Fire and Brimstone Preaching.

So I've never really thought of myself as a fire and brimstone sorta girl, but today I had the opportunity to share the gospel with a few of my classmates because of just that. We were doing a make up small group assignment in my philosophy class, which requires discussion in small groups, and rather randomly the question we were addressing was "Do Ossoma Binladen and Adolf Hitler deserve hell? And if they went to hell who would get out first? (assuming you could get out of hell.)" So at first I was pretty freaked out by having to discuss this with my peers, and a little pissed too becuase it seemed to be treating a serious topic rather lightly. I was freaked becuase I knew I would have to tell them that I believed we all deserved hell and I know that doesn't usually go over all that well. But once again the Holy Spirit intervened. By God's grace I actually ended up sharing the gospel with this group of people. I just started by saying that I believed that, yes, they deserved hell becuase they are sinners just like the rest of us and that that means we have rebelled against God and deserve his punishment. But then I also said that I believed grace was also available to them through repenting of their sin and believing in Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives. My words were rather halting and stumbling and I dind't state it so eloquent as that, and hopefully I used a little less Christianeese, I usually try not to use it with non-Christians, but somehow I think I managed to get that much across. The rest of the group then went around and shared what they believed - we had basically someone from every normal college mindset represented in our group - A Catholic girl who pretty much left it at it was God's decision and not her's. A boy who had used to be a Christian but was more concered with partying right now and didn't think they deserved hell becuase we had all done bad things. A girl who "wasn't very religious" but said sure, they were pretty bad people so they should probably go to hell. And a girl who, as the discussion progressed, shared that her main reason for disowning Christianity was her frustration with the link between American culture and Christianity which seemed to have been drawn and also that she hadn't wanted to believe just because her parents believed so she started looking into other religions and didn't feel she could choose one. She also said she thought she was probably going to hell becuase she had rejected Christianity.
And thus a discussion evolved. The party guy started asking me questions. He just brought up every problem he had with Christianity that had led him away from it and I was able to be honest with him and ended by telling him to ask God about his questions and he said he was and he would. He seemed really interested to hear my answers. He also made the rather scary comment however that he figured he could just do whatever he wanted now since he could just pull out his "get out of jail free card" when he was about to die and ask for forgiveness. Ah. So I'll pray for him.
Then this other girl who seemed to really be seeking, I got to talk with her some more and let her know that I shared those same frustrations with the church and that that's really not what Christianity is, it's just a part of the culture we live in. She said she agreed with Christian principles but didn't want to be aligned with modern-day American Christians. I invited her to my church - a group of 2,000 people who often express that same sentiment. She said she might want to come. I think I'm going to give her a copy of Blue Like Jazz too.

So, through the topic of Hell I was able to share the LOVE of Christ with my classmates today. Can I get a GO GOD on that one?!