Are You Ready?

Sometimes God puts us in situations we never expect to be in. This last weekend I went to San Francisco with a friend for my birthday. We stayed at an International Hostel... filled with people from all over the world; aka MY  KIND OF PLACE! I had good conversations, I had interesting conversations, but one conversation in particular was amaZing. For privacy of the person, I will call him A. The thing I love most is how God totally orchestrated our meeting! I had actually been talking with some guys from Germany, but they decided to go upstairs to get something, or something, I don't even remember, so then I was just sitting there by myself. And a guy standing near me starts talking to me. Within 3 minutes the conversation got hot. And by hot, I mean good. Deep. Real. RAW.
We talked for a good hour, hour & a half about so many different things. He is a traveling public speaker/teacher with a heart for inspiring men to act more manly-and by that, I mean encouraging them to go after what they want. His speaking wasn't from a Christian perspective, but it did have some good qualities to it.. and some qualities I didn't really agree with. With a similar job experience, I shared with him my past speaking/teaching job with the Pregnancy Care Center. Through that, he began asking me questions about abstinence and why I believe in it. I was able to share with him so many aspects of what I taught the students, and why I personally have chosen it for my life. Without sharing every specific detail of our conversation, I will say that we talk about life in such a refreshingly raw way.  He grew up in a Christian home, so he was quite familiar with the Bible and Christianity, but he currently wouldn't consider himself a believer. He said he was learning about different religions trying to see what made the most sense to him. We talked about God, we talked about whether or not the Bible was true and if we could believe it or not, about problems in the modern church, about temptation and staying faithful, about forgiveness of sins, about being imperfect but seeking perfection through Christ, about what I want to do with my life and why, I shared testimonies of how I know God is real in the different provisions I've seen in my life, I shared about things I learned on DTS such as being able to hear from God (we were talking about the Spirit World and how to know if it's God or Satan) (Miriam, I totally shared your story of the song lyrics when Chris Twinn taught!), we talked about SO MUCH I feel like the things I listed only barely scratch the surface.
I've never had a conversation quite like it before.
It was amazing.
We both shared where we were coming from, and we were honest and real with each other. I think some of the things I said really clicked with him. I could see gears turning.

What I took away from this is that you always need to be prepared. 1 Peter 3:15 says "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone to asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." I've always had a desire to take an apologetics class to learn what I need to say to people, so that I know how to defend my faith. I felt like I needed to be taught what the answers are, someone else needed to tell me what to say. But that's not true. When you know who God is and you understand your relationship with Him, that's all you need! God even brought to memory specific verses that went with what we were talking about. I'm not very good at remembering things like that on my own-it was all Him. I remember feeling so pumped and on fire during the conversation, that half the time the words were just flowing out of my mouth with little thought. 

I guess what I'm getting at is always be ready-by knowing God. I didn't go out looking for a conversation, the conversation was brought to me. I was just willing to talk. What I learned is that in order to get anywhere, you have to be raw. You have be willing to admit your faults and weaknesses, even if you don't want to. Don't be afraid of your inadequacies. Be yourself.

I personally will continue to pray for A as he tries to find his way in life. I feel like he's close, oh SO close to finding the truth. Would you pray for him as well? Pray for continued positive reinforcement in his life to stay faithful. Pray for God to speak to him directly, and that people would be constantly put in his life pointing him to Christ. Pray for a strong personal revelation from God. Yeah. YEAH. He's so close guys. I'm so excited!