David Jones: April 2007

The past week and a half have been incredible. God has been speaking to me in a very strong way. I’ve been challenged in new ways and I’ve shown obedience to Him in ways that I hadn’t before. I’ve gotten rid of some junk in my life that was getting between me and God and I’m hearing God’s voice with new clarity. I have been learning to lay my all on the altar of sacrifice, as the hymn says. This week was been great. The teaching was amazing. The topic was evangelism, but we talked about everything from what it means to be a Christian to raising funds for ministry.

One of my roommates came to the DTS not really knowing what he was getting himself into. He’s a Spaniard and his name is Cristian; but when he came to attend the DTS, he wasn’t a Christian. Last night, my other roommate, Guilhermo, and I stayed up really late last night with Cristian explaining to him some of the things that we have been taught throughout the school. Cristian had already kind of prayed the “sinner’s prayer” earlier in the DTS; but he didn’t really understand what it means to be a Christian. We basically explained the Gospel with him using the things that the man who was teaching this week taught.

Cristain

We told him about how God created the world and put humanity in charge of everything. We explained how when humanity sinned in Adam and Eve, we, in effect, gave Satan the dominion that God had given to us. We explained that bad things happen not because God wanted them to happen, but because the world actually changed when we sinned because we gave Satan the authority to do bad things when we sinned. We explained that, by sinning, we rebelled against God, placing ourselves out of the wonderful world that God made for us into a new world of evil, essentially telling God that we didn’t want Him or anything from Him. We explained that, since God wants us to have everything good, being away from God's will is being away from everything good. We explained how God had a plan of salvation for humanity from the beginning. We explained how the God gave us the Law, the Ten Commandments, so that we would know that we have sinned. We explained how this knowledge of sin allows us to know our need for God; for example, we can know that we have sinned because we know that we have lied. We explained that since sin caused separation from God we are separated from God and the life that He wants for us. We explained that, although we have sinned, God still loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to live the sinless life that we didn't live and die the death that we deserve so that if we believe in Him we will not perish, but have eternal life, the life of Jesus. We explained the terms redemption and propitiation and justification and adoption to the family of God in a way that he could understand. We explained that God sent His Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice, or payment, for our sin (propitiation) to purchase us from the slave market of sin (redemption) so that we could be proclaimed not guilty of our sins (justification) so that we could have a relationship with Him (adoption). We explained that being a Christian is not just having Jesus as Savior--or Rescuer—but it also means having Him as Lord--or boss. We explained that being a Christian is having the life of Jesus--eternal life. We explained that this is not adding Jesus to your life, but exchanging your life for His life. We explained that you actually have to give your life to God in order to have eternal life just as Jesus gave us His life. We explained that the eternal life that we have in Jesus is not just living forever but it is having a relationship with the Father, like Jesus had a relationship with the Father. We explained that having a relationship with God doesn’t mean that we will live a “nice” life but that it means that, like Jesus, we have obey the commands of God and take up our own proverbial "cross"; basically, we, like Jesus, have to die to ourselves. We explained that it isn’t unfair of God to ask this of us because it is no more than what He asked of His Son, Jesus and that He doesn’t ask us to do anything that He doesn’t also give us the ability to do. We explained that, like Jesus, we obey the commands of God because, like Jesus, we have a relationship with Him and we love Him. We explained that this is part of what it means to have eternal life. Of course we also explained that having the life of Jesus means that, in Him, we share in His divine nature. We have His Holy Spirit living inside of us and we will reign with Him forever.

After we explained all this, we asked him if he still wanted to be a Christian. He said that he did. So we prayed with him and he prayed. It was great. It’s still early, but I think I’ve seen some change in him already. Before last night’s conversation, for example, he was always somewhat stone-faced in the worship times that we have various times throught the week; but this morning in worship he was actually moving his lips. Granted, he wasn’t singing at the top of his lungs or anything, but it was a change. I’m excited to see more changes in him as time passes.

This Sunday we leave for the first part of the outreach phase of the school. My group is first going to the Basque Country in Spain for a week. It will be great to see what God does through us. It won’t be easy. All of the events that YWAM had planned to do for this week have been canceled by the local government. The reason for this is that this week is the anniversary of a very important event in the area. I’m afraid I don’t know all the history of it, but during the Spainish Civil War in the 1930's a town in the Basque Country called Guernica was bombed by Nazi Germany. The city was pretty much destroyed and a lot of people died. Basically, the region is still suffering and they don’t want a bunch of outsiders coming in and disturbing their mourning. Although YWAM's grand plans of having a big event with a famous musician who wrote a song especially for Guernica are cancelled, we are still going; so please pray for God to give us wisdom to know how we can show the love of God to these people.

Picasso's famous painting, Guernica

After a week in the Basque Country, we will be coming back here to the base in Torrejon for a day. Then we are off to Morocco. The challenges here are various. First, it is illegal for people to go to Morocco as missionaries and it is illegal to share the Gospel in public. We will certainly be sharing the Gospel, but the restrictions will be a challenge. On the one hand, we don’t want to go to jail or get the long term missionaries in trouble; but, on the other hand, we want to share our faith. We need wisdom to know what God wants us to do and courage to do what He asks of us. Of course, the language barrier is another issue.

Please, pray for us. I can hardly wait to see what God will and to share with you the stories of what God will have done through us.

This week we have not been having classes. Instead we have had evangelism week. It’s been great. We’ve been practicing “servant evangelism” as well as some more traditional street evangelism. Monday we went around the neighborhood with brooms and trash bags to pick up trash in the streets. Some of us saw a city clean up crew in a nearby park and offered them a hand. They were surprised. When they figured out that we were serious about helping, they started letting us use some of their tools. It was good. The next day, we went out onto a street corner in Torrejón with three signs, first saying, “God loves you,” (in Spanish, of course) the next saying, “and we’ll wash your windshield for free.” The last said, “Because you’re worth it.” The last one was a quote from a famous cell phone ad. Wednesday, we went to the middle of Madrid and worked together with a ministry called “Kilometro Cero” that does evangelism on the street in Madrid. We literally stood on a box and preached the gospel right in the middle of a busy pedestrian street. It was great.
Yesterday, we went to a big park in Madrid and set up a couple of tables. At one table we gave away free coffee with milk and at the other we had a sign that said “free prayer.” Practically the whole time we were there, we had some of us singing worship songs and playing guitar. One young lady who saw the sign stopped and after a brief conversation with Alba, one of the students, prayed to accept Christ. It was cool. I heard part of the conversation. It went something like this. “What’s this?” “We are giving away free prayer. Would you like me to pray for you?” “Sure.” “Okay, is there anything in particular you would like me to pray for?” “No.” “Would you like to pray to accept Jesus into your heart?” “Yes.” And from there, Alba explained the gospel a little and led her in the “sinner’s prayer.” It was cool. It emboldened me to be a bit more direct when talking to people. A bit later, I saw a man watching the worship, and walked up to him. After a short conversation about who we were, and what we were doing, I asked him if he wanted to accept Jesus. He said yes, so I called one of the native Spanish speakers to come and lead him in prayer. The man was a Peruvian named Freddy. I hope to see him again. Tonight we will go to the train station here in Torrejón and do something similar to what we did in the park yesterday.

Here are a few pictures from the day we washed windows: