CODE BLUE RALLY

Last night our family drove to Des Moines with a few friends from church to attend the first ever Code Blue Rally. This was the first of 8 rallies that World View Weekend is putting on in the next 2 months across the country. There is no cost and it is just one single evening. The speakers (all live) were Mark Cahill, David Barton, Brannon Howse, and Candace Cameron-Bure’. My family thought it was excellent and we’d strongly recommend it- especially for parents and teens.

Afterwards, we stopped at McDonalds. As Stephen was waiting through the long line, I gave a little “10 Commandments Coin” to an older man and struck up a conversation. (It’s hard to listen to Mark Cahill speak without finding someone to witness to afterward 🙂 ) This man was a Catholic and he was very friendly and eager to talk. During the course of our conversation I asked him, “If you died tonight and stood before God and he asked you why he should let you into Heaven what would you say?” He explained that he thinks you get to Heaven by being a good person and keeping the 10 commandments. So I asked him if he has kept the 10 commandments. He hesitated. “Well….I guess…I haven’t kept all of them.”

I asked, “So then will God just ‘let you off the hook’? Doesn’t He have to be just and punish?”

He didn’t have a good answer. He didn’t seem offended though, so I continued. “Really what you just said is that you aren’t sure if you are going to Heaven or not, right?”

He tried to explain to me that it was natural for someone to be “imperfect”, etc… but Sarah had now joined the conversation and replied, “Yes, it may be ‘natural’ but that doesn’t mean it is acceptable to God.”

Candace, in her talk that night, had used a good illustration of how we look when we compare ourselves to God’s law, so I explained it to our new friend. It goes like this. “If you see a sheep grazing on the green grass you think ‘how nice and white the sheep looks against the green grass’. But then it begins to snow and you think ‘how dirty the sheep looks against the white snow'” So it is when we compare ourselves with God’s moral law—the 10 Commandments—instead of comparing ourselves with the people around us. We see how dirty we really are in God’s sight.

I was a little frustrated that this man didn’t take me more seriously. I’m hoping he really was listening to me on the inside, and that he’ll go home, think about our talk and open his Bible. Who knows? Maybe God knew a teenage girl would be the sort of person he would be most receptive to.

I was glad that I had said “hi” and start talking. It wasn’t that hard, and I could tell he appreciated it so much. He said, “Most people your age aren’t interested in talking about stuff like this”. He even insisted on buying Sarah and me ice cream before we left. Please pray for Richard.