Paving The Road For God's Messenger

Heart-beating fast...sweat running down my face...a yell that shatters the mosaic silence of the night...This was the time God began to teach me that I was commissioned by Him to preach His Word

It's been about 2 years now since I started to evangelize the world. From the hot, hot summers out in Watauga, Texas to the chilly climate of Chicago in February, my outreach has been steadily gaining speed as time moves forward. Facing opposition from even fellow church-goers (dealing with accusations of me being too "direct, offensive, and personal" in evangelism) hasn't stalled my outreach for one second. In fact, it has only pushed me on further. Now...to explain the "climactic-like" introduction to what the reader just read. I do not normally share what exactly pushed me to pursue evangelism, due to fears of claims of insanity being hurled at me, yet as I am sitting in front of my screen right now, THIS particular night happened to be the night which turned my world upside-down when it came to God poking a hole inside that space I call "my comfort zone."

To start off, it was about 7 months into my new life in Him when I first started thinking about evangelism. Leaving the comfortable, Christian environment of the Colorado trip in 2007 I just KNEW I had to do just something with the news about Christ, yet I chose not to do anything for a plethora of reasons all sprouting out from personal fear. Reading chapters like Matthew 28 and Luke 24 didn't convince me right on the spot. I was stubborn in my way of thinking and hardened my heart to God's command for all Christians to spread the Gospel to all nations and peoples. Then one night, God finally got my attention...

To this day I do not have a single clue what woke me up, but I do remember awaking to one of the biggest anxiety attacks I had ever faced! It was around 4:00 on a Saturday morning when I awoke with an extreme urge to learn just how I need to share my faith. My heart was beating fast and I remember I was really startled, but what scared me the most was a voice in my head, a voice that said that I needed to learn how to evangelize or that my mother would be taken away from me...Details are very vague for me to remember but I do remember praying to God not to take my mother away from me. I was 17 at the time and I had never felt so threatened in the comforts of my own home before, let alone my bedroom. Whether that was God trying to break down the 50-foot wall around my heart that stopped me from submitting to Him or it was Satan attacking me, knowing that by myself I would never begin evangelizing and played around with that by attacking my heart, I do not know. All I did know was that I needed to pray right then and there for protection from these threats and that my mother would be ok.

The rest of that day proved to be very interesting indeed. My church was holding a Men's Breakfast several hours later, and just when I was about to get a second helping of coffee for my eggs, hashbrowns, and sausage, Pastor John spoke up, "Today, we're going to talk about one of the most important imperatives a Christian must follow through with: evangelism." I literally stopped dead in front of the coffee pot with my mouth opened...I couldn't believe what I just heard. The rest of John's message was just about that...evangelism! Suddenly I began praying what I believe I should've prayed in my room hours before I came to my church that morning: "God, teach me how to be an evangelist." That exact prayer caused me to find myself doing what I never had thought I would ever do, and that was going up to random people in my school, and talking to them about Christ. Granted, I was real inexperienced, and these days I would NEVER try to defend how I shared my faith way back when. I needed a teacher, and God knew about that...which is why I am confident He brought Joseph into my life.

As mentioned earlier I had been attending Cornerstone Bible Church for 7 months now. I had gotten really close to the youth of the church, Matthew Edwards (the youth leader at the time), and just the people in general, but it is very funny how I never got to know Joseph Schmidt. I knew ABOUT Him with his habit of going to Downtown Fort Worth and doing something called "open air preaching," but never asked him what that was exactly. Another funny thing is that whenever people ask me how we met, truthfully I tell them I have no clue. Whether I went up to him personally or vice-versa, I remember him giving me his card with a Gospel presentation on the back (my first experience with a Gospel tract) and told me to call his phone number that was found on the card if I was still interested in evangelizing with him. I followed up with him on that offer and together we drove to his usual, Saturday-night "fishing spot" where I got my very first experience with evangelism. Truthfully a frightening experience, as one of the fellow "preachers" were threatened by a heckler, claiming he was going to go home, get some of his friends, and bring their guns to kill him. Though scary as it was, seeing Joseph preach with all confidence filled me with so much admiration for the man. I soon WANTED to be like him and have his confidence. So that night followed into a routine, over the-summer schedule of Joseph picking me up from my house 2-3 times every week, driving over to Capp Smith Park, and him instructing me in open air preaching. To help me out more, Joseph introduced me to Way of the Master, where I literally devoured all the dvds he had lent me to watch. By the end of that summer, my boldness grew tremendously and any fears I had about evangelism lessened. Looking back, that particular summer would probably be the most profitable one I had ever experienced in my life...and when it was time for that summer to draw to a close, I felt God, through Joseph, had equipped me tremendously for the work he had in store for me.

So far, I believe this post was the most fun post I had the privilege to type up. Since the beginning of this post I knew I had to recount, chronologically, how God had transformed me from a shy, introverted Christian, to now a fire-breathing evangelist. Taking with me all the evangelistic experience I had aquired over that summer into my senior year at Fossil Ridge High School, I began my year with a loud "BANG!" My routine all year was to go to school either super early or stay after school super late just talking to people about sin, Hell, righteousness, Jesus, grace, repentance, and faith in Christ alone for salvation. By the end of that year I had garnered, by God's grace, a reputation for being a Christian evangelist by mostly every group and clique in the school it seemed like. I rejoiced that people I never really hung out with knew about me because of what I did, even if they heckled me a bit as I walked to my car! After graduating high school, I entered TCC where my repuation followed as I had done some campus evangelism. Right now, I am leading a group of evangelists to Southlake Townsquare every Saturday night, the group being comprised of people whether I am either decipling or who has had experience in evangelism, and just a few weeks ago I got a call from Joseph saying that Student Outreach Leadership had unanimously voted me into leadership for my first year up at Moody!

The road has been paved for me already and I am excited to be used by God to walk down this road and spread His Word. As I look back in time to where I was in that pit of depression, and where I am now, I praise God that I am now an ambassador of Christ. This post, as well as the previous two, were for the purpose of establishing backround information on Nick Romero, and allowing the reader to get a glimpse into my heart as merely a sinner saved by grace. I can't end on a better note as I am thinking about Philippians 3, which describes my new heart so so perfectly. There, Paul writes, "Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (3:12-14).