7/22/25

It's only Tuesday, but I want to share some updates from our week so far and some cool things that we are getting to see! Yesterday was such a wonderful day as we saw beautiful fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in a few peoples' lives in different ways. 

One young man, that we met at CSUF and has confessed belief and a desire to follow Jesus, met with Nick, Viany, and me yesterday to talk about how he's been doing and how his discipleship to Jesus has been since our previous meeting. I was blessed to listen to him share as he described the tangible change that has begun to take place within him and the way his mind is already being formed by the scriptures that he has been reading on his own! He shared that his parents have made comment on the way he has changed as a result of his newfound faith - somewhat unsure whether they desire it. He shared with us how he was recently sick for a while, but how it turned out to be a blessing as he was able to spend extra time reading more of the Bible on his own! 

He also shared with us a dream that he had, as he's reportedly been having many vivid dreams lately, and as we prayed and discussed it, it seemed evident that God is speaking to him through this medium paired with His word! As we discussed the dream, he shared his interpretations of a few specific aspects, and he repeatedly used passages of scripture to understand what he saw! I was blown away by his seemingly new attachment to the Bible, and I am so impressed with the way he is already using it as a lense by which to see and interpret his life and experiences! The dream seemed to, in at least one of the facets, warn him of the way that this will cost him relationships - specifically that of his mother and aunt in the dream. It was great to hear his assessment of this reality to following Jesus - that it should be expected that we will not always be accepted or understood in our obedience and discipleship to Jesus. He seemed to acknowledge this reality and yet was not dismayed by it as it seems that he recognizes the greater value in following Jesus and learning from Him. Praise God for the work that He is doing in the heart and desires of this young disciple! May God, by His great grace and mercy, forgive us for our half-hearted devotion to discipleship and shake us alive by the power and conviction of His Holy Spirit to walk in obedience to our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Today, Nick and I headed down to Huntington Beach Pier to engage with some whiteboard evangelism again. We set up with the question, "Do Most Christians Follow Jesus?", and, despite being somewhat unsure of how it would fare, we had so many great conversations! If I tried to recall all of the conversations that we had, I'd certainly leave some out, so I'll just mention a few that were either humorous or uniquely interesting to me.

In our time there, we talked to a Jew, a family of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, an Agnostic, passion-filled Christians, and some terribly confused religious people. At one point, we had a family of Mormons arguing that they were legitimate Christians to another person engaging with our sign. The Christian was answering the question and casually mentioned that Mormons aren't Christians (not knowing that the family standing there was Mormon), and it became an interesting exchange that we got to witness from the sideline. After their conversation closed, Nick was able to have a conversation with the Mormon father which seemed to extend a decent length before he was pulled away by family responsibilities. 

While Nick was doing that, I was having a conversation with a local evangelist who apparently couldn't tell that we were also Christian evangelists - but that's not always a terrible thing. He didn't really want to answer the question because he insisted that we make it more specific to say, "born-again Christians", but I eventually was able to explain the benefit of keeping it general as we engage with more people and can then ask them what they mean by their answer. However, before we ever got that far, I was fire hosed with scripture after scripture by him. I was super stoked that he had so many great verses memorized and was willing to share them, but he seemed to struggle to engage with actual conversation and, due to some script that he seemed to be too attached to, he wasn't able to hear my questions and challenges. 

He had an interesting obsession to the concept of being born again, but when I asked him what that means to him, he insisted that I'm not born again, lest I would understand. Pretty sound reasoning if I do say so myself... It's not the first time that I've been accused of not being a true Christian, and I anticipate that it won't be the last, but it's always good to hear out their reasoning for claiming so. As I kept trying to hammer down this issue of what "being born again" means to him, I found him repeatedly accusing me of not being born again, but he couldn't explain to me why he claimed that. As I sorted his claims, it seems that his main claim was that eternal security is found in the subjective conversion experience of a believer that is essentially "known when seen". He asserted that if I could not tell him the exact moment that I was born again, then I haven't been born again. After asking how he came to this conclusion, and receiving no conclusive response, I asked him when he became "born again". In a beautifully ironic way, he told me that it was "in the fall of ----". I asked if he knew the exact day or time with which that took place, and he replied "no", so I simply applied his own ungrounded standard against him and let him know that he could not be "born again" by his own definition. He wasn't exactly fond of this, but we continued talking. 

At one point in our conversation about being "born again", it somehow came up that he asked me if I go to a church, to which I didn't initially answer, but asserted that that is not how we acquire salvation. For some reason he jumped on this and, again, tried to assert that I am not born again because of my claim. I clarified that I am, in fact, involved with a church in my area, but that it is not by my attendance that you can determine if I'm born again or not. All of a sudden, he agreed with me, and yet still seemed to want to prove that I'm not born again for some reason. I genuinely don't know what this guy's thing was, but as soon as he found out that I attend Friends Church in Fullerton and that we were doing evangelism, he asserted that I'm born again and moved on. I don't know what this guy was trying to do, but I think that his inability to truly listen and hear what I was saying was his largest downfall and caused a great deal of confusion in his own position and where the conversation was going. Listening and seeking to understand is SO ESSENTIAL to productive evangelical conversations. If I were an unbeliever, I would have been out of that conversation twenty minutes earlier as he wasn't there to understand - and therefore misrepresented and straw-manned my views (even unintentionally). As cliche as it might sound, it's so true: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.