John 3:30

He Must Increase, I Must Decrease

savior

Lost a Friend

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After only a few minutes back on Facebook, I caused my wife to lose a friend today! But this wasn’t my usual hijacking shenanigans. She asked me to read a post which had bothered her and read some comments.

Check out this thread and tell me what you think? How many problems can you spot?

You can view the previous comments here. I am just highlighting the stunning conclusion.

It should be noted that “Rachael” jumped in unprompted in order to quote my wife: “But, I believe that warning people of eternal punishment is the most loving thing they can do.” and contradict her. Then you will see she professes to avoid religious debate and to unconditionally love…finally she unfriended my wife on Facebook.

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You tell me…is there anything wrong with this picture?

What Would Jesus Lift?

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is certainly a household name by now, but many people may be surprised to hear he holds an annual conference right here in Columbus, OH. Thousands of folks flock from far (a little alliteration?) to get a chance to see Arnold, as well as learn about different supplements and equipment related to powerlifting and bodybuilding. Additionally, there are other athletic venues and competitions such as gymnastics and jujitsu.

This year, I was able to form a small team to assist me to pass out tracts and evangelize. Here’s the report! Now I don’t talk about money often, and you may know I do not ask for donations, but God provided in some marvelous ways this weekend and I want to boast about Him.

Friday night, March 1, Andrew Zunic’s wife made dinner for the two of us before we met Vince Montgomery, Megan Montgomery and Joe Conkle for evangelism. This was just one way that God provided for me. Normally, my sweet bride would gladly cook me dinner, but she had an event at another church that evening, so this worked out perfectly! Praise Jesus!

We started out at the intersection of W 2nd Avenue and High St and simply walked south. We went as far as Nationwide BLVD (a distance of about a mile). As we walked we passed out tracts and had a little fellowship. Megan got her first taste of Jeni’s ice cream that night!

Since there were enough of us, we split into two teams, and I went with Megan and Vince. We walked over to a group of teenagers who we found out were waiting for a bus and tracted them. Shortly after, a teach approached us, handed the tracts back and said, “Our students don’t need these.” I said something about not hindering the children from coming to Jesus as she walked away purposefully.

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Trekking on, we were getting a lot of rejection when a man named Aaron happily spoke to us for a long time. He attends a church in town called the Potter’s House (which I don’t know much about), but in my evangelism I’ve run into several people from this church. From what I can tell, they get the gospel right, but amidst the chaos of Pentecostalism which is espoused there, it seems many people end up mistaking “feeling grooved by the music and worship” for an authentic “born again experience.”

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Aaron was quite humble in admitting his sin, and he just couldn’t articulate the gospel (something that is indicative of not actually knowing the gospel). If this doesn’t concern you, read 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, especially verse 2. Overall it was an encouraging encounter.

Shortly after that, we met a man named Armand who is an Armenian from Canada. Not a typo, this man is actually from the country Armenia, although I doubt he was a Calvinist. It was an interesting conversation; the man basically believed the bible and about Jesus, but was also certain he was not born again. He seemed to understand grace to an extent, but when questioned, he proclaimed his own righteousness. I had to hold my tongue when he told me about his humility.  I did try to use that as an opening to say that true humility would be acknowledging and believing what God has said. He agreed, but then left it up to individual interpretation.

Vince and Megan had to leave a bit early, so I found Joe and Andrew and we continued to pass out tracts. I met a young man who described himself as a “lost Christian.” I took this to mean that he believed he was a Christian, but that he needed some mentoring. I hope to follow up with him soon. He was actually attempting to break a lifting record that weekend! His name was easy to find on the internet. My night culminated in a thoughtful and friendly discussion/debate with an atheist, but not just any atheist: this man professed to be a born again believer for 15 years who eventually realized the truth of atheism.

He was most fun to talk to since he actually did already know most of the Christian arguments. In fact, many times he would ask a question knowing my response. I was happy a few times to surprise him with what I thought was a better answer than he expected; maybe those will cause him pause.

There were two very remarkable aspects to this conversation that I want to point out. The first is that this man KNEW the Christian gospel. He knew it as well as most Christians I know. In fact, he told me he had taught apologetics. When he told me this, I said, “So I’m sure you know the verse that goes ‘knowledge puffeth up?’” He got a kick out of that. But my point is this – these things are spiritually discerned. For those of you who think you can hand any nonbeliever Lee Strobel’s A Case for Christ and that’ll convince ‘em, understand this: apart from the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, no man will see the glorious Truth of scripture for what it is and take it to heart. This man clearly had “learned” the bible, just like you can learn the storyline behind Star Wars. So don’t fall victim to the mindset that says, “If I refute all this man’s arguments, he will have no choice but to believe Christ.” It just doesn’t work that way.
That being said, you MAY thoughtfully and kindly engage a nonbeliever and discuss these things. But to be skilled at this takes practice and study in order to not get too frustrated. Often, I’ve seen Christians “lash out” in frustration, even seeing their own foundation shaken because they venture into one of these “debates.”

The second and most striking aspect to me was this: When John (that was his name) told me of his conversion from Christian to atheist – he described it in this way.

“First, I started to question how God could send so many people to hell and so few to Heaven. Then, I stopped going to church…”

There’s your key, folks. I’ve heard very few testimonies of “former Christians” who didn’t stop going to church. Let that be your lesson for today.

So Friday night, a few hundred tracts were passed out, a handful of one on one witnessing encounters occurred, and we learned just how cold it gets at night in Columbus in Winter. Everyone made it home safely and prepared for the next day.

Saturday was a different story. By the time I was preparing to pick up Andrew again, I found out that the other two team members who planned to meet us EACH had car trouble. Ultimately, Fred Triplett had to bow out entirely. Joe Conkle overcame the distress and met us outside the convention center in spite of the hardship.

Andrew & I drove to Columbus and I parked for $5. Then I paid for us to ride the bus for another $5. Total spent so far $10. You’ll understand why the emphasis later. 🙂

The crowd was simply wonderful. We spent the day passing out an estimated 2,000 tracts, and I preached with my amplified speaker for several hours. We were directly outside an entrance to the Arnold and people were stopped at the stoplights all day, so I had an audience. Several Christians stopped and encouraged me and the other guys, and we were close enough to go indoors and warm up and use the rest room. I won’t say it was easy, we were standing in 30 degree weather with wind for several hours, but we would not complain either. It actually is a good example to people of our love and kindness. Some people didn’t agree with our message, but they couldn’t deny our commitment to sharing the message, and so no real personal gain we could be receiving from our efforts, only sacrifice.

We count it all joy that we can stand in the cold to proclaim the gospel! Oh how many people never even hear of it!

We took a short break for lunch; I took care of paying for the three of us to the tune of about 18 dollars ($28 spent), and we enjoyed some fellowship and warmed up. The afternoon was filled with preaching and a few good 1 on 1’s. At one point, a young may who was smoking spoke to me at length and was really questioning what he believed. The cool part was that he knew the lifter I had met the night before. While we were talking other people who wanted a cigarette approached asking for a light, etc. They joined the conversation and we had a long talk with a man named Vernon who is seriously asking some good questions, but fills his mind with too much philosophy. I challenged him to read the bible again and see for himself if the things I told him were true.

Oh, so many more things happened that day, and you could always get Vince or Megan Montgomery’s and Joe Conkle’s or Andrew Zunic’s perspectives as well, but for the sake of length I’ll cut this off. Andrew and I walked to the bus stop, I paid $4 more to ride to the car and go home.

Oh yeah, about the money. As I said, I do not ask people for money. It just isn’t something I do at this point, and I know people who DO and I have no problem with that. But in this case, I had two people ask me if they could help by providing meals. I explained that due to the circumstances, the only real way a meal could be provided would be with cash. Well, after spending $32 out of my pocket for the transportation, parking and food, I arrived at church Sunday and received a gift of $25. What a wonderful God I serve! I can’t say how grateful I am for this. This allows me to continue to do this kind of work with less financial obligation.

May God bless the preaching of His Word and save souls! Thanks for reading.

Christmas, Cowards and Killing

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November 24, 2012. Today I led a team of Christians to share the gospel with folks outside the Ohio State vs Michigan game. About 8 of us went to OSU’s campus from 8:45-11:45 am. I preached the entire time, while others passed out tracts or preached on another corner.

After watching the first three quarters of the game at home, 3 of us returned to campus to continue to share the gospel with the lost around 3:45pm. Considering we returned to the same corner, it was no surprise that several people asked, “Are you still here?” I love that we are recognized.

I decided to use Luke 2 as a springboard to some of my preaching today. I also read Psalm 34, Colossians 1, John 1, and 1 John 1 in the open air today, but I read the Christmas account numerous times. Click the preceding link to see whether it is ok for a Christian to celebrate Christmas.

Here is my attempt to embed one of the videos from preaching. It was essentially what is known as “stoplight” preaching, and so you will see me continuously repeat myself as I share the gospel with a new crowd every few minutes.

But toward the end of the video few things happen. For the first time in my preaching career, I was physically affected. A man comes up to me while I’m preaching and you hear him yell that I’m bad for Christianity. Then you can see him push me off my stool. This was the first time today that I was physically pushed from my stool. Although this man wasn’t very rough, you can even see that his own friends know what he did was wrong. Fast forward to the 13 minute mark to see when the more exciting action occurs.

Later that evening, at the corner of Lane Avenue and High Street I was again pushed from my stool. This time is was a much more aggressive push from a man who ran up to push me, so I saw it cominmg. I even braced myself for it and pushed back in an attempt to keep my balance. The significant part of the second encounter is that I was not preaching; I was simply reading the first chapter of 1 John. The simple public reading of God’s Word is enough to convict the hearts of men and draw out their hate – and, as I loudly pointed out to the man who “attacked me” as he ran away, public reading of God’s Word is enough to put men’s cowardice on display as well.

I do not entice people or say extreme things in order that I might elicit a reaction; I used to do that when I first started open air preaching. But today, on several occasions I used the opportunity afforded to me by the public display of evil and rebellion to call out sin. The filthy mouths of the women of Columbus, the hateful and blasphemous men, and the homosexual girls who put their affection for each other on display were not spared the public embarrassment they asked for with their behavior. They also were not spared an opportunity to hear of the forgiveness offered in Christ that I wished for them to receive.

Here is the video.

You will see in the background a woman standing with a couple of signs. These were pro-life signs which depicted an aborted baby and pro-life statements.

Near the end of the video, there is a time when people vocally protested the image on the anti-abortion sign. There are times in street preaching when calling out people for their sin and unrighteousness needs to be done in a dramatic fashion; clearly I believed this was one of those times.

For those of you who are concerned that I sounded “angry;” I was. I believe that I exhibited righteous anger against sin, and use language and a tone which was intended to bring conviction to evildoers and show defense for the innocent. Although I do not agree with the woman’s religious beliefs who held the sign, I agree with her belief that humans are worth protecting from conception, and I believe in she has a right to be there and to be treated with dignity. I watched this woman repeatedly yelled and cursed at, and even spit at once by a man. I am pleased that Christ gave me the courage and boldness to defend her as I loudly and boldly declared the men who committed these acts against her to be cowards. None of them returned to defend themselves.

I do appreciate the amazing amount of support that was given for this weekend. There were people who supplied food for the conference and prayer time we held at our church Friday night. A dear saint acted as a taxi for us throughout the day today; several others prepared lunch and supplied drinks for us between evangelistic trips; and my dear bride served people and cooked and cleaned for two straight days.

Most of all, my precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ provided exceedingly and abundantly more than we could have asked. The answers to prayers were numerous. The appointments were divine; the fellowship was sweet; and the preaching was Christ-exalting, by His grace and power.

Here is the second video of the day:

Some Things Just Don’t Make Sense…

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Here’s something that doesn’t make sense to me.

There are Christians that do not believe in a literal six day creation, as specified in the book of Genesis and Exodus and testified to by Christ Himself in the New Testament. I’m speaking of born-again Christians who hold the Bible to be inerrant, not just anyone labeled Christian.

This wouldn’t be so surprising, except think about this for a second.

A Christian is someone who believes God is angry with them for sin because a book that is thousands of years old says so. In order to atone for these sins, God (who is 3 persons, but 1 God ?huh?) became a man and was subjected to his own creation to the point of crucifixion. Then, miraculously, because of the resurrection of this God-man 3 days later from the dead, all of which happened 2,000 years ago, the Christian of 2012 can have all of his or her sins transferred to this point in time on the cross with Christ, and have the righteousness of God imputed to them; thus, being justified before God forever by His grace.

Couple this with the death of all first-born Egyptian sons after 9 other remarkable plagues, men who perfectly penned Words from God Himself and preserved them as scripture, and a virgin woman giving birth to the King of kings in a manger in the middle east and you’ve got a recipe for some FAITH.

So what I don’t understand is this: How can someone readily believe all these other seriously exceptional events, events which we can only conceive of because of the scripture, yet these same folks deny the special creation of God which is actually evident to all men through general revelation?

Romans 1:19-21 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. <20> For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. <21> For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

This baffles me!

Miami (OH) @ The Ohio State University & Why I’m Rooting for Michigan

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September 1, 2012. The Redhawks of Miami University (not “The U”) are visiting Columbus to face off against Urban Meyer’s Buckeyes. The Tressel era is over. Memories of Appalachian State vs. That Team Up North swirl in my head. Hopefully, we’ll be ready to play.

But I had a different mission today than to watch football. Upon the urging of Bill Adams from Sports Fan Outreach International, and as a representative of Jesus Christ and Berean Baptist Church, I led a team of evangelists to the campus of The Ohio State University. After some back and forth, we finally agreed upon a time. Working around work schedules, we decided we’d arrive around 2:45, about 30 minutes before we’d expect the game to end, and stay until 6 or 7 to preach the gospel, distribute tracts and engage in one on one conversations.

My report below is intended to show you the surpassing power and love of God. His sovereignty, goodness and mercy were made manifest today in ways that are exceedingly and abundantly more than we could’ve hoped. Bear with my details and general wordiness, and try to enjoy the story in spite of my poor ability to transcribe it!

I am a firm believer that when you set out to serve the Lord you will face spiritual opposition. That is, you will encounter forces of the demonic who will try to thwart the mission. As difficult as this often makes life, I’ve found comfort in the opposition. I actually feel somewhat empowered in a sense, with an innate knowledge that the opposition means I’m clearly on the Lord’s side, the side I want to be on! Nevertheless, the point of the story is not to explain how I or we overcame any spiritual forces, but about how incapable I am against them. It is the power of Christ that overcomes spiritual wickedness; and God put that on display today, if only to humble us.

The story starts August 31st (Friday night). The plans are set. I’ll be picking up Matt at 1:30, meeting at Jerry’s; Jerry will pick up Fred and take us to campus. On my way home from coaching football, I have car trouble. I shut it off at a stoplight to restart it, it makes weird noise, but restarts. My daughter, Bailey, and I arrive home, but not before smelling smoke. We thought the car would explode!

So I wake up Saturday morning and my car won’t start…it won’t even turn over! Bless be the name of the Lord that allowed me to make it to my driveway the night before right before my car basically died. A call to AAA and a tow later, and I’m without a vehicle. I let Matt know he can drive. Sounds ok…except Matt’s life has been flipped upside down by family obligations last minute. Matt juggles it all and tells us he’ll meet us on campus. Jerry agrees to pick everyone else up. Joe, from Mansfield, is still on his way. All will be well, we suppose. I call the pastor to send out a prayer request to our congregation which he does right away. Then I call Tom Wilson, one of our deacons, and he prays for us and commits to continue. I feel like the Lord has already displayed His mighty hand! Even through the misfires, we are on track! Praise God. He has kept us faithful through all this and has enabled us to change our plans.

Now I realize I do not own a stool to stand on for preaching. So I find one I like online and call a friend to pick it up for me (remember, I’m without a car). Instead, Mary offers to simply bring me a stool which I can borrow! Now I have all the equipment I need; a stool, charged amp and speaker, microphone with new batteries, thousands of tracts, 27 bibles with our church information stuffed inside, a cooler of snacks and water, my personal bible and a Cleveland Browns poncho – excellent for covering boxes of bibles and our cordless speaker in the event of rain (and one really good looking combo of brown and orange as well).

The fellowship was sweet, as usual, as we made our way to Lane and Olentangy River Rd. As soon as we got there, Fred, Joe and I started passing out tracts. I immediately got into a great conversation with two young men from Lancaster who were raised Catholic, but understood the message of the gospel of grace. If I remember correctly, their names were Kyle and Ethan (sorry if you are reading this and I just got your name wrong!). If you are a brother or sister in Christ, please take a moment to pray for these two men.

I was sorta waiting for Matt to begin preaching; not sure what was holding him up. I finally stepped on the stool to preach. Very few people stopped to listen, but it was a stoplight scenario, so there were regularly 100 or so people waiting for a green light every 3 minutes for a good half an hour. Fred said he overheard someone say, “those guys were at the Super Bowl, too.” That made me chuckle!

Well, as usual, we met some “Christians.” One self-identified Christian girl gave me the middle finger and yelled F#6% you at me as I preached. I used this as an opportunity to talk about how when a person becomes a Christian, they begin to love righteousness and hate wickedness. I thank God for people like this young lady. She unwittingly drew attention to me and to my message of Christ’s glory, while embarrassing herself in her drunkenness. I remember when Ray Comfort said the best thing that can ever happen to you is a heckler; it makes sense to me now after some time preaching.

We spent a couple hours. The other major highlight was when the guys who drive the bicycles with the carriages on the back took exception to my message. They began to yell things about Satan and generally chuckle and snicker. They eventually got really close to me and cranked up some heavy metal. Again, thanks to God for bringing folks that close in order to draw attention to the message of grace and hope and forgiveness of sins which was being preached. I really enjoyed them, although I called them out a couple times as illustrations. I think they ended up pretty embarrassed by their own foolish behavior. I genuinely told them I wanted them to be forgiven of all their sins, including their attempt to thwart the preaching of God’s Word. May God grant them repentance (that’s the only way anyone exercises it).

Finally, Fred left to go home, and Joe and I still hadn’t found Matt! It turns out he was still stuck in traffic almost 2.5 hours later! Joe and I ambled to Lane and High, where there would be more foot traffic. By 6ish, Matt finally met us. Admitting he was parked illegally, we brainstormed and found a place where he could move his car. We recommended that he go to a gas station and buy a drink; Matt left. As Joe and I waited for him, I noticed Matt kept patting his pockets from across the street. I ran over to find he’d lost his wallet! He had just bought gas. We stopped and prayed. I prayed that the Lord would return Matt’s wallet to him, even if it was in a miraculous way. After a thorough car search, Matt left to go back to where he had bought gas an hour earlier.

As I made my way back across the street, I noticed my cellphone was missing! This was amazing. I had just finished speaking to Joe about spiritual warfare, and now it seemed like somehow someone was trying to prevent us from evangelizing! I went to where Matt had parked his car to look for his wallet and then look for my phone. I found neither. Eventually, I just went back to Joe and started preaching again. There were some people who had questions, and some people who just wanted to heckle, including a really inquisitive lady named Juliana. While discussing the gospel with a couple of young men, Matt walked up and handed me my phone. Praise God, I had just left it in his car when I searched for his wallet!

Matt had checked the gas station and it wasn’t there. So Matt, not realizing I had already checked, went back to his ‘illegal’ parking spot to check for his wallet. As he walked around hoping to find it, a man approached him covered head to toe in Michigan garb. “Are you Matt?” he asked. Matt instantly knew the guy must have had his wallet. What a miracle! Had Matt not planned to buy a drink, he may not have noticed his wallet was missing, and had I kept my cellphone, I may have let him know not to check the parking lot where he ultimately ran into this guy! Matt said, “We gotta root for Michigan tonight!”

Now, having seen the Lord answer prayer and overcome all these things on our behalf, we continued to evangelize for a bit. We got into a long conversation with Juliana who had much disagreement with the bible. Please pray she will have her eyes opened to God’s truth. She was enjoyable to talk to, but I had the feeling at the time and even more so now, that she was just a stall tactic. She occupied our time for a while…and I’m not sure the conversation was entirely fruitful. It actually ended with her saying “Shame on you,” to us and returning the bible we had given her that she had put in her bag.

One other quick anecdote: One young man told us absolute truth did not exist. I asked him if that was absolutely true. He said, “Yes.” When confronted by the fact that his statement was self-refuting, he just sorta got annoyed and walked away. It bothered him that we confessed to have the only message of truth about God.

All in all, it was an excellent day. I still do not have a car until Tuesday, but Matt’s nightmare ride around campus and lost wallet fiasco are all history. Joe was encouraged and encouraged us; and Fred…well Fred’s always just happy to go out. I trust the Lord did wonderful things in the hearts of men and women today. I hope he allows us to see some of those things in this life.

If you are still reading, you are a dear person. I suspect I’d have stopped by now, citing the unnecessary details and general wordiness of the author!

Thank you!

Compassion for the Lost

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This is Michael Coughlin’s presentation at the first ever Psalm 117 Mini Conference held at Berean Baptist Church in Pickerington, OH. This conference was a preparation time of fellowship, teaching, prayer and strategy for our first leg of The Biggest Project. Our task: To distribute 2,500 The Biggest Question DVD’s at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

Witnessing to folks with compassion for their condition and the condition of their loved ones.

Why should we have compassion when evangelizing? Is that the same as friendship evangelism?

Join Michael Coughlin and Berean Baptist Church at the first ever Psalm 117 Mini Conference and hear from Luke 10, the story of the Good Samaritan!

Thanks for listening.

If the player is not appearing or you prefer to download the mp3, Click here.

I will add that in the message I share that I do not think our small team would possibly distribute all 2,500 DVD’s provided by Wretched…and we ended up passing them all out so quickly that we had time to pass out tracts as well.

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