The Egg Hunt and the unexpected...

Today was our annual Easter Egg Hunt at church.  It was such fun: baby sheep and their mommy, as well as little bunnies to pet, a craft, food, and of course eggs to hunt. 

Our devotional time is the most important because of the opportunity it provides to share the gospel with families who wouldn't otherwise come to church. This year our lesson focused around how baby animals are born to become like their parents.  Their ears listen for their parents calling them, their eyes see danger and their feet carry them away from danger. 

I then used this baby in my ever-growing tummy to help make a point:  my child is becoming more like me as it grows, but like me, it will be born with sin.  I used passages of scripture like Romans 5:19 to tell the children that we're all born of Adam, making us all sinners.   However, God didn't leave us in our sin.  Instead, He sent Jesus Christ to rescue us!  He is the only one who was perfectly obedient to His Father, therefore He is the only One who can take away sin.  

We then looked at the life of Christ, a baby who grew to be like His Father.  His ears heard the cries of the blind men alongside of the road; He healed them, and they followed Him.  His eyes saw danger, but He did not turn the other direction.  Instead, "He set His face for Jerusalem."  He knew what awaited, yet He willingly went.  When He arrived in Jerusalem, His feet carried Him to Calvary instead of running from certain death.  He did that for you and me!

"For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous."  Romans 5:19

You don't have to live in sin any longer.  By repenting, turning from sin and following Christ, you can be born-again!   If you are a Christian, your life should be lived to grow to be more like your Father: to hear the needs of others and serve them and follow God by obeying Him and sharing the good news of Jesus rising from the dead to save us! 

The egg hunt, food, and fellowship followed.

Later that evening, back at home, we decided to head to Chattanooga.  I had a return to make and had a couple errands to run.  As soon as we took off down the road, it down-poured.  About 15 min. into the drive we came upon a car on the shoulder of I-75 and two people walking ahead.  Ken and I kind of looked at each other and he pulled over.  To make a long story shorter, we gave them a ride. They were teenage boys, looking for their friend.  They used our cel phone and made plans to meet at the gas station.  While waiting, we found out this friend was also walking and they had no real plan of how to get their car fixed, or to get to their destination (downtown Chattanooga). 

 Within 10 min. the third friend showed up, walking in the rain, and got into the van with us.  We drove them downtown and since the rain was so loud, Ken and I could talk without them hearing us.  We felt led to share the gospel with them when we arrived at their drop-off.   We kind of laughed and shook our heads at these clueless boys from Dalton as they called a friend to meet them downtown.

Ken stopped the van in a parking lot.  "Before you leave, can we talk to you for just a few minutes?"  They agreed and listened attentively as we told them that there are no coincidences.  We thought we were going shopping today, but God had it planned for us to share something with you.  We asked if they believed the Bible to be true.  "Yes," said two, "Pretty much," said the third.  (It's always easier to proceed if you know the answer to that question I've learned). 

Here's a summary of the rest of the conversation:
"What would have happened if your car didn't just die along-side the road?  What if you were killed?  Where would you go- heaven or hell?"  They all just looked at us and said they had never really thought about it, but maybe heaven.  We shared how God is just and holy and how James 2:10 says that breaking 1 rule of God's is breaking all rules.  "If you haven't repented from your sin, you would be in hell.   He's using today to warn you of your sin and to repent, to be His child."  We explained what Easter really was about. " I hope God is softening your heart to hear and receive this.  It's up to you now, you have the opportunity to respond to what you've heard."  They sat quiet with eyes focused on us.  After a while I think we said, "Thank you for listening."  They thanked us and we handed each of them a Bible tract on the "10 reasons Christ Came to Die" as they crawled out of our van.

We hoped they would have responded immediately by turning their hearts to the Lord, but that wasn't how it ended.  Please pray for them, that they wrestle with their sin and guilt until it is made right with God.

Last night, I was able to attend "Secret Church" a 6 hour event (which ended up being almost 7) to study Heaven and Hell and what is to come.  I learned how Christ spoke more about hell than anyone and that we shouldn't apologize for sharing the truth of it with others.  David Platt said, "How much do you have to hate someone, to sit in the cubical at work next to them, and never tell them about Christ."  I needed to hear that. So often I neglect to include the reality of hell and the punishment it brings eternally.  I think it's an inward struggle for me....I want to encourage others and build them up, but I also know that I need to tell them the Truth- the gospel.  I can't be a people pleaser, I must be a God- pleaser.

An unexpected conversation with a Cherokee man

My husband parked the mini-van and we unloaded the kids, bundling them up and being careful to avoid the puddles that had accumulated over-night.  This was our first visit to the Audubon Society and today offered many extra events because it was a fundraiser.  Our first stop made the top of the list for the kids: petting an owl and standing next to a falcon. 

Because the Audubon Society is on the Trail of Tears, many of the vendors were Native Americans.  I walked through a couple pottery booths while my husband took the kids to the restroom.   A tent-covered booth labeled, “Iroquois jewelry and Wampum,” (or something to that effect)  caught my eye because we’ll soon be studying Native American history in our homeschool curriculum.

The woman behind the counter greeted me and soon we were making small talk.  She immigrated from Germany and married a Cherokee man.  I told her that I would be leaving America in the coming months (God-willing) for Thailand and her eyes widened, “Thailand, why?!”  “We’ll be telling people about Jesus Christ, that because of our sin we need Him as Savior.”  Those weren’t the words I typically used to explain our move, but the Lord must have prompted me to say it that way.  She didn’t have much more to say, but moments later directed my attention to  a man standing at the entrance to the booth. “You want to talk about sin, you should talk to him.”  I think it caught us both off-guard because with confusion we both asked, “What?” 

“You have a question about sin,” she directed him.  The Native American man (her husband) said, “Oh sin, yes.  What sin will send me to hell?”  Honestly, I couldn’t believe God opened this door!  I was excited, yet focused on answering the question, “Any sin.”  He clarified, “But what sin?  Give me an example.”  I rattled off a few, from lying to cheating.  He didn’t believe in sin, and said he had none.  When I pressed him on the issue, he said that it wasn’t sin, just human nature.  He casually said that he was God.  I said very calmly, “You can’t be.  You have sin, and you can’t take mine away.  You are no different than me.”

My husband showed up at about this time and patiently stayed close by with the kids, while I shared the gospel with this man.  He grew up in church but said he had no example to follow, just an old man- a drunk that sat under a tree. “Do you know what I mean?” he asked.  “I had not one person to look to as an example.”  “Oh, yes I do.  You saw people who say they are Christians but are really just hypocrites.”  I don’t think he expected that answer, but he revisited that excuse more than once, “I have no one to follow, no example.” 

I prayed in my head, asking God to give me scripture and words to speak.  He did.  “You have an example, just like I do: Jesus.  People will always fail, because they have sin.  If you watch my life, I will sin and disappoint you.  The conversation continued like a country road, winding away, and then coming back.  I told him we all have sin, and need someone without sin as our example and that is why we have Christ!  He was without excuse.

If you have any background knowledge you know that Native Americans are very “atuned’ to nature.  I asked who his creator was.  His only response was “the grandfather.”  He had no explanation for how life began, or an afterlife.  I spoke, “Look at creation; it testifies that there must be a God who created it.  Yet, all of this beauty will be destroyed.  My God is so loving that He warned us, through the Bible.  Isn’t that what a loving God would do?  Tell you?”  I shared how provided a solution to sin through Christ.

He listened and guided me to a wall of t-shirts for sale with statements of his faith across the back of them.  There were four and he led me to the first, asking me to read it.  We discussed the philosophy behind this shirt and the next.  I agreed that we should use only from nature what we need, but most of the other “spiritual” content was faulted.  T-shirt number three brought blunt truth from my lips.  To sum up the quote on this shirt: we are born innocent, people hurt us and we are not responsible for the kind of people it made us.  I finished reading it, “Well, that is a lie.  No one is born innocent, I have kids, I know.”  He proceeded to tell me that my children’s short-comings were a result of my thoughts and actions when I carried them in pregnancy.  I honestly took no offense to this and simply said, “My children were born of Adam, they are sinners.  They need a new-birth in Christ, one to take away their sin.”

“I want to know something,” he asked, “What will you think about me when you walk away from here?”  I looked into his face and spoke from the heart with tears forming in my eyes, “I want to cry, because I want you to know my God.”  I grabbed his arm and tugged his sleeve, “I want to pull you to Him and for you follow Him, but you won’t.”    

He smiled and laughed, “I just want you to accept me as I am.”  I said, “If I loved you, I wouldn’t.  If I saw a friend walking down the wrong road, I would tell them, because I loved them.  He smiled and laughed hard, not in a demeaning way, I honestly think I amused him. I continued, “If I had no love for you, I would have walked away.  I wouldn’t continue talking to you, would I?”  “No, you wouldn’t,” he agreed. 

I finished discussing the forth shirt with him and our conversation came to an end.  I asked for his business card and as his wife handed it to me, he ended, “I think we will be good friends.  My door is always open to people who want hear the things I teach.”  Oh, if only the door to his heart was open to hear words of Truth!  I said, “I will be praying that you will read your Bible and follow Christ.”

Today was planned out, we did everything on our list, yet that one encounter changed my entire day.  I realize how the Lord has used the past two weeks to prepare me for this conversation and I certainly didn’t see it coming.  I was using the content from the Sunday sermons to teach to our kids during lunch and was encouraged our son’s response to it, but God also used 10 days of lunch conversations and Bible study to equip me!

 Reflecting on the day, I could be discouraged that the man didn’t profess any desire to seek Christ, but  I know that is the work of the Holy Spirit.  It wasn’t until we drove home and I shared the conversation with Ken, that I realized something.   The wife of the Native American man heard the whole conversation…and she was the one who initiated it!  Perhaps the Lord was speaking to her…I don’t know…

I have a confession: this morning we woke early to pass out Easter service invitations to a subdivision near our church.  The last time we went door to door like this we asked people about their beliefs and shared the gospel with them.  It was hard, out of my comfort zone, and involved weeks of intentional preparation by studying Scripture and being prepared to give an answer.  I said to myself this morning, “I am so glad I don’t have to do that today, I feel so unprepared.”  I’m thankful, that in spite of my sinful attitude, neglecting the call to always be ready to give an answer, God still used me.