29 September, 2009

A Double Blessing - Bragging on God

I want to share with you something that happened this week and in so doing give praise and honor and glory to our awesome God.

Each Saturday for the past six months I have been teaching a Discipleship II class at the church. We also have the classes for the new School for Pastors and Leaders on Saturday, so there are a lot of people there at the same time.

This past Saturday, after finishing with the class at around 6:30 in the evening, I was packing up my things to go when a young man walked into the classroom and asked if he could talk with me. This young man had recently started coming to the church and in addition to attending the services had gone on a youth activity to the water park on the 15th of September (Independence Day here in El Salvador).

While I had had the chance to say hi to him a few times, we hadn't really spoken much since he had been coming. I was a little surprised that he had singled me out to talk to, but of course agreed to speak with him.

We sat down and he immediately began to tell me his story. A mother who had moved to the United States and left he and his siblings behind. A hard life doing the things that young men often do without a stable home, and without Christ. Through his tears he explained to me that he didn't want that old life anymore and wanted to follow God instead.

I took some time to explain the gospel to him from Romans, and we talked about what it means to repent from your sins. He expressed that he wanted to receive the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, and so he cried out to God to save him.

It is always amazing to see the visible change in a person's countenance when they truly give their heart to the Lord. Praise God for another sinner that has come to repentance!

This young man's name is Eusebio (sounds like A-oo-say-be-O) and his is 22 years old. He is excited to begin the process of learning to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Please pray for this new believer that he will learn to walk with the Lord and know Him.

Now for the REALLY incredible part.

I was talking with one of my good friends today in Kansas City. He is Costa Rican and is faithful to pray for us and many other missionaries every day. He asked me how things were going and I told him the same story that I just shared with you. He paused for a moment and then asked again, "What day did you say that happened?". I told him again that it happened on Saturday and he could hardly believe it.

He then read to me from his prayer journal what he had written and been praying for this past Saturday. In summary, he had been praying specifically that each missionary on his list would have the opportunity to personally share the gospel with someone and see them come to put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We rejoiced together and gave God the glory for this young man and for the prayer God allowed us to see so powerfully answered.

Let us be faithful to pray. Let us be faithful to pray specifically.

Sometimes God will give us the tremendous blessing of finding out how the prayer was answered now, and sometimes we will not know until we are with the Lord, but let us be faithful to lift each other up in prayer.

To God be the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

28 September, 2009

What do you believe in?

I thought this was a hilarious video, but it made me think about how many Christians suffer from IDS when it comes to the truth of God's Word. Enjoy.

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