One of the first highlights was speaking with Bob (all names of people not in our group changed). He knew what was right, wanted to do what was right, but he had never experienced salvation and thus was struggling to sanctify his life and failing. He thus came to the point where he thought sanctification was impossible for him and basically had given up on Christianity. Bob was a good example of where many, many people today are at. They know the basics of the plan of salvation, but they don’t know the power that exists in Christ to live a holy life. They thus (correctly) view nominal Christians as hypocrites and view the commandments as unattainable burdens.
Another highlight was the results of our prayer and fasting. We prayed and prayed and prayed that God would bring seeking people to us while in York. We prayed earnestly that the people would see Jesus shining from our faces and in our eyes. We prayed that we would be given the words to say and those words would pierce their very soul. We prayed that the Holy Spirit would prepare and convict the people we were going to come into contact with. We prayed that the forces of evil would be defeated, that the Holy Spirit would put a hedge of protection around us, that’s Satan’s traps would be frustrated, and that the power of Jesus’ blood would prevail.
All of these things and more happened! When we pulled up in York, we stepped out of the car and took our stuff inside. Within 5 minutes of arriving, a man, named Bill, sitting in a car waved Dorothy over and said to her, “Save me.” She thought at first he was being sarcastic or joking. He said again, “Save me.” When Dorothy saw the tears in his eyes, she knew he was serious.
He was sitting in the passenger’s seat of the car. Dorothy walked around and knelt by the window and began to talk to him. Jen suggested I go over and join them. I did. I knelt (kneeling was the only practical way to comfortably talk to him face to face) beside Dorothy.
He poured out a desperate tale of drugs, alcohol, addiction, sin, being shot, being run over by a car purposefully (which then circled the block and tried to run over him again), and being attacked by gangs. He was terrified that he was going to die, because he knew where he was going. However, he also wanted to commit suicide because he just wanted it all to end. His loathed his lack of inner peace. He had an acute sense of his lack of peace with God. He said several times, “I can see by looking at your faces that you have the peace of God in you! I can see Jesus in your faces! I want that peace.”
Dorothy and I, with our Bibles in our hands, laid out the basic plan of salvation. During this time, his friend Dan came back. (Dan purported to be a Christian, but I could tell he wasn’t saved because he advocated a simple prayer of salvation along with sinning more that grace may abound and ignoring any relationship with Jesus. Dan sat in the driver’s seat making unhelpful comments.) He was incredulous that a simple belief in Jesus would save him even though we and Dan insisted upon it. He was certain that there was a path one had to walk to be saved. In a way he was correct; if he was saved by having faith in Christ, he would naturally walk the path of obedience to Christ. But he couldn’t understand (at first) that it wasn’t the good things he did that saved him, but rather accepting and believing in the simple gift of salvation.
Bill kept expressing amazement that he hadn’t been killed or committed suicide yet and Dan kept telling him that God has a plan for his life and wants to save him and that God kept him from getting killed. What Dan was saying got a big boost by the next paragraph’s events.
He said, “I am all broken up inside, man.” When I told him that the Bible (Psalm 34:18 and 51:17) uses those very words to describe the point that we need to come to before salvation, he was amazed and in awe. When we told him that we had been praying and fasting (for the past two weeks) that God would bring searching and open people into our path, Dan told us that they normally didn’t come to this street to buy drugs (”I’ll be honest with ya, man, we’re here to buy drugs.”), but as they were driving by, something prodded him to turn down Poplar St. Both of them were in awe over the hand of God so clearly at work. It was undoubtedly a divine appointment.
He also couldn’t believe that God could forgive a serial killer/multiple murderer like the Amish school shooter or the DC Sniper. We explained to him Romans 6:23, James 2:10, and Galatians 3:10, but it was still hard for him to understand. So we explained the holiness of God and how his absolute purity demanded no sin in his presence. We explained how that no sin, no matter how small, would violate that holiness. So it didn’t matter the size of the sin; all sin was a violation of God’s holiness. He began to understand that aspect, but he still couldn’t bring himself to believe it could be real for him.
He had known nothing but emptiness, vicious cycles, drugs, pain, etc–sin and its effects–all his life. He had tried to be a Christian before, but his horrible misunderstanding of salvation made so that when he tried to be a Christian, he wasn’t saved. This made him doubt. He had tried to change on his own and through a impotent “Christianity”, but he had failed. Thus the faith part was very difficult for him.
Through this all Jen and Brianna were standing right up the street, behind the car, with their arms around each other praying and praying—for removal of spiritual blindness, for the right words for Dorothy and I to speak, for the defeat of the evil spirit world warring against the men, for the making of strongholds ineffectual, etc.
He saw the peace on our faces and wanted that peace, but he didn’t really quite believe it at the heart level. He asked us about the Amish school shootings, “How can those Amish forgive the man that shot their kids?” I said to him softly, “That is the power of the love of God; that is the forgiveness He brings. When we realize how much Jesus forgave us, we are happy to forgive others. That’s some of the power in the love of Jesus! They had the amazing power to forgive against all natural human tendencies through Jesus’ power!”
He had many other questions that we answered with Scripture. He was amazed, “No one ever told me this before! I tried to read the Scripture, but it never made any sense to me.” I explained how that there’s a verse in the Scripture that says something to the effect that the Scriptures are “muddy” to those who are not Christians. Dorothy clarified and quoted the verse (2 Cor. 3:14-16) properly as “veiled” instead of “muddy”. He murmured quietly once more, almost more to himself than us, “No one ever told me.” Dan chimed in in his one and only volume (loud) and said, “These guys know what they’re talking about. They know the Bible. You should listen to them.”
Bill continued to struggle, cry, and wonder how he could be saved, so I prayed for him aloud, rebuking the forces of darkness, praying that he would clearly understand, and that God would give him faith. Dorothy then told him to simply tell Jesus what he was feeling and wanting. (We gave him no “sinners prayer” template which only reinforces the false “say these liturgical words and you’re saved” mentality) He prayed a sobbing, heartbroken prayer, just crying out to Jesus to give him faith and to help him and to save him, but he apparently didn’t have a belief in his heart, because I asked him if felt peace and the presence of God after that, but he said he didn’t. Salvation is not something that can slip by without one realizing it happened.
I have no doubt that God has plans for Bill (and Dan, but especially Bill) in the future. It was, of course, disappointing to not lead Bill to the Lord, but I have confidence that God will bring someone else into his life that will. God didn’t do all that work for nothing. Perhaps he will lead through the little green booklets we gave them entitled “How to Know God” which are filled with Scriptures that talk about knowing God.
On the lighter side, it must have presented an amusing picture: Bill, a white guy, holding a beer in his hand, with a long ponytail and unshaven face, sitting in the passenger seat of an idling car. Next to him sat a big, tall black guy, Dan, who just returned from trying the street’s drug dealer and coming up empty. Kneeling at the passenger’s window were a clean cut young man of 18 and a 28 year old lady with a Beachy covering. Right up the street were two young ladies, Jen and Brianna, with their arms around each other praying. (All the ladies were, of course, wearing dresses, which is somewhat unusual for the slums of York.) What an interesting sight we must have presented to passers-by!
I haven’t learned anything really profound or earth-shattering from York. The most strategic-style re-realization that I came to was that there is a lot of endurance involved in mission work. Most of the benefit for me from York came in a very great strengthening of my faith and a lot of practical learning about how to talk to people about Jesus.
