Hands and Feet of RVA

  Tonight was my wife and I's date night, we went to Carytown to walk around and eat ice cream. While walking we talked to a man who we think was Hindu, I say I think because I'm not sure his views aligned with Hinduism. His god was krishna, and he does yoga as his way to salvation. I asked him if he believes in one God, if he believes in miracles, and if he believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and he said yes to all. But he was pluralistic with his faith, he said we are worshipping the same "god" but by different names. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, etc. I brought up John 14:16 where Jesus says "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," which shows that all religions cannot be true because that would be contradictory. I hope I was able to push a stone in his shoe.

  On this Saturday me and my eldest son went out to mow someone's lawn. Before we got out of the truck we read John 13:1-17. This passage is the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet, we discussed what that means, and how Jesus instructs us to do so to others. We found a yard with really tall overgrown grass, we knocked on their door and asked if we could cut their grass for free. We mowed the grass, weed eated, and hedge trimmed their front yard. When done we exchanged contact info, and we told them to have a blessed day. I am still trying to figure out how direct to be with witnessing, should I ask people if they know Jesus, can I pray for them, what their faith is, etc. Lesson's learned: more batteries or gas powered lawnmower more batteries or gas powered weed eater Time lapse the work?

  I arrived at the pre-event meeting space a couple minutes after 1 pm. I sat down on the curb to finish my apple, pray, and re-read my pre-witnessing checklist. The other guys were not there by 1:15 so I decided that something must have come up for them and I went in to the event solo. For context Sundays I take a digital fast, meaning no phone, iPad, computer etc. The event was the big gay watermelon festival in Scott's Addition, from 12 to 5 pm on Sunday 8/10. I wore my Jesus Won t-shirt, and my goal was to go talk with people, pray with people, and put pebbles in shoes. The scripture I had in mind for my heart posture is 1 Peter 3:15-16 "in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at anytime to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame." The first vendor ...

  Some Jehovah’s Witness came by my house today and gave me an invite to their upcoming convention, it is an invitation to JW events. I talked with them about Jesus’ deity. I was searching my mind for the deity versus, I am glad I have been working on memorizing them recently. Matthew 12:8, Mark 14:62, John 8:58, John 10:30. I’ll be honest I could’ve been more put together, the knock on the door mid work day threw me off. I did get the guys phone number and planning to reconnect next week.   Afterwards talking with others more scripture was brought up John 14:9, Daniel 7, John 1:1, Phil 2:4, Isiah 6 and 10. When I stepped outside to talk with them I did not have a bible on me, so when we looked at verses it was through the JW app on her phone. So I believe we were looking at the NWT, next time bring out my own bible. I usually use NIV or ESV, but KJV could be a common ground they would listen to (initial research I’ve done). A good question to have asked would have been, how a...

  Today I planned to go to a pride community event right after lunch but God had different plans for me. I ended up talking with the Future World of Israel (FWOI) group for almost an hour, online I have heard this group called the Hebrew Israelites. The main points that I heard from talking with them are as follows: salvation is only for Israelites, and salvation is a combination of faith in Jesus and works. A tactic they use is "steam roller", where they will keep talking and jump around from verse to verse making it hard to have a conversation. A detailed tactic for handling this "steam roller" can be seen here   https://tabernacleofdavidministries.com/2020/08/14/how-to-handle-a-steamroller-in-apologetic-discussions/. Included below are a few verses that show God's grace is for anyone who accepts it and salvation is not works based.  Everyone: Romans 6:23 Romans 10:13 Romans 11 John 3:16 Acts 13 Not works based: Ephesians 2:8-9 Romans 10:9 John 3:16 Check out ...

  This week has been a week of planning, research, and fellowship. My goals for missional work is as follows: do one witnessing or evangelism event a month, one service project a month, and one blog post a week. This week I found the witnessing events for July, August, September and November. Next week’s blog post will be about witnessing at another pride community event. While look at this weekends pride community event I stumbled across a couple Wicca events in the fall, my conversations with people (three men) throughout the week focused on Wicca, witchcraft, and new age stuff to prepare for the events this fall. Tuesday I talked with a guy on the phone over lunch who was active in the Wicca religion before he gave that up and started following Jesus of Nazareth. It was very informative to talk with him. I heard that Wicca is mostly a peaceful religion,    an opposition to traditional religion is not being peaceful, i.e. crusades, 9/11, etc. Always be on guard and keep...

  Today was the start of Flint Tribe at Forest Hill Park, official start time is 7:00pm on Wednesday evenings. For the workout Ultra led a very rugged workout which included jogging, squats, push ups, bench presses, sit-ups, water jug lifts, calf raises, dips, burpees, and box jumps repeating three times. I ended up modifying as it was a very good and tough workout.   After that I led devotion on love, asking the questions; what is love? How do we define love? How does the New Testament answer those questions? How does the world answer those questions? How do we tactically day to day love our neighbor? How do we tactically day to day love people by speaking truth? First John 4:16-20 tells us that God is Love, there is no fear in love, we love because God first loved us ,and we cannot love God if we are not even loving our brothers and sisters. I think the perfect example of love is God sending Jesus to die for us (Romans 5:8, John 3:16). Jesus commands us to love our neighbor ...