The conversation

There is a guy (I'll call him Joe) who has been coming to the college group the past month and a half. A friend invited him and he has been getting plugged in which is awesome. He came by my office last week and we had a chance to talk. I found out he is not a Christian, never went to church, and doesn't know anything about the Bible. And he was curious. He wanted to know things. He had questions.

During our conversation, I started thinking...most students I talk with are Christians and most have grown up going to church (like myself). So, here's an opportunity to share with this awesome college student who has tons of questions about Christianity and I was almost at a loss of where to start! It was an interesting experience.

He wanted to start at the beginning, so I grabbed a Bible and we started talking about Genesis: God creating everything, Adam and Eve, how sin entered the world, etc. I was sitting there sharing and feeling a bit of that out-of-body experience. I couldn't remember doing this before. If I have had conversations with kids or other friends who were not Christians, they usually had some knowledge about the Bible, God, etc. But we were literally starting from scratch. Joe was looking at me expectantly and excited to hear what this whole "Jesus-thing" was all about.

As we were talking, 2 things hit me:

1) dude, I totally speak "Christianese". Ya know, the language we believers use that other people have no idea about. I caught myself saying "repentence" and stuff like that and quickly stopped. Do we realize we have this Christian language/lingo? I think I knew it in the back of my head, but it never hit me as hard until I was talking with Joe.

2) We believe some crazy stuff! All my life it never hit me how strange things might sound to non-believers. But it's true. Wait a sec...a woman who had never been with a man had a baby?? A man who had never sinned took all the sins of the world upon himself and died on a cross? How could he take everyone's sins? This Jesus raised from the dead three days later and after awhile he rose into heaven in front of his disciples? What does it mean to have "Jesus come into your heart" when you become a Christian? A person's in your heart?? How do you explain the Trinity to someone who has never heard of it before?

My mind was in over-drive the whole time. He asked some really great, challenging questions. I asked him questions, too. I gave him a Bible and suggested Luke might be a cool place to start reading. He wants to be in a guys' small group, which I am stoked about. He wanted to pray after our convo. My mind was still reeling when he left. Ack! What did I just say? Did any of it make sense? God...did I do ok??

Joe's been on my mind a lot and I'm praying for him. And I'm realizing it's not up to me, or his friend, or the college group to convince him to be a Christian. We're there to plant seeds and encourage him. God is the One working and tugging at his heart. Wow.