The Most Effective Evangelist & God’s Return Policy

The other night while roaming the streets of downtown Atlanta, a homeless man approached me and we became acquainted surprisingly quickly. The conversation started gradually, like "hey how is it going?" And just like that we started talking. He continued to ask me questions about my life before he even started talking about himself. When he talked he was very funny, he told jokes about people that he had ran into on the street. Then he started talking about love and marriage. Then he transitioned into telling me about God in his life and how he isn't as good as he should be, but everyday he tries to do better with the things he knows he struggles with. It was only after we had this long conversation that he asked for a couple dollars for transportation to get back to the shelter for the night. Even after he asked for the money he said, "but you know what, if you don't have the cash, I really just want you to pray for me because prayer changes things." While my friends looked at me like I was doing something wrong, I gave him the couple dollars.

I think their are 2 lessons that we can learn from my encounter with this man.

The first is I think this man was one of the most effective evangelist I have met in a long time. The reason is because he took an interest in my life before he even started talking about Jesus in his life. I was open to listen to what he had to say.

The second is that even though my friends looked at me strangely because I gave him my cash, when I got home that night someone needed me to do them a favor and they gave three times as much money as I had given away.