Two Agnostics, a Christian, and the Catholic Church

The title of this blog may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but in actuality, this has been a description of my last few weeks of life.  Before I get into this, let me give you a little context as to why these weeks have been important.  For those of you that don’t know, at the beginning of this year I was appointed as a missionary to Ireland with TEAM and I will be going there at the end of October.  Even though most of the people in Ireland identify as Catholic, Ireland has the lowest percentage of Evangelical Christians of any English-speaking country.  This history with the Church, but lack of meaningful relationship with God has been heavy on my heart and is one of the main reasons that I have wanted to do missions in Europe. 

This call upon my life was recently reaffirmed in two different conversations in the past few weeks that I have had with two different agnostic individuals, Doug and Sam.  Both of them grew up with some background with the Catholic church, but despite their “religious heritage,” both of them have decided that following Jesus was not something that they were interested in.  Doug had some negative experiences with people who claimed to be Christians that gave him a distaste for Christianity as a whole.  Sam, on the other hand, simply could not believe different parts of Scripture and accept all of Scripture as truth.  As I listened to these stories, my heart hurt for the pain that had been brought into their lives at different points in time.  

Both of these guys are currently on a search for truth, but as hard as they search, truth seems to be evading them.  I had really good conversations with each of them, but in the end, we had to just agree to disagree.  I told them that the Bible says that the only way to heaven and a right relationship with God is through Jesus Christ, not simply believing He existed, but placing your faith in Him and turning your life over to Him.  However, at the time of our conversations, neither of these guys were able to accept that as truth.  As I reflected on these two conversations, I was struck by the fact that these are the same sorts of people as many that I will be ministering to in Ireland: those that have a history with Catholicism, but no meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ.  God is burdening my heart for those who need the gospel!

I continue to pray that God will reveal truth to these two guys and that eventually they will find an amazing, life-giving relationship with Jesus.  Not only do I wish this for these two individuals, but this is my prayer for the people of Ireland as well.  God has brought incredible meaning, purpose, truth, and LIFE to my life, and I hope that someday, He will bring those things to them too.