Power of Prayer

Today we were back at RMIT Bundoora. We talked about how yesterday went and decided we wanted to focus more on praying for God to bring us to people and to work in our conversations. Josh and I paired up together and after walking around for a good bit not finding anyone to talk to came across a guy eating soup at the tables outside. He was egar to take our Soularium survey and introduced himself as Abs. We went through the survey and got to understand more about what he believed. Like many he though that God created the world, the rules (gravity, elements, etc.) and is now just watching everything play out. He believed that the way we get into heaven is based on a point system...do bad things and you get points deducted, do good things and point get added. Simple enough but the big question is what rules do you follow and how do you know if you are 'good enough'? We explained to him that God is holy and perfect and we are sinful. Abs brought up the 10 Comandments as a basis for what is right and wrong...which is right, those are some of the requirments God has set in place. The problem is no one can ever keep all of them. No one. "You shall not murder"...so some people have and some people havn't. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (aka lie)....everyone has lied. We have all fallen short.

The amazing thing is that after telling Abs this he got it. He understood that we are sinful, God is perfect and that becasue God is just and holy he can not be with us. It clicked. But what if it ended here? We are sinful, "For the wages of sin is death" which means what we earn for our wrongdoings is eternal seperation from God.

Thankfully we have grace. This is the second part of what we told Abs. God loved us and desired to have a relationship with us. In order to do this he sent Jesus Christ to earth and Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life. When Christ was crucified he bore all of our sins. God took this sacrifce as a payment for our sins. At this point Abs stood up and excalimed "I understand it!".

After a bit more discussion and answering questions Josh explained that now comes our response. When we know the Gospel message, that Christ has died for our sins, it is our decision...the ball is in our court. It is like a free gift. You have to accept it in order to claim it. We explained that you have to agree that you are sinful and put your faith in the fact that Jesus died and paid for our sins. In putting this faith in Christ we become Christian and recieve the Holy Spirit which works in us to help us grow and understand. Another 'ah-ha' moment occured here.

Abs, Josh and I talked for a bit more and it seemed that Abs really understood what we were telling us. When we asked if accepting Christ was something he saw himself as wanting to do he replied telling us that he wanted to be able to give himself wholeheartedly to it, knowing it was a big decision, but didnt think his lifestyle matched up. He also stated that he 'didnt have time and right now he was focused on Uni and after Uni he wanted look more into things'.

We explained that it isnt by works, doing good things, that we earn our way into heaven. It is by God's grace, the gift that we do not deserve, and by faith, trustuing that Christ paid for our sins, that we recieve eternal life. The timing in life reason is a common one. If it is 'I'm too young' or 'I'm too busy' or 'I'm too old' it will always remain 'mot the right time'. But it is. It is never too early, too late or inconvient to accept Christ. It is the biggest decision of your life.

Abs understood all of this and wanted to think about things, still saying he didnt had too much going on right now in his life and was pretty happy at where he was. Pray that he understands the importance, and the God continues to work around him, bringing Christians into his life.

The reason this post is labled 'power of prayer' is what Josh and I discovered later. The conversation went so well and had so many moments where normally people get stuck on the point that we are sinful or that Christ died for our sins or they dont see that 'all religions are the same' is wrong or so many other issues. We hit so many in our conversation and each time we brought up the Biblical truth Abs accepted and understood them. After our talk we Josh and I went upstairs where four of the girls on project were praying. They had seen us from the window and had prayed for our conversation the whole time. Later we found out that Erin and Allen had passed by us, saw us talking and prayed for us too. At the end of the day I was talking with Geoff, a STINTer (misionary), and he told me that him, Evan and Mel had also seen us and prayed for Josh, Abs and I. That means that the whole project team on campus at that time had been praying for us. And it showed with how Abs' eyes were open to the truth. God is faithful!

So in talking about prayer here are some prayer requests...
*For Abs, that he truely understands what we told him and is convicted to seek out the truth and make a decision.
*For the other students that we have talked to.
*For a technical error in the O-Week Surveys that is not sending us the girl's online responses
*The team- for us to see why we are here, our individual walks and also our health
*The students- for God to soften thier hearts, open thier eyes and for us to be able to talk to them.

Yes, another long post. I understand that some of the Biblical information might be new to you, and if you want to know more, have questions or want to talk PLEASE e-mail me (lapierre@vt.edu) or you can get help at http://www.ccci.org/wij/index.aspx or www.everystudent.com.