I am unskilled in music but decided to try guitar lessons anyway. I would have quit the guitar lessons earlier, but the Lord was opening up many opportunities for the gospel with my teacher, Ben.* We spent a portion of each lesson discussing the gospel and spiritual things.
One day, the guitar lesson before me was running overtime. As the student came out, I was surprised I recognized him. I had witnessed to him downtown Cedar Rapids a week earlier at the St Patrick’s Day parade!
“Hey Cameron*! How are you doing?” I asked him, “Did you read the tract I gave you?”
A week before, when a friend and I had been at the St. Patrick’s Day parade handing out tracts, we approached a group of bored teenagers. Cameron and his friends listened politely, answered a few questions, and then I had asked for their names and thanked them for taking the time to listen. My friend and I had prayed for them by name, and I expected I would never see them again.
Yet here was Cameron again—just waiting for his mom to pick him up after his lesson. We had another five-minute conversation going over the gospel. After Cameron left, the guitar teacher, Ben, said, “Cameron needed to hear that. He is causing all sorts of problems at home.” This opened up another opportunity to talk about the gospel with my guitar teacher. During that lesson, I think we spent 5 minutes doing guitar and 40 minutes talking about what Jesus did on the cross.
Over the course of the guitar lessons, I had many gospel conversations with Ben. When his mother was on hospice, I gave him 10 copies of an evangelistic book, One Heartbeat Away by Mark Cahill and 10 copies of Afterlife by Warren Henderson to give to his family as they visited his mother. He was so thankful for the thoughtfulness and said his family appreciated the books. He only returned two books to me because he gave away the rest.
The Lord orchestrates conversations and opportunities in ways that we cannot imagine. He brings us in touch with those who need to hear the gospel.
While I grew up knowing the gospel and wanting to reach the lost, it wasn’t until I took a class on personal evangelism in my college years that I began effectively sharing my faith. That is one of the reasons I enjoy seeing people come to our Testify camps and get equipped to share Christ so that they also can put into action their desire to reach the lost.
If you have been considering coming to Testify, we encourage you to take the step and sign up! No previous witnessing experience is required.
Being together with a group of other believers who have a heart to share the gospel, and knowing you are not doing it alone, is truly an awesome experience! Testify is always such an amazing time of seeing the Lord open doors for gospel conversations, and seeing Christians grow in boldness and confidence.
“and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ” (Philemon 6).
*Names changed for the sake of privacy.