Wednesday - Thursday

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday was another full and fulfilling day. We began with another session in the morning from Hebrews 12 where we were challenged to consider Jesus, to "Consider him" as we seek to run our race with endurance. We were reminded of the endurance Jesus showed in the face of such hostility, and reminded that by looking to Christ and abiding in Christ we are given the strength to endure our race as well. It was a timely reminder of how central faith is to the Christian life and how important it is that we don't run on our own strength.

After that mornings message, we broke up into teams and served in the Backyard Bible Clubs we had spent time inviting the community to the day before. Over 80 kids, at least half of which were not affiliated with Gospel Grace Church, came out to the events. We assisted in crowd control, running games, and quizzing the kids on their memory verses. The best part, however, was seeing all these young children hear the gospel so clearly!

In the afternoon, we spent several hours canvassing various neighborhoods around Salt Lake City inviting them to various summer events GGC will be hosting. We also heard a message entitled "The Gospel for the Irreligious," where one of the GGC pastors described a profile of a typical irreligious person in our contemporary culture and took us through Acts 17 and showed how Paul presented the gospel to to people who weren't part of a formal religion already. It was a helpful equipping time for evangelism!

The day ended with a later night photo-scavenger hunt. . . which one of our teams won! It was a blast and a great way to end a long day.

THURSDAY 

By now many on the team are feeling the effects of several long days strung together, but the students continue to persevere and engage in all the sessions and all the word God has for us to do. Thursday began with the third message in our series from Hebrews 12. In this message we learned about the Lord's discipline for His children and how He uses discipline for our good and to help us finish the race. It was a timely message as we saw how God's love for us is so perfect that He will do what is necessary to help us resist temptation, grow in godliness, and run with endurance.

We spent several hours in the late morning canvassing more of the city, hanging thousands of door hangers informing people about Gospel Grace and some of their outreach events. After lunch we had an equipping session addressing "The Gospel for the Religious," which largely focused on the doctrinal differences between Mormonism and Christianity as evidenced in the book of Hebrews. 

That afternoon we got to put much of the training we had received over the last few days into practice as we spent several hours tabling and evangelizing at a nearby park. Many of our students had in depth conversations about Christianity and the gospel with all sorts of people, including atheists, agnostics, Mormons, Satanists, and many others. It was amazing seeing out students confidence in the gospel message and their desire to proclaim grow even over the course of an afternoon.

After our time in the park was done, we went back to Gospel Grace to share some of the interactions we had and to spend time praying for those people. Afterwards, we went to dinner as a group and got to enjoy some great fellowship. We ended the night early and went back to our hotel to rest up for the last couple days!