The Powerful, Practical Benefits of Street Preaching

By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None Of His Benefits:

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me,’” -Matthew 16:24

Several years ago Wini and I traveled to the University of Alabama where I led a time of revival prayer for about thirty college students. The plan originally was for me to speak for about an hour and then lead the students in revival prayer for another hour. I spoke for about ninety minutes and then we prayed. It was one of those meetings where the Holy Spirit showed up in great power. We prayed continually for almost three hours and by ten o’clock that night the students were on their faces, confessing sin, and crying out to God for an outpouring of the Spirit on the Alabama campus. The very next week a tornado came through the campus and one of the students who had been saved a year or two earlier and was a swimmer on the Alabama swim team was killed when a wall collapsed on him and his girlfriend as they waited out the storm in his basement. God used this young man’s death to make Jesus an issue on the campus.

Wini developed a strong relationship with several of the college women at that meeting and met with them many times over the next couple of years before they moved on to marriage and children or careers. I had been engaging in open air preaching for sometime and while Wini was supportive she confessed to me from time to time that she wondered really now effective this might be. One day Wini was having coffee with one of these women, who by then was in medical school, and Wini mentioned my open air preaching. What follows is the testimony of this young woman who is now a medical doctor in Birmingham serving a poor community. Upon Wini’s request this is what she recently wrote:

“Growing up I had been exposed to Christianity by my parents and church. I started reading the Bible regularly in High School after a senior girl invited me to join her small group. I did not drink or cuss or live a wild lifestyle in high school and was known as the good girl. I went to the University of Alabama for college and started struggling greatly with the temptations to be liked and popular while still wanting to pursue my faith in Christ. I joined a sorority and a campus ministry. I went to band parties and I went to worship nights. I flirted with guys and I read my Bible. I was convicted in my heart about this double life, but I was so enslaved to this desire to be like everyone else. I wanted to be the good Christian girl who could still have fun like everyone else.

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