Week 3

Opening up Spiritual Dialogue

In tonight’s class we talked about opening up spiritual dialogue both on a FAITH visit and in our day to day actives. Because sharing the gospel should be everyday right? There is only two times we should preach the Word Paul says in 2 Tim 4:2, in season and out of season.

One of the things that I got out of the lesson is to listen intently to the one you are visiting. Being of the male race, I don’t listen very well. Just ask my wife. It is important to do more then hear someone, but to listen and understand what they are saying. One of the groups that went out tonight had a good example of this. Not where they didn’t listen, but where a previous church didn’t.

Another great point that I got from the lesson is to be real. We should really care for people, especially the lost. If we ponder hell, how can we not have a true passion for the lost? We should every day think what hell is like and who is going there. Matthew 13:47-50 says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In Mark 9:47,48, where my class studies will be soon, it describes hell as a place where the worm will never die and the fire is not quenched. Who do we know that is not saved? Should we not warn people and tell them that they too can have eternal life?

Our Visit

My team visited a church member. We wanted to introduce ourselves and invite her to our class. It was a great visit. Because we care for the lost (see above), we asked what she understood it took for a person to go to heaven. From her answer we know she was saved. No need to share the gospel, but we did invite her to Sunday school and look forward to her joining our group.

After this visit we went a few houses down and visited her parents. We stopped by just to introduce ourselves, because I am terrible with names and faces and couldn’t place them. It was a great visit there too. We told them about another class that would be a great fit for them.

Prayer Request

Pray for Adam’s family. This is the young man that was killed in the automobile accident this Sunday. Pray for our country and our economy. Pray for our age group, it seems we have been hit very hard this year sickness, surgeries, work related issues. You name it and it seems it has happed to us this year.

Week 2

Testimony Time

It’s week 2 of FAITH. You may be wondering where week one went. Even though this is the second week it is the first time for us to go out visiting. The first week was an introduction and some testimony work. We are doing it a little different this go around. Only the learners, first timers, are required to go to class. All the rest come in just for visitations. Even though it is not my first go time, I can’t pass up the food. They are the only ones to get a meal….oh the teaching good too and you can always pick up something more each time through.

The last couple weeks we have been working on our Sunday school and evangelistic testimonies. If you are saved and go to a Sunday school class you will already have one, but it always good to put it on paper. This gets you thinking about it and helps you in how to share with others.

We also have a specific way we share them. On our Sunday school testimony, we list some true statements about our class. We then follow it up with a benefit we gained about that statement. For example here is mine; “I love my class and the people in it. We just formed a new class because we were growing so large, but we still feel like one big, close group with the connections in the other class. All of them are people around my age. We have the same life situations and just people that I can have fun with both inside and outside of class. They are there when you need them. Just recently we had a death in the family. Our class stepped in and was there for us emotionally and physically too. We had meals brought to us for over a week. That was just one thing we didn’t have to worry about.”

The evangelistic testimony is real similar. We break it down the three parts: pre-conversion experience, conversation statement, and benefits of conversion. The pre-conversion experience is a statement about before we were saved and about our life. Then we have the conversion statement which is just “Then I had a life-changing experience”. The last part, the benefits, describes how things are different since that change. The example of mine would be: “When I was just starting my family, it often worried me that if I died, what would happen to my family. Not only that that, but I feared death and what would happen to me. Then I had a life-changing experience. Since then when troubles arise I have peace. For example with the down turn in the economy and people losing their jobs, I still have confidence that God will take care of us and more importantly I no longer fear death.

We were also instructed to start memorizing the outline through “I”. To learn more about the outline see the post from last year:
“F” http://faithatvictory.blogspot.com/2008/03/week-4.html
“A” http://faithatvictory.blogspot.com/2008/03/week-5.html
“I” I don’t have a post for “I”, I must have been gone.

Our Visit

Our visit was with some members of our Sunday school class. It was a family that has been out due to medical issues. We just wanted to drop by and see how they were going and if we could help in any way. We had a good visit. I got to practice our gospel presentation, both to show the learners on the team and also to expose our class mates we were visiting to what we actually do in FAITH. We had a great visit and got to know them a little better. I may even have a new team member to fill the empty spot. One of the class members we were visiting said she has been thinking about joining FAITH and will pray about filling that spot that we have. We prayed with them before we left and got back to church about 30 minuets late, but it was worth it. Great visit!

Prayer Request

There has been a lot of sickness going around, pray that God will keep everyone well so we can enjoy the fellowship of all our class members. Inside and outside our class we have friends that are fighting long term illnesses. Pray that God will heal them. Pray for my new class that God will give me the wisdom and guidance to lead it in a way that will honor and glorify Him. Pray for baby Emma as she is recovering from RSV. Pray for our possible new FAITH member, that if this is the right time to join, God will give her the strength.