Tap Dancing for Jesus & "All Roads Lead to the Same God" Hmmm?

 Back at Pasadena City College again – it was brilliant, partly because I was able to speak with a guy for like an hour, partly because the campus is just so rad looking, but mainly because Risch decided to tap dance as he was sharing the good word. Its true! Risch was, as always, up there first and was doing a great job just trying to explain to his listeners their need for the Jesus, but all of a sudden he lost track of where he was going and he kind of blanked. He then said “I told myself that if I lost track of where I was going, because I was nervous or whatever, I would tap dance up here” and sure enough our little buddy started clicking his heels like a pig-tailed princess on recital night. It was pretty amazing, but even more than amazing and comical - I think of what was really going on BEYOND the tap dancing and the laughter it brought me, indeed I saw my partner being funny, but what was really happening?  This is what was happening there beneath the dance session, it was a constant reality – this constant reality that it is hard to do what we are doing. It is difficult to get up in front of a crowd of people, its difficult to put yourself up there and make yourself a target, when you have only the best of intentions but people mock you, people get angry with you, and even those who should be on your side (other believers) are right along with the nay sayers just really giving you crap. To be sure, it reminds me of Jesus and his approach and his reception. But yeah, Risch danced not to be funny, not to be weird (although a secret motive was the crowd draw that would and did come in as a result), but was to remind himself that if he is a fool he is a fool for Christ, and he was just that. I love Risch, he is daily dieing to himself – its easy to do Christianity in a pew, or at the coffee shop with our other Christian friends, or reading a book, or abstaining from flipping off someone who cuts you off, or by saying “God bless you” to the bum you just gave your last 3 dollars to…, but it is very difficult to try to go out in the dark places of this country and be a light. It is much easier to just let the world happen to us, but we desire that Jesus, through us, happens to them, and in doing so we have to be fools, but so be it, a fool for Christ was Risch!

            After Risch went, I hopped on up, I botched it real bad. I had about 5 hecklers, and I don’t mind them but these ones were very distracting. So after I went and mumbled a probably incoherent Gospel message I stepped down and commenced to speak with a young man who insisted that there is no one truth, and that all roads lead to god, that all religions are the same, and so on. We spoke at length about the subjects, I felt good in some of the things I shred with him and I trust God will give use to them, but in some areas I didn’t have the best responses.  That’s all for now.

A Lesbian and A Muslim With Ears to Hear

 

Jesus spoke of the fact that only those that had “ears to hear” would really be able to truly hear the truths he was sharing, and today I got a slight glimpse of that. Our crew rolled out to Orange Coast College in the heart of Orange County, CA. so as to share truth and offer hope, but there weren’t that many ears passing by us and so it seemed that there would be not much visual fruit that we would be able to see. Risch went up first again today, only one person stopped and listened, after Risch had finished sharing I approached the sole pair of ears and we began a brilliant 15 min chat. The girl was raised in a Christian home, desired to be “good”, and at the moment has a girlfriend and is openly embracing her homosexuality. She desired to be “better” and said that she couldn’t help it as she was born that way. I commenced to first tell her that being gay is indeed a sin, but so is heterosexual premarital sex, so is over-eating, so is being grouchy to your step-sister – I wanted to make it clear that I did not have a vendetta again her specific sin but that sin is sin and it requires atonement. Without retracing our conversation, suffice it to say, she listened, “believed” it, desired to “walk in the light”, and so on, but she just ended with “I am beginning my spiritual journey and trying to figure things out and this was a good conversation.” No doubt I wanted her to give up her ways right there, but I have to remember that it is indeed a process sometimes in regards to hard ground being broken, making a bad soil a good one, then planting, then watering and re-watering existing seed. I do hope to see her again.

 

            A little while later a young lady walked up to Risch and said “I heard you talking about Jesus, can you tell me about Him?” This girl was a Muslim from Egypt and was engaged to a “Christian” American guy, she said that whenever she asked her fiancé what Christianity is all about that he just kind of changes the subject as he clearly doesn’t know what its all about. It really is sad that so many people, especially here in America, embrace Christianity just cause its what their parents did. I once heard it said that “What one generation believes, the next generation assumes, and then the following generation dismisses”, and it seems we are at an overlap of the final two. If you were to ask someone, “what is the gospel in two minutes?” I really don’t know how many people could tell you, and this is something that I especially would like to help show people. I don’t want people to just up their church attendance, or start being nicer to people, or to start listening to Christian music, but I want them to be embrace a new life, a new king, and a new kingdom that permeates every area of our short lives. Anyways back to the girl, Risch eventually called me over and she and I began to speak and I just told her the basic story of the people of Israel and then Jesus while kind of highlighting different areas between Christianity and Islam. She was kind, didn’t speak much, but was very interested and it was super legit. I think the most amazing thing was that she wanted a Bible and so we gave her one - this really excites me as it takes it out of my hands and my speaking and my eloquence and my teaching capabilities and puts it in the hands of the Spirit as she reads the Word – indeed she is in good and capable hands.