Dare 2 Share Update....

So, Friday and Saturday, Brenna and I were at Dare 2 Share. It's a really cool conference that teaches youth how to share their faith. Then, once they've given them some methods of doing that, we actually go out into our communities and walk door-to-door telling people about the love of Jesus. We initially ask for can foods for Sunshine Ministries, and then we spring a second question on them. Brenna and I walked around down a street with 5 kids each. She would take one side of the road with her 5 and i would take the other side with my kids. (i say kids, but they range from 13-18). Anyway, then, we split into two groups of three so we would cover more houses. It was an awesome to see these kids telling others about their faith and what God has done in their lives.

We graduated from Persecution University because we had several doors slammed in our face. When we asked one lady if we could ask her another question, she said "is it about Jesus?" we said, yes. and then she said "just take yor can goods and be happy" So, we were just like, ummm, ok, thanks. Another guy had this whole government, religion conspriracy theory. I tried explaining to him how religion is just a bunch of rules and regulations and how Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I guess all we could do was plant a seed there. And finally, I talked to a guy that believed there was no devil and no hell, but said he had read the Bible several times from front to back. It was hard to try and show him the love of Jesus, but still tell him he was wrong. He was trying to say how God wouldn't create a place like Hell because he is so loving. Nothing was really getting to him when I tried to say how God is a just God as well as a loving God. I kind of got hung up on the fact he didn't believe there was a Hell or even Satan. I just can't believe that someone that has read the Bible would beleive there's not a literal Hell.

These were just a few of my stories of people I encountered with the two youth i walked with from door-to-door. As we were finishing up with the last house on the street (on our side), i noticed Brenna and her two girls were talking to a guy at the house they were at. So, i figured I should probably go over and help out, since it was a guy. He's a pretty tall, black-guy(for your mental picture). His name is Sam, and I could tell they were at a critical point in the conversation. Brenna was explaining to him that no matter what he's done, he could come to God as he was. He didn't have to change and be a better person before he was able to come to Jesus. I told him Romans 3:23 and explained how we've all sinned and no one on their own is good enough to be with God. It really broke us when he started to cry. You could really just see God working in him. He told us how he used to go to church and we kind of got it out of him what he believed. We could tell he had once gotten saved, when he was a kid. He went on to tell us how he really wanted to get back in church, so we invited him to our church. (Unfortunately, he didn't come yesterday, but maybe he went somewhere else.) As we were kind of wrapping it up, we prayed for him and whatever was going on in his life. You could just really tell it was something big. It was amazing that we only knew this guy for 15 minutes, but we felt this love for him because we knew we were the ones God put in his path. I was so disappointed yesterday when he didn't show up, but I know God knows what He's doing. Brenna wrote down his address when we left, so we can write him a letter. We'll try to encourage him and include some verses he can look up.

Derwin Gray, a former NFL player, (aka "the Evangelism Linebacker" just google it), was one of the speakers this year for Dare 2 Share. He had a really cool analogy i thought i would share. He explained how he was a terrible basketball player. He said if there was a device where Michael Jordan could be transported and be placed into your body, you would then be able to "be like Mike". You'd have all of Jordan's shooting abilities, his defense, the passes, everything. It the same way when when get saved. Jesus is inside of us, but we tend to say, "hey, do it like this, Jesus". We don't actually let him live through us. We end up trying to make everyting happen by ourselves. We try to save people ourself, instead of letting God work on their hearts. I think that's kind of why i was disappointed when i didn't see Sam yesterday at church. I felt like i had failed, but even if i never see him again, we told him about Jesus and his love for us. That's exactly what we're called to do; to go and tell.

It was a great weekend. I could just really feel the power talked about in Acts 1:8. I'm sure Brenna will probably have some things to add to this post so be looking out for that. Be looking forward to His return, it's coming. Talk to yall later.

Dare 2 Share....

http://www.dare2share.org/survive/

This is what Brenna and I are doing this weekend with our Youth group. We'll post more about it on Sunday afternoon probably. We'll be getting out and sharing the Gospel with a ton of people here in St. Louis. Please pray for us and the people we'll be talking with. Thaks yall.

A lot of stuff is going on up here. Soon, i'll post about what our church vision is for the next 3-5 years. It's really exciting!