Pastor Stephen Baker is teaching a series of lessons on Becoming a Missional Church to our adult Sunday School class. I am so glad, expecially now that the school year has started, that the adult Sunday School lessons are available online. On my birthday, we got to watch a movie in class called "The Gospel Blimp". This is a period piece based on a book by my pastor's father, Joseph Bayly. In it, some men decided to do evangelism with a gimic. They got a blimp, and put verses on it and threw messages out of in onto their neighbors. In the mean time, one of them, who was thrown out of the group spent time with his neighbor and through that relationship, the neighbor was introduced to Christ, and he was saved.
The idea was that the blimp was impersonal and irrelevant, or something. This made me very worried about my behaviour at Planned Parenthood. To go there, and read Scripture and pray and sing praises to God...what is that? Wouldn't it be better if I just stayed home? Why fill the air with my incessantly irrelevant droning?
Three Thursdays ago, I was swayed by a personal downfall and by my insecurity in my method and purpose. I didn't go.
Two Thursdays ago, I went, and found two other CGSers there, Josh and Veruna (sp). I expressed this wavering in my heart to them, and they encouraged me to continue, and to also speak to the people there at Planned Parenthood. So, I prayed and began to read Isaiah. An 18 year old girl was there with her mother. Her mother was being seen by the abortion doctor. She was being closely guarded and "comforted" by an elder male escort whom I had never seen, but later was told that his wife regularly escorts there. When I began reading, this girl stood up and moved slightly toward me. She talked to the escort and listened. I moved to another location to be better heard and continued. This girl continued to inch toward me. The escort moved with her and kept his back to me and attempted to stay between her and us. When he went to offer his protection to a new arrival, we greeted her and she came over and stood with us and chatted.
Although I am less confident in my words than in God's Word, I hope that God gives us words there. I hope that we do not mingle our reasoning with God's truth. I think of all the things I failed to say, and all the things I fumbled.
Last Thursday, Josh held a sign with a picture of an aborted baby on it. A car drove up and parked right next to him. An older woman emerged disgusted. She said that she wished we just wouldn't bring pictures. Asked why, she said that they are offensive. We explained to her that it is necessary, because many people do not realize that Planned Parenthood is killing real babies like this one. She said we shouldn't bring them because they are so disturbing, no one wants to see that.
Last Thursday also I had some wonderful discussions with Veruna about how God's truth and great wisdom is revealed to us throughout the world, if we would only look.
2 comments:
I disagree with "impersonal means" not reaching people. God is personal enough to use impersonal means to reach people. I am an example. If you read through my testimony on one of my first blogs on my site, you can see it was no person who led me to Christ. It was a work of Christ working in my heart, making me search out Truth. Neither method, impersonal or personal, is better than the other. It is all about God doing the work. A friend of mine where I use to work before I married became a Christian through our friendship. However, Christ has been working in her heart since she was a child.
Small things are seeds planted. I can give you several examples of seeds planted before I became a Christian. I am sure you could too. Without these small things, I never would have been guided.
I couldn't agree with you more. I was converted during a communion service of all things, while they were fencing the table.
God's word is powerful. I do pray that He will give me words when He has something to say, He said He would, and He has from time to time. I wouldn't go down there on my own, though. I think my calling there is simply to proclaim God's truth there.
(Good to read about your running progress...I stand in awe and sweat!)
Rachel
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