Today we had an OM meeting at café divine, A speaker from Algeria talked to us today, I learned so many random facts about Muslims and Algeria. Muslims are the easiest people in the world to evangelize to because they want to talk about God all night! Apparently St. Augustine is from Algeria too, which is pretty random. God is doing so dang much in Algeria, it’s absolutely astonishing, he just went on for an hour stating miracle after miracle. Wow God is doing so much!! He said just wait, in a couple years the North African Muslims are going to be evangelizing and revolutionizing Europe. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD. Anyway after this talk the same man from café Devine, the one who both Inhye and Mpumi were told to share their testimonies with started asking questions. God has been so abundantly at work in this mans life, it almost seems like God sent our whole group out here with this man in mind. Anyway his question was “well the evangelizing information you are sharing with us would be helpful if we were evangelizing to Muslims, but how do we share with the Catholics?” “are we supposed to evangelize to the Catholics and protestants the same way that you are evangelizing to the Muslims, by just telling them that they are wrong and that the only way they can find salvation is by having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?, are you sure that would work here?”
After he asked that question one of the OM workers just erupted on him and bursted out the entire gospel message, it was perfect because that was the one thing that we hadn’t yet got to share with him in full detail because he portrayed to us that he already knew the gist of it, which he did, but this information was so essential.. Right after the gospel message had been delivered another individual stood up and said it’s not about telling people that they’re wrong in their beliefs, it’s about getting right with God by having a personal relationship with God. It doesn’t matter if you go to church or mass, and it doesn’t matter what church you go to, what matters is whether you give your life to the lord entirely and turn from your past.
This man then explained briefly that he had gone to church since he was a boy, but he hadn’t really experienced God until he began to have a personal relationship with Christ, then Christ gave him the power to turn his life around. He said it wasn’t about the church he grew up in; it was about his relationship with God. Then man who originally asked the question said something along the lines of, well you grew up in a catholic church so of course your relationship with God wasn’t right. After this statement God told me that I absolutely had to share my story with this man. Because he had the perspective that if you go to the right church then you’re saved. I felt like I had to share with him that I grew up in the “right faith” that I grew up Presbyterian, but for a majority of my life I wasn’t saved. I got to share my testimony, my idiocy, my rebellion. As the spirit lead me I spoke, and as I spoke he became more and more heart struck. In awe he nodded, agreeing with everything the spirit inclined me to say. As I would stop momentarily to gather my thoughts, he would say “I’m in that position right now, how did you get freed from it, how did you get out of this lifestyle, how did you get out of these types of situations, is it possible to break free from this?” I got to lay out and explain each of the steps that God laid out for me, I got to share so many of the things that God taught me, and ultimately, with every answer I got to point this man to the Lord. As I talked we connected more and more, but every miracle which had freed me from this lifestyle of rebellion (and trust me it does take a miracle when you get into it as pathetically deep as I was) was a gift of God. God was gifting this man as we spoke with one another. This seriously seemed like a divine conversation in Café Devine: God had started it by pointing out how essential it is to come to him and give him our all and that when we make that commitment is when he flips our worlds upside down, not when we join the right church, God then inclined me to share my testimony and as I spoke it each word of my life story convicted this man and showed him how to be redeemed, God gave him the answers he needed, God showed him a way out of that entrapping, consuming lifestyle, and God showed him that even when you get deep into that darkness that there is always a way out, that there is nowhere to dark for his light to shine and that God will always meet us where we’re at. . Our God is so cool! Haha to think that he dragged me half way around the world just to share what he’s done in my life with this man, (his son), just so that this man could not only have hope, but so that he could see hope and understand that God wants to give him hope and freedom. Our God loves each one of us that much! Enough to drag someone who you can relate to half way around the world just to help you come to your senses.
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