 So that was beautiful, you know, I watched them put in that That was an MRI machine at first And I saw them putting it up there and you know mark kept going and I'm thinking boy This is he's I thought it was improving the whole thing, you know And then I saw a carousel go up on the screen. I said he had this planned out, but it was good It was very good mark. Thank you, and I have Really am delighted to be here. It's been a while since I've spoken at Defending the faith we started coming Sally and I started coming here. I think it was around 1994 95 When our friends Dan and then at Kegas just said you got to go there And we went and then we came down from Michigan and we used to take with us I don't know how many people we had that but 25 30 people coming with us for a while. It was just wonderful Today I want to Do a few things Did you all get the outline? Okay, good. Good, then I don't have to spend too much time sharing it First of all, I'm gonna do this Gonna tell you a little story about myself and then I'm gonna go over basic principles for sharing the faith and Sharing the gospel big difference here sharing the faith sharing your faith and sharing the gospel are really two different things Obviously related, but sharing the gospel is Proclaiming the historical announcement of what God has done in Christ Sharing your faith is witnessing to what Christ's gospel has done for you So important point to keep in mind sharing the gospel is a verbal message It is about words. This is very important Paul the sixth said There is no true evangelization if the name the teaching the life the promises the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth The son of God are not proclaimed The finest witness will prove ineffective if it is not explained Now you hear people all the time say low I'm only gonna use words if necessary. Look, it's always necessary It's always necessary and you've probably gotten a kick, right? You've heard people say things like um, oh listen I don't I don't preach. I just live my faith so people can see it Well whoop-de-doo You've outdone Mother Teresa and Jesus and Saint Paul who I guess were all forced to use words Because they couldn't measure up to your level of visible holiness All right, these are stupid arguments When Paul the sixth wrote on even evangelization the modern world he insisted that we use words When our first Pope Peter wrote to us about this He said always be ready to give an answer or an explanation To anyone who asked for the reason for the hope within you with gentleness and reverence so words are Important and I want to just really make that clear All right, four big parts first can tell you a little story about me a much bigger story about you third an essential story about Jesus and then a cluster of four stories about non-christians who came to Christ now these are first-hand stories that I was Participated in all real people and one thing will become evident as I tell these stories the Holy Spirit is Working well before you ever arrive on the scene and I you know, I never say I make a convert Saying that an evangelist makes converts is like saying that midwives make babies God makes converts evangelists reap the harvest and The people I'm going to be talking about were all non-christians. They had no interest in Christ They had no interest in the church Not all of them became Not all of them came into full communion with the Catholic Church, although I think most of them eventually did Evangelism is not complete by the way until people are in full communion, but that's another task I want to get at the front end of the process here. All right Little story about me so you know those of you who don't know me should know a little bit I was born in New Haven, Connecticut 1951 the oldest of five kids my mom and dad faithfully sent us off to Saturday catechism class Mass every Sunday even on vacation. We went to confession once a month mom and dad discussed morality right and wrong But they never talked about Jesus. They never talked about God. They never talked about it's the sacred and Nevertheless, I liked talking about quote spiritual things like UFOs and purgatory and just odd thing They were all they were all as a kid. They were all clustered So my friends and I would often talk about these things my best friend at the time was Wayne Sanford Wayne was a Protestant and once in a while Wayne myself other friends would go sneaking into St. Claire's church, which is right across from Wayne's house in diagonal from mine and That's what was my home church and the first thing that would happen. Of course is you get hit with the scent of incense and so Cresty your church stinks I'd come right back out of my and say hey, this is a holy place shut the heck up or get the hell out of here and they say you know Cresty your church stinks because Catholics stink and I said well your name is Sanford and you make your sister's perfume stink Yeah, well your pope is so dumb. He can't even speak English and you're so dumb. You're going to hell and don't even know about it am not R2 I loved evangelism from an early age And God God has a sense of humor because Wayne is now a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. I Assure you I had nothing to do with it That part of the dialogue in fact is drawn from Garrison Keillers Capturing of how Catholic and Protestant kids in my neighborhood talked about matters religious We were ignorant, but we were tribal and so we went off against one another Unfortunately though when I hit adolescence my faith turned to the flesh and was all downhill My parents generation enjoyed the virtues of wine women and song my generation was not that different We just wanted drug sex and rock and roll and it devastated me I began my teen years as president of the class voted most likely to succeed and By the end of it. I was the first kid at my high school to be arrested for heroin possession I had a grade point average of 1.8 in a two-year suspended sentence over my head Now I ceased using drugs in May of 1969. It was a memorable day I remember it very clearly and I'll refer to it again later But I had had a string of pseudomistical LSD experiences. I just completed my senior year I was a musician and so I hit the road and I lived in vacant apartments and parks and beaches Railroad flats. I became something of a metaphysical guru kind of flopping around at the feet of any charlatan or alien that would explain these experiences to me and I there were all kinds of strange people it was 1969 1970 in Miami I met Swy Hart who was an alien from Venus who ran a science fiction bookstore Taught me past life regression in rural Michigan There was Bula who channeled spirits and started off her sessions with listen my children. I am the queen of life At Kalamazoo College. I had Hari Krishna's smelling like patchouli oil dancing around me until I was would receive a copy of the bag at Gita Jehovah's Witnesses were trumpeting the coming of Armageddon the children of God were talking about Comet Cahotec I studied with Mormons meditated with Buddhists went vegetarian with seven-day Adventists for five years I lived a strict discipline of vegetarianism celibacy avoidance of television radio and books that weren't published by the Religious group I was a part of called the I am religious activity kind of a new age or new consciousness group But in March of 1974 when I was at Michigan State University I finally encountered the Jesus of the New Testament and realized he was not the Jesus of New Age or a cultic thought Evangelicals would say I was born again As a Catholic I would say I appropriated the grace of my baptism finally and my allegiance no matter what happened My allegiance shifted from the Jesus of New Age thought to the Jesus of historic Christianity and the New Testament After 12 years of working within evangelical Protestantism in various forms of ministry I was called to pastor an evangelical Protestant congregation. I began doing some Christian talk radio and After five years the questions that have been forced on me by my pastoral experience made me reconsider the wisdom of the Catholic Church that had been around for 2,000 years and I resigned my pastorate, but not my microphone By the grace of God all my detours led me to Rome So that's my little short story So you know something about me now. Let's talk about you in Some ways what I have to say right now is the whole talk and if I can get it across we can leave early This is it Know and be yourself Now you might be thinking what I was talking about some pretty odd stuff there and you're right There was a lot of odd stuff, but to our father in heaven The one who created us redeems us sustains us Every single life story is equally odd Equally fascinating and equally worthy of attention. I read John Henry Newman In the 1980s and he taught me this Quote I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created I have a place in God's counsels in God's world, which no one else has God knows me and calls me by my name So here's the first and most important point in learning how to give away your faith or share your faith Know who you are in Christ Now let's take a look at this a few little humble exercises here We all go to these meetings and these parties where some host or Manager decides he's gonna make you say three minutes tell everybody who you are right So tell us Al tell us a little bit about yourself Well, what do you say in those meetings? How long does it take before those in that room get a hint that you're a disciple of Jesus Of course be discreet be appropriate, but be honest don't hide your light under a bushel Don't pretend to be what you're not. You're a disciple of Jesus get it out on the table Nothing's more natural for disciples than to share the faith in the master last week my wife Sally went out and bought some plums and Peaches and after a few days were so right that the slightest touch to them and they they leaked all over you That's what disciples are supposed to be like You know They're so in view with the spirit of the master that they leak all over the place and that's our life task That's who we are We're called to imitate Christ be conformed to his character Reproduce his life in us. We're buried with him in baptism and raised in unison life, right? This is why I don't have a bucket list I mean people who are in the bucket list are trying to get the list done before death, but I already died with Christ I've got something else. I want to do it's too late for a bucket list for me I have a kingdom list of what I want to accomplish So be who you are in Christ. It's not some piece of banal pop psychology It's a survival strategy in this culture You know, we're living in a world in which I den everybody's talking about identity everybody, you know You've got identity politics, which is Balkanizing the nation. You might remember this hilarious story Rachel dolezal claimed to be black and become president of the Spokane NAACP and then her parents outed her She was a plain old vanilla white Caucasian, but great at makeup and ethnic hair styling And it wasn't widely reported, but Rachel also had posed as Asian and Native American at times More seriously the transgenderism the crisis Time magazine says this is the next great civil rights Movement, but what is transgender? Controversy but a conflict over who gets to discover invent or accept one's identity Questions of identity are percolating all over the place. I mean look around we've got new technologies every week People are not discovering themselves in God who they're called the image They're learning to reinvent themselves recreate themselves come up with new identities in which they imagine some phantasm of their own Imagination, you know bloggers have a motto I post therefore I am in Tire industry serve this search for revised identities You got image consultants and spin doctors and experts in impression management and plastic surgery and Botox and ethnic and racial Makeovers social media and blogging has trained everyone in the art of perpetual self-creation Relentless self-promotion and everyone is explaining and defending and selling and exposing themselves at just the time when people are most unsure if anyone is really just being themselves You know ironically in the age of the selfie people wonder more and more what their self really is and Whether they're encountering real selves or mere phantoms are images and others So everywhere you look right now people are asking who am I who are you who are we? So you Have in prayer in worship in reflection on scripture You have a very vivid and clear identity in Christ This is established by the very word of God the one who holds all creation in existence You are a new creature in Christ. You're a child of God You are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works You are a joint heir with Christ a partaker of the divine nature and ambassador for Christ part of a chosen generation a royal Priesthood a holy nation you're free from the fear of death Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world and it's not you who live but Christ who lives in you our Identity in Christ is secure even as the world is suffering from terminal insecurity Remember this the goal of redemption is About the formation of a new identity It's the creation of a renewed human race The church is the pilot plant for the new humanity our task is become like him the last Adam and to present this new man in Christ to the watching world You know unfortunately, I mean the world is often is blinded to reality because it's fascinated with the peace Appearances, but that's not a new thing with baby boomers or gen Xers or Millennials It goes back to Samuel for heaven's sake Samuel first Samuel 16 7 Humans look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart There's really nothing new here in Samuel's time and in Mark Zuckerberg's time humans are obsessed with appearance and They normally form their identities By seeing themselves through the eyes of those closest to them. It's called the phenomenon of the looking-glass self But real character real identity is who we are when no one's looking for God If we really understood who we are in Christ, we could end the talk here right now But I'm still learning and I assume you're still learning We're trying to understand this mystery of what it means to be in Christ so Catholics must get comfortable live out their Catholic identity authentically joyfully radically because the world is confused and they need to know who you are So to give away our faith we start with this very simple thing Who am I in Christ? And here are a few again. I'm keeping this really small beginnings be faithful in small matters You'll have plenty of opportunities to share your faith in the gospel. Okay, most of us get asked this question. How'd the weekend go? How'd the weekend go? Come in on Monday Well, I I used to answer this. Yeah, I got the garage cleared out Sally and I went down to the Ark to hear the California guitar trio. Hey David Got a hat-trick at his lacrosse tournament Never did I say Yeah, I think I was tremendous. We had such a powerful time at mass It was an incredible time of worship or you know father-dead's homily had me thinking for a half an hour afterwards I don't lie about it. Maybe it was a lousy homily, but the point is If the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith Once in a while there had better be something to share when somebody says to you how the weekend go, right? And that little habit of transparency that ease with honest disclosure can serve you well in lots of situations Yeah, I just remember as I was thinking about this years ago a waitress asked me If I was a student, you know, I'm sitting down just having a meal a long time ago And I said no, no, no, I just graduated and Predictably her next question was what's next? You getting out of here. What are you gonna do to get a job? And I told her the truth I said well, my wife and I are gonna stay in town because we're deeply involved in our church And we have a great circle of friends who are helping one another grow spiritually Well, she stopped and for 20 minutes in and out as she ran around the place We were talking about spiritual and social priorities. Why church is important. What does it mean to seek first the kingdom? Don't despise small social interactions like that that come about simply because Your identity as a disciple of Christ is right in your face Here's another transparency exercise for you How many of you have really wanted to share your faith in Jesus with someone but chickened out because you were afraid That that person would be offended or you would embarrass yourself or you would appear uncool Show of hands. How many of you have done that and The rest of you are liars You've got bigger problems than I thought You know Did you ever consider in that situation just saying hey Ken I really enjoy our friendship and I wanted you to know something about me that I sometimes find hard to talk about I've really wanted to tell you why I've been trying to follow Jesus, but I was afraid I'd turn you off or offend you Why doesn't it occur to you that you could be yourself and say something like that? Don't you think ken would find that kind of honest self-disclosure refreshing? Maybe we take your relationship to a new level You know, there's an old asian saying from Lao Tzu when you are content to be simply yourself And don't complain or compete Or compare Everyone will respect you It's not your humanness. That's the problem. It's not my humanness. That's the problem Jesus was human And becky pepper pepper makes a great point. Jesus is not only the center of our message. He's the pattern of our proclamation He's not the only the one we share He's the one we imitate when we share and that leads me to this next essential point How does Jesus do it? We're called to imitate him the master How does he witness because when a disciple is fully trained? He tells us he will be like his master First of all, Jesus isn't afraid to ask for help You know He's not ashamed of asking for directions if he needs them I'll work on that Jesus was without sin, but he wasn't without hunger or apprehension or fatigue or even Human loneliness. I mean think at the moment of his greatest His greatest agony there in the garden He asks his inner circle of closest friends peter james and john to come and pray with him for an hour In john chapter 4 Jesus is thirsty and he asked the Samaritan woman for a drink Now this is about as basic an icebreaker as you can get Give me a glass of water. Would you I mean this is a conversation starter Jesus who created water Asked the Samaritan woman who has a water jar to give him water He dignifies her by giving her something she can do for him. He isn't afraid to ask for help He's not going to lose his spiritual stature A lot of Christians think they've got to come from a position of power When they're witnessing the people or have it all together. No You can come from the standpoint of knee Secondly, Jesus wasn't afraid to display his emotions. He wept before the tomb of Lazarus He was angry at the money changers. He drips sarcasm with the scribes and Pharisees What did Jesus regard as important? Well, he was wholly concerned we know with God and he was wholly concerned with people His life was a constant affirmation Of the preciousness of human life and human dignity He had an anti statistical approach to people He's the one who says, hmm I lost one of these sheep. I'm going to leave the 99 and go after the one He's the one who knows that they rejoice in heaven over the one sinner who repents than over the 99 who don't He's the one who said the blind beggar Bartimaeus Could stop the whole show and talk to him an insignificant pauper Interrupts the schedule of the great king And Jesus stops everything. He serves the beggar And he actually asks those who tried to keep the beggar away to start serving that beggar as well Jesus regularly gives his attention to the unimportant the weak the sinful the poor the powerless. You know when you go to a party Do you look around to see who's not enjoying themselves? And do you look at the people who are feeling left out or maybe don't know anybody or do you run just talk to your friends? I mean, what about your kids What would be like if our kids were trained to invite the girl or boy to the prom Who would most likely be ignored or not asked by others Jesus organized his life in his day in his time To be identified with those who don't rule the roost or who don't get the awards He took the time to talk to children Who are crashing his meetings and the disciples scolded him and Jesus ends up scolding the apostles the disciples Jesus's love of people meant that he was approachable. He was available. He was open to strangers and new relationships He made time for people You know people always say I don't I don't get any opportunities to witness Well, the reason you don't have any opportunities to witness because you're so wrapped up with your kids Your grandkids your job your church When are the heckler own believers ever going to enter your life? I mean, I know this because I rarely see unbelievers anymore. I'm surrounded by wonderful catholics I've got to make room to get unbelievers into my life. I have to make a day of the week when it's my Al's gonna have some bad company today, you know Jesus was available and open to people they could you know, we're like legos You know how legos work right you clip on these they got these little round Nobs and you clip onto them all of us have our lego knobs clipped onto Nobody can latch into our lives anymore. At least met my life and I assume it's similar to yours Look, jesus always had time There's this wonderful little story John in the gospel of john where john the baptist is at the jordan and two of his disciples are there Jesus walks by and john the baptist says look at that. That's the lamb of god So the two disciples say this is important and they begin basically stalking jesus they're walking behind him, you know And then jesus stops he turns around and says what do you want? They get tongue-tied. They're unsure of what to say and then they stammer something like, um, well, um What kind of wonder where you live in these days? And and jesus says come follow me come follow me and he takes him to his home You know and they become his disciples He's hospitable He's open to strangers and believe me most people will respond to an invitation to come to your house Long before they're going to come to an invitation to come to mass So use your home jesus did the late evangelical apologist francer schaefer Used to say there are no little people C. S. Lewis said it much more eloquently When he said there are no ordinary people You have never talked to a mere mortal Next to the blessed sacrament itself Your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses Artists evangelists missionaries see splendor in the ordinary Because they are artists of the soul They see in every human being No matter how ruined and desolate The glorious possibility of restoration through christ's love total restoration of course only at the end of time But we can see in our experience the beautiful beginnings of a masterpiece In everybody Because that's why jesus created them We're like a beautiful rembrandt masterpiece that's been vandalized and ripped We're like magnificent medieval castles that have fallen into disrepair These artifacts are really good They're broken down They need to be restored You know van Gogh knew this vince and van Gogh was first of all a missionary. Did you know that? He was too zealous and his church dumped them. So he began doing art But van Gogh said this christ is more of an artist than the artists He works in the living spirit and the living flesh. He makes men instead of statues So my point is It's easy to avoid people we don't like It becomes a real challenge of evangelism to make room for them to Look at the most crusty person in your sphere of influence Begin praying for them and try to remember that their father in heaven likes that person Delights in that person enjoys that person rejoices in that person If he was an earthly father they'd pull out his wallet and say hey, look at this. This is my kid. You know pretty cute, huh? And of course you would say Yeah, it got to develop a taste That's where we are So let me tell you four quick stories here Tell you the story about sue first of all This is a story about using What I call turning the tables helping a person realize Kind of pushing them to the logical conclusion of their assumptions G. K. Chesterton tells a beautiful story that illustrates this and I'll start with that It's the story of innocent smith a philosophy student at Cambridge one day after class innocent is invited to the rooms of the Great philosopher pessimism emerson aims and for hours they relax sipping pork And aims pontificates life is so painful that an omniscient god should put us all out of our misery and strike us dead And so innocent smith says well, why doesn't he do that? And the professor says because he's dead himself and Innocent smith then well, he snaps And he pulls out a cold small black barrel Trains the revolve around the professor and says old man. Let me help you by putting you out of your misery And as he cocks the revolver the professor leaps out the window Lands on a flying buttress below the window clings to and sits on a gargoyle there and he says don't kill me Please don't kill me and smith retorts Before you break your neck or I blow out your brains I want the metaphysical point cleared up Do I understand that you want to get back to living? I'd give anything to get back the terrified professor said Give anything smith asked Yes, anything Then blast your impudence give us a song And the startled and a professor sang a song of gratitude for existence and smith helped him back to safety When they were back together in the professor's rooms Smith said he was sorry I have to ask you to realize that I have just had an escape from death And the professor said you had an escape from death Oh, you don't understand professor. You don't understand. I had to prove you wrong or die The thing I saw shining in your eyes when you dangled from that bridge was enjoyment at life and not your empty nihilistic philosophy What you knew when you sat on that damn gargoyle Was that the world when all is said and done is a wonderful and beautiful place I know it because I saw it at the same minute professor I had to prove you wrong or die In spite of your opinions. You now know that life is worth living It's a great story. I didn't use a gun in my conversations with sue But the point is similar when we met I immediately sensed the kindred spirit even though she made no pretense of being a christian We were both musicians. I played classical guitar. She was a pianist In the moment she identified herself as a pianist I was seized by an intuition or a word of knowledge or whatever and I said I can tell you your favorite composer Chopin she said, how did you know that? I said, I'm not sure. I just had a very vivid hunch about this Now I didn't know it at that moment But this actually did affect her uh much deeper than just an odd coincidence And I point this out because the holy spirit is always engaged in an inner dialogue with people Long before we're aware of it. She had transferred to michigan state from scintz and adi university of scintz and adi She wanted to study horticulture. She was working in the botanical gardens and she was at that time psychologically fragile but working hard to appear tough In scintz and adi her inner world had been destabilized by a diet of books by uh thomas pinchin I ran kurt vonnegut and these authors are quite different But they all write as enemies of traditional morality and historic christianity for them Altruism is described disguised self interest heroism is no more a testimony to human goodness than villainy Kurt vonnegut thought we are what we pretend to be so we must be careful about what we pretend to be And for sue this seemed to be an inside joke that everybody had but her And life was ultimately pointless irrational and absurd and it was like an infection That was running through her stream. She wasn't in on the joke And she wasn't uh confident in what was real or unreal right or wrong What was good or evil one of the last draws is when she got an a for a paper in philosophy of modern art That she knew was complete gibberish She was even less confident after that in objectively real knowledge of morality I learned much later when I had pegged shopan a special for her that I was unlocking a chamber inside of her That she had deliberately closed out of self protection In this chaotic world My appeal to shopan completely unbeknownst to me Held out the promise of sanity and beauty restored to her She was thinking is this so much a part of me that even this new guy who I don't even know can detect it She was intelligent sensitive interested in literature But the christian faith was nowhere on the horizon for her Two good friends said to me don't don't waste your time She she's not open to the gospel at all I didn't think I thought differently. She had moved to michigan To be a work therapy major because she needed something real and concrete She didn't want the abstract the speculative the intellectual She believed that working with plants would put her back in touch with some fundamental realities the rhythms of nature She needed grounding literally And to me that signaled that she needed healing And if she wants healing then she's got to want god, right? She believed that truth and morality were Individually specific. There were no moral absolutes. No one triggered right and wrong. She wasn't happy about this She was actually thought it was rather tragic and this is where we actually had a turning point She couldn't be a relativist I said And I said even those guys who write those books They're not relativists at heart if their daughters were raped They would not act as if morality was a matter of complete indifference or a matter of personal choice They would act out of pure moral outrage as though something truly evil had occurred They were like professor aims in chesterton's story They have one attitude toward life and death when they're comfortable in their writing room And they have quite another when they're grimly hanging on to the buttress while staring down the barrel of a gun All thoughts can be thought but not all thoughts can be consistently lived And she agreed this was a turning point. She agreed that these authors for all their bluster Probably wouldn't be able to live consistently with their philosophy if their daughters were raped They would say that was evil Around that time a new friend of mine named John Gonzalez needed to dry out. He was about 10 years 10 years older to me an opera composer He needed to dry out and he used to regularly go to a convent in Cincinnati where he the nuns took him in So I invited sue to come with us and she was familiar with Cincinnati We were greeted there by the mother superior and one of the sisters Sue's hands were calloused She had been working in the gardens and the mother superior 80 years old somewhat frail Took sue's hands held them and just looked at them And sue tells me she realized Somehow this woman was operating on an entirely different spiritual plane than she was There was no condemnation no judgment just pure love and acceptance and a beautiful gentleness That emanated from this 80 year old nun Very unfamiliar world to sue Well that night it turned out that my friend John Gonzalez Decided he was going to disclose to me that he was gay By giving me a most inappropriate hug and asking me to be the object of his affections that night His name was as I said John Gonzalez and he said to me Al I am a latin man And we like to express our affection to our friends in very demonstrative ways I said, um, well john, you know, I'm austrian rather teutonic and we don't do that kind of thing So no way was I sleeping in that room that night? So I went walking the halls of the convent in order the chapel to pray and walking the halls I found sue roaming around she had had some disturbing dreams that involved her beloved grandfather A deeply committed christian lovely guy And this gave us some intense time to just walk the halls discuss god What he might be saying to her in these experiences Our spiritual conversations were growing increasingly more meaningful About two months later. I finally popped the question directly. I said sue You know, we've been talking since august at thanksgiving now Where are you and you're thinking about jesus? And then she told me she had gone out and bought a bible. She never told me this Yeah, I bought a bible. She'd been reading paul. He really excited her She also said she had had a strange experience After lunch one day, she was walking across the michigan state campus And uh tossed the rest of her sandwich into the trash and said to god, I feel like this trash Um, if you want this trash, you can have it see what you can do with it It was not exactly the most articulate prayer, but it was real She began attending the house church that we had started our friendship continued to flower She ended up being baptized became a follower of jesus two months later I popped another question to her and asked her to be my wife So that's actually sally, um, not sue She was excited by the prospect of christian missions. We had a deep interconnectedness So we married a year later and for 41 years and five kids and 14 grandkids in a boat load of very unusual ministry experiences I would say god's sure god has money's worth out of that trash I'm like taking a look at the clock here. Let me see, uh, how many of these stories we're going to get through Let me tell you rebecca's story. It's the next one in line here It embodies two major points. Each of these stories have a certain key point about evangelism This point is that people are not what they seem they often do not appear to be what they seem They are often send If you listen to them carefully You can find what they are really desiring And as saint Augustine said our hearts are restless until they find the rest in you um rachel warned me That her friend rebecca was coming to live with her and she said this listen al she's not open to talking about religion or spiritual things so shut up And And I said well, okay, that's fine Rebecca was just returning from hitchhiking through canada for a year She was a child of divorce had longed for a white picket fence happy traditional american dream family And then her fiance was murdered in detroit When he refused refused to turn over his wallet to some punk who shot him for 20 bucks This is what finally beat her down and drove her to spend a year on the road and Some very untraditional actions and behaviors She was unusually independent determined not to get hurt She was not unattractive, but she worked hard to appear so Dressed in dirty overalls Didn't think much of hair brushes or basic makeup And she never parted with a rancid shabby knapsack that I kept my distance from Unlike sally I didn't or sue I didn't Sent any immediate rapport with her her favorite song was suicide is painless Favorite movie was herald and laud and I said, no, that's not for me She was also jewish and I didn't know anything about Judaism. She wasn't observant at all But I wasn't I was naive enough To not know you're not supposed to talk to jews about jesus and as we got to one another got to know one another I realized she did hunger for family Her bitterness or hardness was a result of great loss Peter berger in his book rumor of angels describes what he calls signals of transcendence These are impulses that are within the domain of our natural world But appear to point to something beyond this world She longed for a family That transcended her present situation in fact the absence of a family undermined What she had once believed life held for her But that longing persisted even in the absence of a family Even though life was meaningless and suicide was painless. She still longed for that family She was not a christian so she didn't really Come to church with us or anything like that But she we invited her to activities that our christian friends were involved in she thought I was a fanatic But I was careful to never imply that our friendship depended on her You know thought becoming a follower of jesus One day I happened to come across a book called ben israel by a guy named art cats A jewish philosopher who had become a follower of jesus as a jewish messiah I was curious. So I said to rebecca. I said hey look at this book Tell me if it sounds authentically jewish to you. No pressure, you know I mean hear from her for a month and I figured oh my gosh, what I do the book was a real dud Then one night she calls she needs to talk She comes up my apartment. She's agitated Al All these months. I've enjoyed your company with roger and linda and carrey and I've always felt protected that nobody Was going to force me to change. I'm jewish your christian Now this book it's got me all confused. This guy is both a jew and a christian and he thinks knowing jesus is the most important thing in his life What would it mean if I believed in jesus? Well, I mean after months of prayer and friendship I'd been studying about jewish mid's conceptions about christianity. I was Old testament prophecy and jewish jewish messiah pass over and communion. I had all these arguments around And they were worthless I just stammered on about well, jesus would mean purpose in life and Need to repent forgiveness of sins and she interrupted me and said look I want a different life Will jesus bring me joy? and My ears my my eyes teared up my ears buzzed And I realized that all her hustling around the country Had been driven by this aching Void and I said to her Rebecca the scripture shows that jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him if you put your faith in jesus and follow him You're gonna find your own cross But you're gonna ultimately reap a harvest of joy And then I simply said to her I said well, are you ready to place your faith in christ tonight? She squinched up her nose, you know squinted her eyes looked at me like I had suggested some sort of weird dance ritual You mean right here now? And I said yeah now And we prayed together Just a few minutes She made a commitment to follow jesus then she excused herself and went into the bathroom She came out a few minutes later and she asked me Did you know what I was doing in there? I I said, uh, I'm no it wasn't really on my mind, but I I suppose there's a 50-50 chance if I guess Uh No, silly I got rid of these and she pulled out an empty birth control dispenser That was her declaration of repentance and her embrace of a whole new way of seeking love and family She was baptized a few months later began attending the small house church that a few friends and I had started We eventually grew apart, but she stayed faithful to christ. She sent me an email a few years ago I hadn't heard from her in probably 25 years She was living in st. Paul turned to the program. She was happy as a mom married a great baptist engineer Uh, I was working as a church secretary And she said to me isn't it amazing That jesus made you what I thought you would be she meant a teacher And he gave me the joy that you promised me he would It's a great story and it's been a great life for her Let me tell you just one last story here and wrap this up Uh, this is a story of Not second chances, but third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth ninth tenth chances That god is a god of unending chances until we die My brother michael had been in prison for two years Nobody in my family had been in regular touch with him It's not as heartless as it sounds. He chose heroin Over my mother father sisters and brothers I lived in michigan, so I wasn't really close to him. We had been close when I was very young I was on vacation at my parents house in connecticut. I was passed from a church in michigan It was the sunday that we were planning on leaving And uh, it had been an unsatisfying visit Michael had not been a part of conversation. Like I said, nobody really paid much attention to him anymore Well, my my family was very secular in their mentality And I was praying deliberately and intentionally for an opening to be able to you know connect somehow about the gospel That sunday morning. I decided I wasn't even going to go to church I was just going to hang out and look for an opportunity But then an old family friend came by and they started talking about diets and lousy sitcoms And gossip and I said I'm not going to miss church for this So I went to downtown new haven where they have three churches on the green and I figured you know Somebody has an 11 o'clock service They didn't they had 10 o'clock services So I ended up going to a burger king right there at the corner of church in chapel and I got myself a soda Don't ever call it a pop if you're in connecticut because they think you're from the Ozarks Um and for roughly an hour and a half I sat in this air conditioned restaurant and prayed read some scripture Journaled a bit and I asked the lord. I said, what can I do best in the remaining hours to serve my family and help move them in your direction About an hour an hour and a half went by and then you know, you just have that feeling that it's time to leave You're kind of satisfied. So I got up walked out the door took a few steps onto Uh chapel street turned left And there was my brother michael walking down the street about 10 yards from me We just looked at each other and started smiling Ran to each other hugged one another Brother brother. He said to me. What are you doing here? And I said God sent me And he said expletive deleted expletive deleted. There is a god We caught up a little bit and I he was in bad bad place. I urged him to come to michigan Uh, I went home talked to sally about it. There were all kinds of problems. There was parole. There was work There was my family. I told each family member privately what had happened. It's very interesting the way they regarded this this thing When they saw when I told them about the encounter one of them said, oh my gosh, that's fate Another one said, oh my gosh, that's luck Another one said, oh my gosh, that's karma Another one said, oh my gosh, that's god Another one said, oh my gosh, that's weird Their entire world view is caught up in responding to that for me, of course, it was the hand of god Michael came to michigan lived with us for a period of eight years He made a profession of faith in christ was baptized He found fellowship with decent people for the first time in his adult life But he it was tough. I tell you michael's the kind of kid who if you took him to the opera He'd find the only person in the room who preferred wild thing, you know He could always hone in on the worst people in the room He was off and on sober But then he hit a great period and for two years he was clean and sober He ended up going to college Nobody ever thought that this kid who had started drinking and he got into crime at 12 years old would ever End up getting on the dean's list at a college But then in the fall of 1996 my 16 year old daughter, alexis noticed something was wrong And over the next six months he ended up in three different rehab centers Finally we moved to an arbor. I prevailed upon him to leave Detroit and come and live with us We had agreed to pick him up the next morning And that would give him another 10 days straight and clean on this trip Sally uh when he didn't answer the phone in the morning sally drove into detroit to pick him up He didn't answer the door. She walked in and he was dead Layed out on the floor michael's conversion had been the most incredible conversion i'd ever been involved in and i'd seen quite a few people come to christ We learned that he died of heroin abuse It was an extraordinary shock To me It threatened all that i had believed about the power of god To raise people up and bring them to what he had called them to be In the months before his death at the age of 39 He told me once he said, you know, do you remember that day when you left home? When you just got out of high school. He said that was the best day of my life Now he was referring to that remarkable day back in may of 69 that i referred to I remember that day because i decided to stop doing drugs. It wasn't just a decision there was a sense of extraordinary grace in my life that day and uh, and i didn't go downtown I didn't go to jam anywhere. I just stayed home with my 10 year old brother I was 17 we played basketball. We walked we talked we told stories We generally hung out and did what big brothers and little brothers ought to do when they have time together I was amazed i remembered the day but i was amazed that he remembered it as the best day of his life Now i've lived longer I've married happily i've had five children of who i'm proud i've had some modest success in my field of ministry I've had the joy of seeing people come to christ in repentance and faith But that day with michael still stands out as one of the most heavenly days of my earthly life I believe that on that day we each tasted the powers of the age to come in some inexplicable way A foretaste of christ's kingdom People ask me all the time, you know, do you think you'll see michael in heaven? And I say, um, well, I certainly pray Uh for that But I pray that he no longer needs to remember that one day from 1969 because i'm hoping that his eternity is full of them But as a catholic, I know That such a judgment is not mine to make It's a hope I can hold but it's not mine to make And I hold that hope Because i'm not ashamed of the gospel of god because like st paul I've seen it as the power of god for salvation for so many people And when all is said and done Effective witnessing means Knowing who you are in christ and being yourself Showing your priorities live them out Loving people as individual images of god and just organize your life So you have some room to share it with bad company Thanks very much