Witnessing Report 3-31: A Little Rusty, Using prayer in evangelism?

A couple friends and I went witnessing last night. It’s been a long time. It was a slow quiet Sunday night, but there were enough people walking by, stopping, and interacting to make it enjoyable, fruitful, and good practice though we were all rusty. We had a couple of walk-by hecklers who said the same old things. There’s nothing new under the sun. We had a slightly drunk man ask for prayer. He seemed like a legitimate believer from most the things he said. He may just be having a rough time in his life that led him to drinking that night. Though he did start going on about John Hagee and his end times stuff telling us how soon Jesus was returning. He started talking about multiple blood moons and who knows what. Since he was drunk and I knew he could talk forever, I ended the conversation as quickly and kindly as I could so the evangelism wasn’t hindered. A girl my friend invited out from his seminary came. She sat way off to the side when she heard him preaching. She was apparently very turned off by it. I don’t want to be too hard on this girl because she did come out even though she was an introvert and I know she’s likely just a product of bad teaching about evangelism from her church and school.  I suppose it’s also possible she could be a false convert, but I doubt it. I think false converts often balk at street preaching and witnessing because they’re so shocked by it. They’re shocked because they only perceive God as loving with no message of wrath. This shock is too much for them to handle so in that moment that they mock, criticize, disassociate themselves, and in their own way reject the preaching of the whole gospel message. This can show true colors of the heart of a false convert… though I’ve never really thought that through until just now. Anyway, He took her aside to go do on-on-ones and after 2 conversations and about 15 min. she decided to leave. Of course she asked him how effective street evangelism was. This is a tiring and predictable question from contemporary evangelism. He told us after he shared with the 2^nd couple, his friend asked them if there was anything she could pray for them about. He was saying in his head, “umm… salvation?” This kind of thing is typical for contemporary evangelism. It’s very popular today for Christians to use prayer or large signs that say free prayer for evangelism without ever sharing the message they really need to hear. This is a waste of time. Our time might be better spent at the movies if we are content doing pseudo-evangelism. It’s also a gross misunderstanding of how the Lord works with the prayers of and for the lost. God is not obligated and I think biblically not likely to answer prayers for or by the lost unless they are prayers for or of salvation. We’ve become so engrossed in our safe Christian bubble that we attach legitimate safe inoffensive elements of the Christian life to evangelism when they have no place there. They are for a child of God relating to God, not an unbeliever. Anyway, this is part of the reason I stopped blogging, I can get so critical. Lord, help me to be humble and gracious. I think the things I’ve said need to be said, but may I at least never forget from where I’ve come and the grace You have shown me countless times.