Ashley (1-16-12)

Ki-Ki and I headed into the city today. We set up at the trolley turn-around on Market & Powell. I explained Romans 1:16-17 to the crowd for a while. The Lord blessed me with a considerable amount of clarity and conviction and thus many paid attention to the words spoken.

After about twenty minutes, William the tap dancer showed up with his massive sound system. Once he arrives on the scene he pretty much drowns out all noise but his own; and not to mention that what he does is actually illegal since San Francisco municipal codes only allow for ten watts of amplification and his system is clearly over two-hundred! For whatever reason though the police do not hassle him.

Once he started dancing we headed up to Union Square for a while. That did not last long however since one really needs to project one's voice to be heard over the cars and thus the unamplified preacher soon becomes hoarse.

So we headed back down to Market and set up outside of Westgate Mall. As I stood there I remember praying audibly to the Lord, "What possible hope is there of reaching these people? Please Lord, do something."

I was preaching for about two minutes when I noticed a girl who stopped to hear what I was saying. As I was talking about Christ I could tell that something was going on in her heart so I began to very aggressively expound on His grace - fixing my attention on her the whole time.

As I would declare things like, "Jesus says that if you come to Him, He will never cast you away" and "He's the Great Physician and He is ready to restore your soul," I noticed that she began crying and thus I began speaking directly to her: "He's ready to wash all your sins away. Will you come to Him?" "He's ready to take all your shame away, Will you come to Him?" "He said He would pardon the worst of sinners, Will you come to Him?"

At that point this young lady pretty much started weeping - in fact several people stopped to see what was going on.  I stepped down off my 'soapbox' and asked her to come over to me. When she did I asked her if she wanted to come to Jesus. She said - through many tears - that she did, but she did not know how to and she feared that He would not accept her for all that she has done.

So we both cried out together to the Lord that He would indeed meet this poor broken soul where she was at and reveal His amazing grace to her.  I have good reason to believe that He did.

Her name is Ashley and it turns out that about a month ago she was singing in a brass band downtown and she heard us preaching and said that something happened to her then that she was not able to forget.

How gracious of the Lord to cause our paths to cross again; one time for the sowing and another time for the reaping.

When we were leaving Ki-Ki said to me "Why was that girl crying?" I said, "Because it seems like she just came to the Lord." It was a special moment for sure.

God bless you as you simply and sincerely "Declare His glory among the nations!" (Psalm 96:3).