Living the Journey

The Lord gave Priscilla and I the wonderful opportunity of passing out Gospel tracts in a park on Sunday afternoon. We prayed that He would bring into our path just the right people He wanted us to encounter. Feeling assured that He would do just that, we entered our “mission field”! Our encounters included a 16 year old public school girl who was not walking close to God (we passed a Journey brochure on to her), and then we met a Christian Romanian family who attended church in the area.

After about an hour in the park, we had not gotten a soul yet, but Priscilla was praying for one. As we started walking back, the Lord brought into our path a Spanish lady whom I will call Maria. Priscilla handed her a tract which she stopped to accept. It seemed like she wanted to talk more!

Priscilla then asked if she could get to Heaven by being a good person. She sighed and said she was trying. It was as if she was carrying a huge weight, working so hard to be good enough to go to Heaven. Priscilla opened her Bible and shared with her Ephesians 2:8-9, emphasizing that salvation is a gift, not earned by works. If we could get to Heaven by being good, then we would have to be perfect all our lives, because there can be no sin in Heaven. But Jesus shed His blood on the cross as the payment for our sins. It is only by trusting Jesus alone that we can have eternal life, and then we must let Him be the Lord of our life.

It was about this time that the Lord prompted me to pray for Maria. It seemed like she was pretty set on her idea that you could be good enough to go to Heaven. But then the Lord said, “Just ask Me! I can bring this soul to repentance!” (See Psalm 2:8)

Maria then shared her story how she had been divorced after 22 years of marriage, and it was hard for her to trust anyone now. Priscilla then explained how people will let you down, but Jesus never will. He is the only friend that you can trust. As Maria read Ephesians 2:8-9, tears came to her eyes as she saw Christ’s free gift and how much God loved her. “It’s so beautiful!” she exclaimed.

Priscilla asked her if she wanted to pray right then, and she did, thanking God for His gift of eternal life and telling Him that she was trusting Him for her salvation. A joyful smile broke across her face and she gave us both a big hug, thanking us for taking the time to tell her of all this! “I love you girls!” she told us. I told her that God had given us such a wonderful gift of salvation, and we wanted to share it with others. Priscilla encouraged her to read her Bible, and I gave her a copy of The World’s Greatest Question. We parted and went on our way rejoicing and praising the Lord that another dear soul was on her way to Heaven! (Luke 15:10)

~ Hannah

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 9:08 pm and is filed under The Journey Continued. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.