“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
John 3:16-18.
Many years ago, perhaps thirty-five or so now I was doing what we call street witnessing with a friend on the streets of big city.
We’d do a three or four kilometre lap along a major street, from about nine at night until one in the morning depending on how many people were around. People and the police were use to us doing it.
We got our regulars some who simply wanted someone to talk or argue with us along with the drunks coming out of the bars and some new people.
On this particular occasion around midnight on a very cold February night, a very agitated man in his mid twenties came up to us. At first we though he might have a mental illness but that wasn’t the case.
He was very rational he just didn’t agree with anything we said. He had a lot of preconceived ideas that just didn’t add up.
He eventually told us he was a devil worshipper.
Over the space of an hour we tried to tell him about Christ although it was difficult because he didn’t want to listen. He seemed to be in attack mode, All he wanted to do was tell us what he believed.
Finally we were able to tell him what we believed, the very basics, the words of Jesus.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
John 3:16-18.
He told us quite bluntly he didn’t believe. That we were wrong and he was right then left us.
He gave us pause to think. Were we the last chance he had to receive Jesus into his life. Would he enter a Christless eternity?
It caused us to want to reach more people something we did. I forget how many actually came to know Christ but I do remember we talked to a lot of people.
During the few years we were witnessing we talked to everything from members of bike gangs, to people living on the street, to the average person and everyone in between.
We planted a lot of seeds. Quite often that was all we could do. Still the message went out and I probably will not know what happened to those seeds this side of eternity.
It is important that we as Christians all plant seeds. That we speak about our faith to others even if they don’t agree with us.
We as best we can need to enter into dialogue with the people around us telling them in an unthreatening way what we believe.
We may not see the results of that seed in this life time but we will in eternity.
Are you planting seeds around you?
Think about it.
