Spreading the News

First the bad news: I still don't have a job. That's pretty much all I can say about that. At every turn it seems that I am being thwarted in my searching. All my leads are going cold. It is an entirely frustrating process. Through all of it, I've had to hold on to the promise that God has something planned for me. And it's hard, because I keep looking to God to show up and He's not showing up in the ways that I think he should turn up.

Still, I know I'm supposed to be here. After all, the overflow of support that I got from all of you proves to me that this is where God wants me. And perhaps the reason that I have not gotten a job as of yet is the overabundance of funds that I have been given. I have more than enough support to cover my expenses for the summer, while others are in deep need of a job to pay for their time here in the city. And so maybe my purpose here is not to work, but to engage the people and students of Chicago in spiritual conversations.

That's actually what I ended up doing today. I went out with Steve Ng and a few other leaders and students to a beach north of Michigan Avenue to share with the people there. This was actually my first time going out to share the gospel so it was a pretty intense experience. Steve and I got to talk to two guys while we were out. We didn't get a good chance to share the gospel with that guy, but we did talk a bit about faith and Christianity.

The second guy we talked to was all over the place. His name was Marjan and he called himself an atheist, but then made a comment that we all came from God. But then he said God didn't need us because He's God. And then he claimed that God was deep inside every one of our cells and that we all innately had God in us. Finally he decided that God didn't exist and that everything in the Bible could be explained by aliens. It was so crazy and really off-putting that I couldn't get a word in about Christ. The guy just really couldn't make up his mind. It made me sad because I really wanted him to see the truth of God and Christ, but he really didn't want anything to do with either of them.

After we talked to that guy, Steve and I met up with the rest of the group and switched up our teams. I went back out with Collin, one of the other leaders, who insisted that I take the lead on sharing. I was honestly really nervous because I had never really shared before and the first two guys I had talked hadn't really inspired my confidence. But I went out again. Collin and I walked around for a while and talked about why I was worried about sharing. He eventually convinced me that I could do it through God's strength.

We didn't have a lot of time left by the time I got my confidence up, but we were able to talk to this really cool guy named Chandler. He wasn't actually from Chicago, but was in the city for vacation or work or something.We talked a lot about his life, what his spiritual background, what he believed about God. He actually said he believed that Jesus was the Son of God. It just seemed to us that he had been burned by a lot of people in his past. He kept telling us that we would come to realize a lot of things as we got older and that people changed a lot over time. I was actually able to share a bit of my testimony and how God gave me hope for a future through the sacrifice of his Son. He was really cool and Colin and I could tell that he was definitely searching for something good in the world. Colin suggested he read "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel as a starting place, which Chandler seemed pretty enthusiastic about. I think if he actually reads the book, he'll find his way back to God.

I'd say today was a good experience with sharing. I got to see the good, the bad, and the neutral responses to the message of God. Hopefully my experiences in the future will be just as varied and exciting. And I hope I get to see the word of God move among the people of Chicago.