Testimonies of the Gospel

Testimonies I wanted to share two stories with you that Gilles shared with me this past week about sharing the Gospel in the traditional, Reformed French setting. One story of a baptism that he was supposed to do. Basically, people want to baptize their babies as a social ritual even if they aren't practicing. Gilles is reluctant to do infant baptisms, and rarely agrees to them. He says now that he accepts more because of this one particular couple. He visited them, and they promptly told him that they don’t believe in God and think it’s important to avoid institutions like the church. He was offended by this and told them that they had to do two things before they saw each other next. He said. “You must read the Gospels, and then you must answer for yourselves who the Bible says Jesus is, and then who Jesus is for you.” He left the house expecting never to hear from them again. However, well before they were supposed to meet again, he receives a call from the wife, who is in tears. She says that they must see him right away, because ever since they started reading the Bible, they were so overwhelmed by the love of God that they couldn’t function. He went over, and they were both in tears. They prayed together to each receive Jesus, and then they cancelled their child’s baptism. She was six months pregnant with their second child, and asked that she be baptized as soon as possible! So, what was a social ritual turned into the radical salvation of a whole family!! Another story is something that happened this past Friday morning. He was asked to prepare a wedding for a couple, of which the man is Protestant by tradition and the woman is Jewish. He met with them once, and after the woman asked him if she could meet with him in private. She came by Friday morning, and just simply told him that she felt like she didn’t know God and that she wanted him to tell her everything he knew about how to know God personally. He shared the Gospel with her right then and there and then they prayed together! God is moving in a really radical way! Sometimes it's hard to see here how God moves because everything always stays pretty calm and growth is gradual as far as numbers go. But sometimes it takes spiritual eyes to see what is growing in the spiritual realm. Please continue to pray that God would meet people in these traditional settings in a non-traditional way!