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.

Week 2

This is week 2 and I’m very excited about FAITH. During class time we talked about Roman Catholicism and how it is different then what the book calls “Protestant Christianity”. One of the biggest differences is how the bible is viewed. We believe in sola scriptura-“Scripture alone.” That the bible is all that we need (see 2 Tim 3:16). In the Catholic Church, they give equal weight to Scripture and traditions. They have what is called “Sacred Traditions”. The bishops have this special insight that is passed on from the apostles and then down from Bishop to Bishop. They also believe that the Pope is infallible when he speaks for the Church.

The way that they view the Bible is also very different. They see the bible as a “churched-based book.” They believe that the Church observed things and then wrote them down in a book. We believe again that the Bible is the inspired word of God.

Because of how they view the Bible and give so much weight on the traditions of men (Mark 7), it is easy for them to move away from the truth. I’m not going to go through every difference but just pull a few of the biggest ones out.

We are saved by faith (Eph. 2;8,9). Catholics believe that you are saved by faith plus works. That is it a life long process. You are baptized as a baby to wash away you original sin but your mortal and venial (easily forgiven) sins need to be confessed to a priest and taken care of by penance. Penance simply means to make amends for those sins. Penance can be anything from repeating by saying certain prayers to fasting.

Because they still can’t do enough in this short lifetime to make it to heaven, Catholics believe that you must go to Purgatory a special place to be cleansed of your sins and made fit for heaven.

There have been many tries to unit the Catholic Church with “Protestants”, but without any success. They keep trying to find some common ground that both sides agree on, but what should be done is just start at the beginning. Let’s see what scripture has to says. No agreement will ever be made when the rules keep being changed. If the Bishops and Pope hold equal weight to the Bible, then it will be easy to get off track. While looking at the different doctrines of the Catholic Church, you’ll see doctrines or rules referenced not by a scripture in the bible but a pope and a year. Take this example. We believe that Jesus is the only way to God. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6). Catholics believe by the words of Pope Leo XIII in 1891: “[A]s no man goeth to the Father but by the Son, so no man goeth to Christ but by His mother.” That was added in 1891 and holds equal weight with the bible.

This is why we must always hold the scripture as Gods holy inspired word.

Our visit
We went door knocking tonight. We only made it to two house because each of them were fairly long visits. The first one was a couple that attended St. Luke’s. The wife gave a “Faith” answer to the key question on how a person gets to heaven. We had a good discussion about children and other ministries in our two churches. We prayed with them before leaving

It was getting dark and the neighbor’s house was dark so we skipped that one and went to the next house. It was a young woman and her daughter. The daughter attended Victory Baptist School and the Church in the past. I asked her the Key question and she gave a works answer, “live like Christ”. Before we could continue on with the gospel, she took over the conversation. She had some very informative things to say on her view of how the Church should to minister to a changing world of divorce families, drug use, and many societal problems. Josh talked about our Sunday school class and how it is not the typical “preach to you” style and that we talk about these everyday issues.

We left there late as usually for my team and we needed to find someone to give the bible to. We saw a fire truck at Taco Bell and figured these people would be perfect, but the firemen were inside and we didn’t have time for them to come out. We drove to Fitness 10 and there were two guys in the parking lot talking. Josh gave them each a bible and they said they were just talking about Church. By the way, Sherri ending up giving her bible to the firemen later as her team came in.

Prayer Request
Pray that God will show each of us opportunities to share Christ. Pray for all our ministries at the Church, our school and our missionaries.