Our Inaugural Family “Gospel Praise Night” at the Local Mall
January 24th, 2008 at 10:45 pm (Preaching)
Praise the Lord for a wonderful Saturday night (Jan 12th) that Grace, Stephen and I had in the Lord. On Friday evening as our little family was having Bible Time, I had the children pretty much stay quiet as I preached on 2 Timothy 1:8 “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God.” Usually I let them ask questions while I’m teaching so they can learn more, but this time I thought they needed to practice remaining quiet. Well immediately afterwards Grace told me that she had so many questions. In the teaching, I was mainly stressing that we should not be ashamed of the gospel and that we should look forward to the blessing of suffering persecution for Jesus’ sake. A little later, Grace came to me out of the blue and asked, “Can we go preach the gospel tomorrow!?” To which, I ecstatically replied, “Of course!” So we thought about where we could go and I figured the mall might be good since it was so cold out. It was such a blessing to see that Grace was really listening to the message and the Lord had put it on her heart to apply it to her life.
Turns out that Stephen was sick and getting sicker on Saturday. But all day long they were so excited to go preach the gospel. So after their naps, really only Grace was well enough to go, but I couldn’t say no to the little guy, he was so revved up to share the gospel with folks. So Christy and Josiah and Faith stayed home sick and the two bigger ones went with me to the mall. First off, as a treat, we ate dinner at the mall. Then they had a double decker carousel, so to make sure they had a good experience with sharing the gospel, I let them go on that as well. Then it was off to a mall entrance where we could setup camp and hand out gospel tracts.
We started handing out million dollar bills, “big money” tracts, and the cartoon tracts. We wished that we had brought some Spanish tracts, but we left them in the other car. For the first hour and a half, we basically just gave out the gospel tracts. The vast majority of folks were happy to receive them. At one point Stephen gave a Spanish New Testament to a hispanic lady. Also, Stephen and Grace both brought a personal gift from home to give to some children. Stephen gave a t-shirt to a little boy as I handed the rest of the family, including the father, gospel tracts. They were kind of surprised, but happy to receive the t-shirt. Later on Grace gave a purse to a little Indian girl and the parents were totally shocked. I gave them some cartoon tracts, but they pretty much were in shock as they walked away.
So finally, it was almost 8pm and I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get into any real meaningful conversations. I told the children that we would leave at 8 and stop by McDonalds to get some ice cream. We grabbed my backpack and started to go, but Stephen asked to visit the tuxedo rental shop one more time (we had spent a few minutes in there early on, but I had to leave my conversation with the counter girl because mall security was eyeing my backpack that I had left out in the open mall area). So we went into the tux store and Stephen tried on a jacket. I got to talking with the college girl who was working there named Sarah and it turns out she was Catholic. I shared the gospel with her for about 45 minutes and it was just a great time! You could see the Lord turning on the light bulb as I explained to her justification and substitution, etc. Multiple times she would say something like, “That makes so much sense. I never thought of it like that.” etc. At one point she said that she had gone to her priest with questions about God and the Bible, but he just told her what the church teaches and that she had to believe that. During our conversation, I had Grace and Stephen recite some relevant Bible verses for Miss Sarah, to which Sarah was most happy to hear and receive. It was so neat to share the gospel as a family, as a team, to an individual whom clearly God was working on (for example she is a science major, yet had real doubts about evolution).
Ultimately I left her with a ton of materials which she eagerly accepted. I think about a dozen AiG booklets, a Way of the Master DVD, a book on Roman Catholicism and a slew of gospel tracts. She even mentioned that just that day she told her boyfriend that she wished she had someone to talk with about her spiritual questions. Praise God for his orchestrating our meeting. It was so neat to think that God used Grace as the one who initiated going out that night to preach the gospel, then God used Stephen as the one who prompted us to go back into that tux store one last time. God was working it all out, the timing of it all and preparing Sarah’s heart for who knows how long.
As we left, I told Sarah we’d come back in a couple weeks with more materials. Please pray for her as she gets through the gospel resources. On the way home (after ice cream), we were just rejoicing greatly and praising the Lord for our time. Stephen blurted out, “We should call this a ‘praise night!’” to which I heartily agreed since we were praising the Lord so much! The next day he amended his phrase with ‘gospel’. “Since we preached the gospel, we should call it a ‘gospel praise night.’” He was right again! 
So praise the Lord for His work in my children and in Sarah. Please pray for all the folks that received some portion of God’s truth that night.
This Saturday, we plan on going outside the building of a “Christian” rock concert and handing out gospel tracts. Pray that God would lead us once again to prepared hearts and that He would give us boldness and sensitivity to preach the gospel with His power.
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Mom said,
January 26, 2008 at 3:00 pm
This is such a Praise to God that I’m almost crying of Joy!!!! Gospel Praise Night!! Halleluia!!! Just know I’ll be praying for the entire family this evening as God anoints you to share His vital message; The Truth of His Gospel!
Of course, I’ll be praying now for Sarah too as the Holy Spirit continues to work in her heart to make a final surrender to God as her Lord & Savior.