I had never experienced the Good News of God’s saving love until the day of my conversion, and I wanted to make sure that no one else suffered the same misfortune. Sometimes, because I spent so much time talking with people about Christ, the half-hour walk home from school took me four hours.
Not everyone was eager to talk. Once I approached some men who were smoking pot. When I started telling them about Christ, one of them rebuffed me by saying, “Go away, man, we’re sinning.” Another time I was working at a car wash and started sharing my faith with a carload of men. One of them blurted, “Oh, man, I remember you.” It was the same guys. Sometimes I shared Christ with people as they were getting drunk or smoking pot. I did learn, however, that it is usually easier to reason with people about Christ when they are not stoned.
While the pastor of the church I joined mentored me the most, ministers from various churches in town gave me advice and mentored me, while friends from different churches sometimes teamed up with me in sharing our faith. One was an African American friend named Kyrk Freeman. When we started witnessing to each other one day, we discovered that both of us had recently been converted. His family always welcomed me as if I were a member of their own family, and we often visited each other’s churches. Years later I learned that some of the young people I had led to Christ or discipled in his neighborhood still remembered me.
Not everybody liked us sharing our faith. People often ridiculed me, one guy pulled a knife on me, and another guy beat me while I kept preaching. But so convinced was I that Jesus is the source of life, I was prepared to die for His honor.
This content is by Craig Keener, but edited and posted by Defenders Media.
For more, please check out Dr. Keener’s Impossible Love.
