I wanted to share another personal evangelism experience from this weekend.
But first, some background. The Personal Evangelism program we use at our church (Soul Winners' Club) talks about several ways we encounter people that we witness to – people that have visited our church, people that we are asked to visit from their friends or relatives, door-to-door or street evangelism and divine appointments. Divine appointments are defined as encounters you were not expecting that God puts in your path.
One more piece of background and then on to the testimony. Another thing we do in the Soul Winners' Club is set up a trainer/trainee relationship. Every session (each one is 12 weeks long) an experienced soul winner is paired with someone that is just learning. One of the things you do as a trainer is take your trainee out witnessing and, while you present the gospel to someone, they watch and pray and run interference (keeping away stray kids and animals and minimizing the outside distractions that Satan and his buddies throw up). Then, somewhere towards the end of the 12 week session, the trainee will have the opportunity to present the gospel to someone and (with God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit) lead a person to Christ.
My partner this time is a Jewish man named Mike. He just got saved this last December. This weekend was the first time that Mike and I went out together to go witnessing. The outreach pastor gave us a couple of visits to make of people that had come to the church a couple of times and then stopped coming. As soon as we got into the car we prayed that God would let us see someone get saved that day.
Our church is in Glen Burnie, Mike is from Columbia and I live in Bowie. So, of course, the second we pulled out of the driveway we were pretty much lost. Even with a map we had about three or four false starts. I told Mike that God's timing is always perfect. As we tried to find our way to the first visit I talked to Mike about times where God has used my bumbling and lack of navigation skills to bring me to all sorts of people I would not have otherwise met. I told him that, when you go out witnessing, you may not wind up where you planned but you always wind up where God plans. He shared a Jewish proverb with me that goes something like: man plans and God laughs.
We finally found the apartment (of course it was only about 5 minutes from the church - if you went directly there). And, wouldn't you know, they weren't home. After knocking about three times and leaving a note we decided to leave the building and head for the second family on our list. We walked out into the rain and … ran right into our divine appointment.
As we were coming out of the building we started walking to my car down the street. In the adjoining apartment building to the one we visited, an old man (about 70ish) came out walking with a cane. As Mike and I came up to the walkway from his building the old gentleman was just making it to the sidewalk with his cane in one hand and a stack of letters to mail in the other.
He said "hi" and we stopped to talk. His name was Don. I told him we were out visiting some people from our church that lived in the next building. We started talking and he told me that he has read through the Bible three times. I told him that was a very impressive feat. I then asked him about his church background. He said he didn't really go to church. I gave him my testimony and then asked him if God should take his life was he 100% sure he would go to heaven. He said he wasn't sure but he hoped so. I told him that, in about 5 minutes, I could show him from the Bible how he could be sure and never have to worry about it again. He said that would be a good thing to know. The three of us stood there in the rain and, within a couple of minutes, Don bowed his head and asked God to forgive him of his sins and to come into his heart and save him. I gave Don some assurances of his salvation and promised to visit him over the next week. We all shook hands, he thanked us and then we all went on our way.
This was the first time that Mike had ever seen anyone (besides himself) get saved. He could have floated to the rest of the visits he was so high. After we had a glory fit in the car he listed all the delays that came into our path so that we could be walking by that building at the exact second that Don came out to mail his letters. God is great and He uses our strengths, as well as our weaknesses, for His purpose.
As the morning wound down and we had finished visiting the other people Mike had the most profound insight. He said, "We just saw a miracle. This morning Don was on his way to hell. But now, we will be hanging out with him in heaven some day." Soul winning makes a difference, an eternal difference.