective conversations. The idea/thought to it is that if we don’t engage them enough in the conversation (i.e. asking good questions to make them think and analyze themselves) then they don’t think deeply enough to take their eternity as seriously as would be helpful for them. But when we (and Ray, Kirk and Mark) asked them questions that made them identify themselves, they take it more seriously. One example was a guy I talked to, took him through the ‘Intelligence Test’ and then explained that our senses can fool us. Then I asked him if he thought he was a good person. He said he was, so then I took him through the 10 Commandments and it really hit him when he realized that he had broken God’s commandments and deserves to be punished. And then I asked him if that concerned him that based on his confession that he had broken God’s commandments and that he knew that God had to punish him and that meant he deserved to spend forever in Hell – did that concern him? I just talked to him for a minute or two and just let him think about the gravity of that question. It was interesting to see his conscience, his will to live, and the truth of God’s Word and his understanding of God’s justice work on his heart. After he thought about it, he said that it did bother him. I then explained what Jesus did for him if he accepts it and challenged him to read God’s Word, take it seriously and obey what he reads and he left our conversation thinking. I’m praying for him. I wish I could remember his name, but I’m praying for him. It was neat to see God’s Word work on a tender heart to draw that man to Himself.

Thank you to our dear prayer partners! Your prayers are more appreciated than you know! We are praying that God will keep using each and every one of you where ever He has you to be sprinkling His Word in conversations and of course, continuing to ask God to raise up more laborers in His harvest!

Your friends and fellow laborers in the harvest,
David, Barbara, Steven and Paul
‘Come let us worship the King of Kings!'