reChurch Podcast
Welcome to the reChurch Podcast, hosted by Justin and Brooke Knoop.
As we speak, there is a massive number of people leaving the institutional Church...but interestingly, they aren’t walking away from Jesus. Many of us have noticed a significant gap between what we see in the Bible and what we experience on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it.
reChurch Podcast
How To Evangelize Like Jesus | #reChurch Ep. 07
Discover a refreshingly authentic approach to evangelism that challenges the traditional norms. Have you ever wondered if mass evangelism meetings truly capture the essence of Jesus's teachings? We take you on a journey through the heart of the Great Commission, exploring how Jesus's relational and spirit-led methods offer a transformative blueprint for sharing the gospel. Drawing from the book of Acts and real-life stories, we uncover how meaningful, personal interactions can have a far greater impact than institutionalized methods that often miss the deeper message of salvation.
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I remember being taught just by example, even when we were on the mission field looking at other missionaries, that sharing the gospel was basically going to people and telling them that Jesus loved them, praying for them and then walking away. And then I remember going through the book of Acts and I'm like, wait a minute. There was not one single time where the disciples shared the gospel with somebody and started with Jesus loves you. What's interesting is they never told that to unbelievers.
Speaker 2:How many times do we just go and tell somebody Jesus loves you and think we did our duty? In the charismatic world there was this massive outbreak of praying for the sick, which we were. We did that. We prayed for the sick and we saw a lot of miracles, but we just prayed for the sick and we never shared any more than that. Oh, pray for the sick, see a miracle, Jesus loves you and move on. But I never shared the gospel with them. Cool, God healed them, because God can heal. Today he does do that, but he's actually more worried about where their soul is going.
Speaker 1:Miracles are a sign.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:What does a sign do?
Speaker 2:It points to a direction.
Speaker 1:It points you to something, right. You don't go into a town and it says welcome to Alabama, and you stand at the sign right, you camp out there. It's pointing to the city that's behind it. So signs and miracles are pointing to Jesus, right, and so those are a tool that's utilized.
Speaker 2:Like you have to throw off everything that can entangle you from running this race. Like the devil's greatest tactic for a believer is to Welcome to the ReChurch podcast.
Speaker 1:If you're tired of business as usual Christianity and you're ready to live just like Jesus, then you found yourself in the right place. I'm your host, Justin Knoop, and I'm here once again with my lovely, amazing, beautiful wife, Brooke.
Speaker 2:Brooke say hello. Yes, he keeps asking me to come over here and hang out, so I'm here again.
Speaker 1:I know Nobody else answers my calls to be on the podcast. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:That's so funny.
Speaker 1:No, but I'm super excited to talk about today's topic on hand. I think it's really important, I think it's something that's skimmed over, misunderstood a lot, and that is really the heart of evangelism and specifically, the way Jesus did it and the way Jesus calls us to do it. I think we have swapped out the Jesus if you want to say Jesus model of evangelism, which is more relational.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And organic, for a more task-oriented way of evangelism, and so we're going to get into that today. I think you know a lot of times what we talk about, you know, on this podcast, is we relate it back to how we have basically made things that come natural from the spirit in the Bible and we have institutionalized them. And so, studying church history, it's interesting that there's a lot of things that have happened over church history that started off amazing. God was moving amazingly through these things. But what's typical for human beings to do a lot of times is they see God working in and through one thing and then all of a sudden, they make a method or a structure out of it, and so I think we've done that with a lot of things.
Speaker 1:I can think of many examples, examples like things we're going to talk about in this podcast, like event style evangelism right, having these mass evangelism meetings and, oh, my goodness God, thousands of people were saved, or, you know, raise their hands and pray to prayer in that. Let's now institute this as a way. And so you slowly start to see those things, those crusade style evangelism meetings, creep into the church and next thing, you know, we're actually pulling a lot of those aspects from those meetings and putting them in our Sunday gatherings. Right, it starts to mimic. Our Sunday gatherings start to mimic like a Billy Graham crusade or something like that. So we will get into discussing a few things in that matter. But what I want to start off with first is really why not take just a close look at the authentic way that Jesus did it? What do you think if you could say a way that Jesus's way is different than the typical institutional model of evangelism? How did Jesus do it differently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know you do see Jesus talk a couple times to like a large crowd.
Speaker 2:But if you notice that those meetings actually were like not super, like fruitful, shall I say, in the scheme of things, like most everyone actually walked away from that meeting. They were more there for a sign and a wonder than they were and to be fed than to actually come and surrender to Jesus. But what you do see is the disciples come back to him and say, hey, these, these parables you're teaching? Like we don't understand them, like can you explain them to us? And that's when Jesus was like hey, the kingdom of God has been given to you because you're here to know more, to ask questions, to go deeper. And then he began to explain those things to the disciples and the few that stayed around. So I think Jesus's model of evangelism is kind of what we see in the Gospels and the book of Mark, where he sends out the disciples two by two and he says go into a town. And he says find the person of peace. And then he says stay with them for a time.
Speaker 1:He doesn't say invite them to church.
Speaker 2:No, he doesn't say invite them to church. He doesn't say you know, just talk to them for the day. He doesn't say that. He says stay with them and let your peace rest there. And he says if you go to a town and they do not receive your message, dust your feet off and move forward. So how many times this could go so many ways just that one scripture. But like how many times do we just go and tell somebody Jesus loves you and think we did our duty as an evangelist? Or how many times have we?
Speaker 2:In the charismatic world there was this massive outbreak of praying for the sick, which we did, that we prayed for the sick and we saw a lot of miracles, but we just prayed for the sick and we never shared any more than that. Like, oh, pray for the sick, see a miracle, jesus loves you, and move on. But I never shared the gospel with them Like cool, god healed them, because God can heal. Today he does do that, but he's actually more worried about where their soul is going. The miracle is to point to Jesus, which Jesus is the Savior. So the miracle is to lead you into the gospel, you know. So we can't just stop with the miracle. And two, like those people need to be discipled as well. So like getting them connected with someone if you can't stay in that area or if you are in that area, like get their number and connect with them on a regular basis, baptize them, pray for the Holy Spirit to fill them. Then teach them to obey Jesus, teach them how to do the same things you just did. That's true evangelism.
Speaker 2:I think people think evangelists are just supposed to blow in, blow up and blow out, but that's actually not what, you see, jesus do. He actually like dwelled with the people that he was discipling. He also didn't take on too many people, you know, he really just poured into the 12. And then we also see him really pour even more into the three that was around him. So don't bite off more than you can chew, but like actually take the time, once you've evangelized, to sit with the people that you've evangelized, because sometimes there's a season of actually sitting with them and like not going to preach the gospel to everybody, you see, all the time, because you already have 10 people who are like, hey, I need to know how to walk with Jesus, or whatever that may look like. So, or whatever your capacity is in that season of your life.
Speaker 1:As you're speaking, I'm thinking about all these different memories and stories of going through different phases of our Christian walk and having these revelations of evangelism not being sharing, basically sharing the gospel not being a task, and all those things. I'm thinking, wow, which way do I go with that? But kind of taking a step back just to break it down for people, because I don't know where you're at. You may be in a place where you're attending a church gathering and you've never shared the gospel with anybody. You don't even know where to start. Or you may be in a place where you're more open to it and you want to do that, but again, you've never really done it, or you've only done it a few times and you're uncomfortable with sharing the gospel.
Speaker 1:And so, going back to what you said before, like the gospel is not just Jesus loves you and what's interesting. This is one of the most interesting things and I know a lot of people will take this the wrong way, but it is what it is. I remember being taught just by example, even when we were on the mission field looking at other missionaries, that sharing the gospel was basically going to people and telling them that Jesus loved them, praying for them and then walking away or hoping, you know, something happens from that because you've planted a seed Right. And then I remember going through the book of Acts and I'm like wait a minute there was not one single time where the disciples shared the gospel with somebody and started with Jesus loves you.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is they never told that to unbelievers.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:What did they preach? What did Jesus tell them to preach? Repentance, repentance, repentance. And so you even see, with the first time that the gospel was preached, that we know of from Peter in the book of Acts preached, that we know of from Peter in the book of Acts. It's a very hard message, but it's a message, a sobering message of truth, where the person has to come to recognition with the fact that they have sinned against God.
Speaker 1:And until they have that revelation and that aha moment I guess a lot of people put it until you know the bad news, you can't understand your need for the good news. So it's not that Jesus doesn't love people and it's not that it's a bad thing necessarily to tell people Jesus loves you. Um, but I think, like, be very spirit led in those moments and just don't spray that around like hey, hey, hey, you know or think that you're evangelizing in that, in that sense doing that. And so I want to share a very specific example. I can't remember exactly how the Lord went about it, but I remember he was both teaching us that at the same time that we weren't doing it correctly. Do you remember that he basically rebuked us? He told us we're preaching a false gospel.
Speaker 1:Is what we sensed in prayer actually preaching the full message of Jesus that, hey, he died for you and you have sinned against him? There's something that you need to do. We weren't giving people the option to respond the way that the Bible tells them to respond, and I was concerned that people wouldn't receive that message right, because it wasn't sugarcoated, it wasn't, you know, didn't seem like a nice message, but I remember a specific instance. You might remember this as well. We went into a restaurant and we went into. It was like a pizza restaurant or something like that. And here's where. Here's where all the pieces fall in. It's not just about praying for the sick, seeing miracles happened. It's not just about preaching a message, the actual verbal message of the gospel. It's about all those things coming together.
Speaker 2:That's the Jesus model. It's like what you're saying is you're trying to bake cookies without like your eggs or your milk. You know what I mean. And you just have a few ingredients, but Jesus wants you to preach the whole package. But a lot of people don't even know what that whole package is because maybe they've responded to something that they don't even know what they responded to.
Speaker 1:And so I realized that miracles are a sign.
Speaker 2:That's right. What does a sign do? It points to a direction.
Speaker 1:It points you to something right. You don't go into a town and it says welcome to Alabama. And you stand at the sign right.
Speaker 1:You camp out there, it's pointing to the city that's behind it. So signs and miracles are pointing to Jesus, right, and so those are a tool that's utilized to point people to Jesus. And so we went into this restaurant and I got a word of knowledge. If you're not familiar with that, that's just a gift of the spirit, where all of a sudden, you get information about somebody that you couldn't have known without God revealing it to you. And so I felt like I had a word of knowledge for, uh, one of the waitresses, and so I went up.
Speaker 1:But when I went up, there was three waitresses standing there, and so I said hey, you know, this may sound weird, but I'm a follower of Christ and I feel like God told me that one of you is dealing with severe neck pain in this part of your neck. Um, any of you guys dealing with that? And they all just kind of stared at me and I I kind of scanned them and look at the third, the third girl, and she was like uh, yes, you know, and she explained the situation. Yes, I'm dealing with neck pain. I was like okay, can I pray for you? Prayed for her right there. All her neck pain disappeared. This was the coolest part when that happened. When that miracle took place, they all stared at me and it was like their ears were wide open because, something supernatural just happened and guess what?
Speaker 1:I didn't have to convince them to listen to what I was going to say. After that, I already had their full attention. And now, what do I do with that? What do I do in that moment? And so I could have said Jesus loves you guys. He showed you how much he loves you. God bless, have a nice day Right, leave my tip and leave. But then they would have never heard the message. They would have heard the gospel.
Speaker 1:What I did do is I said hey, you know the, the person that just healed you was not me, it was Jesus. And let me tell you about Jesus. And so I shared the gospel. The, the, the workers manager, was sitting right there behind him. So I knew I didn't want to like keep them for 10, 15 minutes. I didn't want him to get in trouble.
Speaker 1:So I tried to share the gospel the best I could, as quick as possible, tell them about the creator, about Jesus and what he did for them. And and then I and then I offered them to respond. I said hey, this is how you respond right through repentance, and I go through that just within a couple minutes. And I looked at each of them and I said do you want to follow Jesus? Like, do you want to respond to that message? And I looked at the first one and she just I can't remember if it was all, I think it was all three girls she looked at me and just stared at me, didn't answer. I went to the second one. I was like what about you? She just stared at me, didn't answer. I looked at the third one and she had tears in her eyes and she said, she said this.
Speaker 2:She said why would I not want?
Speaker 1:to follow a God like that. And I was blown away because this is really the first time I was fully obedient to just preach the pure truth as strong and as straightforward as can be, no fluff. And two-thirds of them were not ready, but one was, and so I said let me pray, for this was the crazy thing. We were very bold at that time. So she's behind the counter manager over here, two workers here, restaurant behind us, and I said well, let me pray for you to be filled with the Holy Spirit right now. So I pray for her to be filled with the Holy Spirit. She begins to receive the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:She kind of falls up against the wall, if you remember, and literally starts praying in tongues right there in the restaurant Right, and then we connected her with some friends and told her that she needed to get baptized we take baptism really seriously because Jesus did and so we connected her with a friend because we were going to be gone, we were going to be out of town and stuff, and so this I share that example in detail because this was the first time that I remember just being fully obedient to Christ and understanding that I don't have to, I don't have to add stuff to this thing, like Jesus already set a perfect example. But sometimes I don't know whether we're we're scared to do it or we think it won't work, or it's going to be embarrassing if we pray for somebody and nothing happens, like who cares? That's on him, that's not on us. We're just called to walk in faith and be obedient to do that, and it is so simple what I just explained to you. That all took place in under 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, too, what's really cool is, as that story was, as this was happening, we had a group of people with us, a group of believers, and one or two of the believers that were with us were like wow, I've never heard the gospel shared like that and they're like we've never been baptized before. And that night they went and baptized each other. The two of them it was a husband and wife went and baptized each other.
Speaker 1:No, we went with them. Oh, that's right, we baptized them I forgot we went and baptized.
Speaker 2:This was a long time ago. That's why I'm like the details get foggy but we go and baptize them. But after we baptized them, we remembered that the girl that wanted to be baptized gave us her number, which we gave to this couple because they lived right down the street from the restaurant. And we gave them the number and they put it in the back pocket. We baptized them. We're like, oh no, the numbers in the back pocket, like we just dunked you in this. Now it's like a river, you know so, like a muddy river, and we're like, oh no, he takes it out, it's completely dry, number, unfazed and affected. And they ended up, I think, baptizing the girl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't remember the story, but yeah, yeah, it's so wild, and that's just one example of many of that happening.
Speaker 1:And that was when we realized it's not. It's not about having tons and tons of people respond, but just giving the pure message and the pure truth to people. Because there are you know Paul says it like some, some plants, some water, but it's God who brings the growth. You don't know. You don't know who has prayed for that person, who has poured into that person all those things in that moment. Now let me give you a different scenario.
Speaker 1:This is the institutional model of evangelism at large. Instead of me just actually doing that with that person, instead of me sharing the gospel with that person, I would invite them to a church service. That's why, on the front of this, that's why the thumbnail says don't invite your friends to church. Don't invite them to church. Why? Because it's a bad thing that they hear the message or anything. No, it's because it's actually your responsibility as a disciple of Christ to do the work. The great commission is not just for church leaders. So what do you think? Do you remember when you realized, when that hit you, that the? I remember you sharing stories in past podcasts about bringing the great commission to other people like hey, did you know this? But do you remember when it hit you that the great commission was not just for pastors and leaders and and and uh, professionals, if you will, in the church, but it's actually for every person. Surprisingly, this is not widely known. A lot of people think it's not their responsibility to share the gospel and to baptize people. That's right.
Speaker 2:I think the sad part is, if you set the church down at large at a coffee shop and just sat across the table with them and opened your Bible to the end of each gospel and said, what is the Great Commission? They could not tell you what it is because they've never been held accountable to actually share it or they haven't been taught it themselves, which means we are failing somewhere in the institution. We have to teach people how to share their faith, share the gospel and live out the Great Commission. That's what you're held accountable to. Those are Jesus's last words, right? So I remember for us like we had traveled overseas. We've been all around the world like preaching the gospel large groups, small groups, house situations, intimate situations, whatever, whatever environment there was, we have done it, you know, in the jungle, in the desert, like we've been everywhere. And so we'd share the gospel and I remember the Lord.
Speaker 2:We were living in Norway at the time and the Lord woke me up in my sleep and told me that the gospel we had preached was partial and that it wasn't the gospel that saved and that that blood was on our hands. What do you do? What do you do at one o'clock in the morning when you're living somewhere we were actually living in someone's home and like God wakes you up to tell you that blood is on your hands. So the first thing I said is Lord, how do I make this right? Like, do I need to go back to the Philippines, to Africa, to India, to Nepal? Like do I need to go back to all these places and like find these people? Because some of it was like gels.
Speaker 2:We went into and preached at Like I don't know if I can go back and get in there and all these things. And the Lord said no, you don't have to fix it. He said, but you just don't speak the gospel or preach it until you know exactly what you're preaching and why you're preaching it in the full picture of the full gospel. And I was like yes, sir, I repent for preaching a false gospel, a partial gospel that doesn't save. And I said teach me. So I, literally I didn't share the gospel for weeks and that was weird for us at that time. You know not to share the gospel almost every day of our lives. You know we're still very evangelistic. So I'm like sitting there and I'm like okay, lord, like where do I start? And he said start in the book of Acts, and in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter two, it's the only place in scripture where you see the gospel preached the.
Speaker 1:Peter package.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Peter package. That's actually really good, the Peter package. I love that, where you see the gospel preached and the response to the gospel and people getting a born again at the same moment. Someone preaches it at one time in one chapter. It's the only place in scripture you see that happen.
Speaker 2:So in Acts, chapter two, you know, peter stands up and it says he was just had received the Holy Spirit. Some people thought he was drunk, some people thought he was crazy, but he corrects them and he's like guys, like this is not drunkenness, this is not crazy. It's nine o'clock in the morning. But this is what Joel, the prophet and the old told us would happen the Spirit would be poured out on all flesh. And he said so, this is what's taking place.
Speaker 2:And then he calls his brothers, his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters, and says hey, like guys, you killed the Messiah. He didn't say gosh, jesus loves you so much. I saw his death on a cross just a few days ago. Like he didn't say that, he called out their sin. He told them the bad news. He said you've killed the Messiah.
Speaker 2:So he calls out their sin and it says in that moment that they were cut to the heart, which is true repentance, true repentance is being cut to the heart, open heart surgery, you're bleeding out. And so they're like what do we do, peter? What do we do to fix this? And he says repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit. Simple as that. Like if I don't have a lot of time to share the gospel, I just share that story in five minutes. At a coffee shop, like hey, did you know that? Like you've ascended against God, you might not have hung him on a cross, but every time you curse or every time you sleep with your boyfriend, you put a nail in his hand twice. And I'm like what would you do if the Holy Spirit's been working in your heart, already doing things in you, and then all of a sudden, somebody came to you and told you that yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, what are they going to do? Or what if God tells you to go talk to them and you say that message in Acts 2, and all of a sudden you say, hey, the Lord wants you to know you need to repent of fornication or pornography? And they're like how did you know? I don't know. God just told me to say it. And so then they realize God sees them, this is God pursuing me right now and you don't just walk away in that moment. If they want to be baptized, you go baptize them. In that moment People will be like, well, what if you're on the way to work? Or what if they're on the way to work? Or what if, da-da-da-da-da-da I'm like people call out for being sick more than they do you can call out when you get baptized, I can promise you that you can call out born again.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've got to get born again. I'll be back tomorrow. You know what I'm saying. You'll be much thankful that I'm a new creation when I get back. But you can go baptize them. Paul literally was in a jail cell at midnight and it says he immediately went and baptized the disciples when the jail cell broke open at midnight and we're like, maybe we should wait a month and let the. I've been on the side of the institutional church.
Speaker 1:So long I can't remember.
Speaker 2:Like the? What's it called when they do that? Like baptismal Sunday, I guess? Like let's wait. In five months there's a baptism Sunday when we fill up the tub and we dunk you then and you can just wait. Put your name on this piece of paper. No, baptize them immediately, Immediately.
Speaker 1:That's the example we see in scripture there was an urgency.
Speaker 2:Seriously, the eunuch in the desert is on a chariot heading to a place and they're in the desert like there's snakes, there's hilla, monsters I have all boys so I know about things like that. That's what we do in homeschool. There's all these things in these deserts. And they stop the chariot and he says let's hold me back from being baptized right now. There's water, there's water.
Speaker 1:He points it out points it out. This is a cool thing and I want to share with you a revelation the Lord gave me when you were just talking. But this is a cool thing People don't pay attention to people's response. They think if it's not written in the scripture, then it never actually happened. But we don't even hear Philip in that moment preach baptism. No, but something that he said to causes him to say there's water.
Speaker 2:What withholds me?
Speaker 1:from being baptized right now yeah.
Speaker 1:And he's like well, you know, do you believe? Then nothing. So something he said to him made him think that he needed to get into the water. Now, something Peter said to the jailer made his whole household think that they needed to be baptized. Then, at midnight, something that happened to Peter when he preached to Cornelius' household made him say what withholds us from baptizing them? They had to baptize them now. Something hit Paul when he in Ephesians, chapter 19,. When he met those disciples of John, something, the message that he knew, caused him to say you must be that's Acts 19,.
Speaker 2:by the way, Sorry, Acts 19. He was on the way to Ephesus. That's why he got confused.
Speaker 1:On the way to Ephesus. There is no Ephesians 19, I promise you that let's move on that. But something in the message he understood caused him to say you must be baptized into Christ Jesus now. Now yeah, and so there's nowhere in scripture. These are some of the things that I want to challenge people with is like we have so many traditions, so many things that we do so many ways. We do things that are completely not in scripture and we don't ever challenge those.
Speaker 1:but we tend to challenge all the things that are in scripture because we want our, because we're we're more comfortable with our traditions, what I want to say is let's just take a fresh look at the scripture, because if Jesus did it, if the disciples did it, it's at least worth taking a look at, because there must be a reason that they did it. There must be a reason. There was an urgency with baptism. But the one thing I want to say I want to go back to is I was thinking about the difference between the Jesus loves you gospel and the repentance gospel, and this hit me. You can tell somebody Jesus loves you without loving them truly in your heart and it falls flat to the ground. But yet again, you could be full of love in your heart and tell somebody they need to repent of their sins and it can pierce their heart because you genuinely love them.
Speaker 1:People are too focused on the words, getting the words right that are coming out of their mouth, as opposed to getting your heart right before God. Because when your heart is right before God, you'll gain his heart for people, you will genuinely love people and you can say hard things without condemning them. That's right. I've watched that in you. I've watched things come out of your mouth to people and I'm like I would have had a hard time saying that or calling that out. I'm like like I would have had a hard time saying that or calling that out and then I'll watch the person respond and just totally total humility and repent and experience God in such a radical way. But it's because I noticed, because it's because of the time and intercession that you spend for people like you are invested in relationships, you love people, so you can speak to them like that it's the same thing, Like can say harder things to the ones that you live with, you love your family members and stuff like that typically than you would a stranger.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I think it's the same way with evangelism, which brings me to my next point. There's a very cold way that we do this task-oriented evangelism in the church. The relationship becomes maybe. I invited you to this event, what do you think? And this might be a hard time. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with event style evangelistic meetings.
Speaker 2:We do it sometimes. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But where do you think that misses the mark? Why can't that be all that we do? Yeah, where do you?
Speaker 2:think that misses the mark. Why can't that be all that we do? I think event style evangelism can be good if you have a large group of people who are interested or something of that nature. But what I realized being an evangelist for a long time I would call myself evangelistic by gifting. I'm very prophetic. I love to share the gospel. It's one of my favorite things. Like you can ask anybody like if we're out and about in public, like Brooke is going to go find the random person over there and she's talking to him and she'll talk. I'll talk to him for two hours and Justin's like um, it's a family day and I'm like I'm so sorry we end up doing family stuff.
Speaker 1:So you're trying to grow the family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will sit there and just talk or whatever. And so for me, what I realize has been the most fruitful is, when you do those large meetings, you don't know what's hitting and sparking who and what's challenging and correcting or encouraging who, unless you get in a really lucky situation and they come tell you. But that's not always the case. When you're one-on-one with someone like they can actually ask questions, you know, and you can exchange phone numbers, and it can go deeper and it can be better, and it can, it can actually go somewhere. Um, so not that they're both wrong, but you need to be comfortable in both areas. But I think the main point here is no matter if you are an evangelist by gifting okay, I might be evangelist by gifting, it comes more natural to me but we are all, as believers, called to evangelize right. So what that means is we all need to be ready to share our faith in any moment or time if we're asked right, and also have our ears open towards heaven. If I'm at a pool and I'm sitting, have our ears open towards heaven, like if I'm at a pool and I'm sitting there and I've got my four kids, I'm looking. Literally my whole mindset is who needs Jesus here, everywhere I go. So my kids are playing, I'm sitting there, I'm playing with them in the pool, whatever the case may be, and I'm asking Lord, is there someone here who needs to know you? Is there someone here who's seeking you? Is there someone here who's a person of peace? And I'll just walk up to somebody and maybe I talk and immediately I realize, yeah, they're not the person you know, like they're not. Their hearts are kind of hard towards Jesus. But then I'll go to the next person and talk to them and the problem is is we don't even know how to start these conversations because we're so uncomfortable, because we don't practice sharing the gospel.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, the first time I got up to share the gospel was in a large group. I was so uncomfortable, I didn't even really know what to say at the time because your nerves are so high Like you just kind of you know how your mind goes blank, like it was kind of that situation. But I just had to trust that the Lord was going to fill my mouth and I watched him show up and he filled my mouth. I had prophetic words. People got born again and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's like the Bible's true, he does. It says not to worry what you're going to say or how you're going to say it, because he's going to give you the words to say and that happened to me.
Speaker 2:And after that moment I'm like, oh, I can do this every day. Like I found my purpose in that moment because I watch people genuinely want to give their lives to Jesus and that's what I'm here for. Like, what else am I on the earth for? Is that? So I think, once you do it once and you see it work and you actually see people respond, not to that. Jesus loves you. Message, people love that.
Speaker 2:Like, of course, somebody's gonna be like, oh, thank you so much. But like, hey, you have all sinned and you've offended God. You are one of the ones that hung him on the tree, even though you weren't there that day. Your sin hung him on a tree, right, you have to repent. And when you see somebody actually genuinely repent, like you, what else do you want to do with your life?
Speaker 2:I am literally addicted to seeing people know Jesus. I don't know what else to do, you know. So I sit there and I say that like, get confident, share your testimony. I mean golly. We could even do like, maybe even a tutorial on how to share your testimony and share the gospel within it. You know that's really powerful as well. But being able to do both is great, but not everybody's good at standing up in front of a crowd.
Speaker 2:The best evangelistic tool is to be confident who Jesus Christ is. And the more you see the gospel work, the more you believe it, the more authority you have in it and the bolder you get Like I've shared the gospel. I can't even count anymore how many times I've shared it and I've seen people respond to it almost every time I've shared it. And now I know it works without a shadow of a doubt, so I don't go in thinking are they going to be upset or offended Like? I just know it works. And that confidence and boldness, man, the Holy Spirit, partnered with that, Boom. People's hearts are moved when you begin to share the love of Jesus through repentance. Okay, the love of Jesus is that he died for you while you were still a sinner, but we have to talk about the sin so we can understand the love. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So no, that's good, and I think um a lot of people misunderstand boldness and where it comes from Now. There is one section of scripture where Paul asks the church to pray for him that he might be bold in his proclamation of the gospel.
Speaker 1:So I think there is a supernatural boldness that can come over you with the Holy Spirit, right, but in general, like your normal boldness, the boldness people are looking for to actually share their faith or share the gospel in general conversation, sitting in a waiting room, in an elevator, wherever it may be at your workplace that boldness doesn't always come supernaturally, it comes through practice.
Speaker 1:And I want you to think about it this way. I want the people who are listening to think about it this way. There are so many things that you do right now in your life that you do with ease and it's comes now, it seems seemingly comes natural, and you're so bold in it Like you. You go out to drive If you've been driving for 20 plus years. You go out and you drive a car. You're not like man. I wonder if it's going to go okay today. Man, I'm really nervous about turning on that left turn signal. How do I do my, my, my? How do I put my brights on? Where's the break?
Speaker 2:again, you know you're not thinking about like our 16 year old drive for three days without his lights on and he didn't even know it.
Speaker 1:I'm like but then you get to see that Right and you know, in 20 years he'll be, he'll be just like us. But in when you're just getting started it's very nerve wracking. It's because you just you're not familiar with it. There's so many things in our life but we don't actually apply that to Christianity and say, hey, the big reason that you're uncomfortable sharing the gospel is because you don't share the gospel Like we were too.
Speaker 1:Everybody is it's a very rare case If it's something. Even I think your case was kind of rare to where you stepped out and you did it and you saw those major results. So even if you just share it once and you totally screw it up and you you know, don't let that stop you, don't let that stop you from just sharing it once and you totally screw it up and you and you know, don't let that stop you, don't let that stop you from just sharing it again and sharing it again.
Speaker 2:You don't have to get up in front of a crowd of 5,000 people the first time you share the gospel start with your mother, who's not saved, or your grandmother, who's not saved, or your children, who are not saved, or your husband, who is not saved, or your cousin or your aunt. Start with people that you actually know. Share with your family first and, if they reject you, move to your friends and other people in your life. I'm not asking you to go to walk up to the stranger at Walmart and go share the gospel with them. Every single person that they know, whether it's family, friend or coworker, whatever the case may be. Somebody doesn't know Jesus. Start there Like, start there. That's the most comfortable place for you to begin to share the gospel and practice. See what happens.
Speaker 1:This is kind of funny that I'm sharing this, but, um, and this may be for somebody, somebody may be like that's weird. But it's funny that driving in our car we'll sing songs like at the loud, you know, as loud as we can, all this stuff.
Speaker 1:But then when it comes to something like that, like sharing the gospel, like I would never do that in the car alone Share the gospel, preach the gospel to yourself in the car, when nobody's there, like nobody's going to laugh at you, it's just you and the Holy Spirit. You know, unless the Holy Spirit chuckles he might, that's right. But here's the example. The Holy Spirit chuckles, he might, but here's the example.
Speaker 1:I was in the shower this one time and I wanted to be able to clearly communicate my understanding of the gospel, my understanding in certain aspects of things, and so I asked myself the question what is the gospel? And then I just shared it out loud to myself and then, based on how I shared it, I was like well, where does dot dot dot play a part in it? Where does faith play a part? What does repentance mean? I just started questioning myself like I was another person and that may sound weird to you, but it's like why are we so willing to put so much practice into other things? But it sounds silly to practice sharing the gospel with somebody. We think that spiritual stuff should just come automatic and if it doesn't, then we don't do it at all. That's right and it's like.
Speaker 2:But why does it say? The scriptures say like stir up the spirit within yourselves. Right, how do you stir up the spirit? I mean there's many ways to stir up the spirit. There's adoration, there's thankfulness, there's praying in tongues. There, I mean, there's many ways to serve the Spirit. There's adoration, there's thankfulness, there's praying in tongues, there's preaching the gospel to yourself. There will be times I'll be in prayer and I'll be praying in the Spirit and then, all of a sudden, I'll picture myself preaching the gospel to people and I'm sitting there weeping because I'm like gosh, this is really good news. It's almost like I'm getting born again, again, and I realize like I'm getting born again.
Speaker 2:Again, you know, like, and I realized like I'm like Lord and sometimes I interpret it as in like, wow, I need to go share the gospel with somebody today. Or the Lord's like no, you just need to be reminded of this message, that you've been saved, and it just spurs me up and gives me this gratitude and things like that. So, like, read the gospel to yourself. Read Acts 2 over and over and over again, Get comfortable with it. Read it to others, Read it to your family, to your children, over and over again, and then the next thing you know, you're just going to be able to.
Speaker 2:I could literally tell you the book of Acts, or chapter Acts, chapter 2, as if I was there, Because I've read it so many times and I have preached that message so many times to people that it literally is like I could do it in my sleep at this point. Like Justin's saying like, if you don't practice driving, you never get comfortable. If you don't practice folding laundry, you never get good at it. If you don't practice what you know you need to, you're never going to be confident in it. So just go do it.
Speaker 1:And I want to say too, that doesn't mean that you just memorize a paragraph of sharing the gospel, and then you regurgitate it you'll notice that there are elements to it. There are primary elements to it that do not change, but the way it's delivered is going to change based on who you're speaking to. That's right. I'll give you an example. If there's a person that you're talking to and they're extremely repentant already, you don't have to push repentance in that message that much.
Speaker 1:You don't have to overemphasize on a part that they already get. But there may be someone that you're sharing the gospel with and through the conversation that you had prior, you realize they don't even think they're a sinner, right, and so in that case you might say something like hey, um, have you give them an example of what, what sin is? Have you ever? Have you ever lied? Ever lied to somebody? You ever used the Lord's name in vain? Have you ever thought lustfully, you know, about somebody?
Speaker 2:Well, we've had that happen. Remember that one girl that came to our house and she wanted to be baptized. And we're kind of like so why? Why do you want to be baptized? Cause we didn't know her that. Well, somebody brought her and was like, hey, like I be there for you, but you're going to be the one that does this. So we just kind of asked the question so why do you want to be baptized? She's like, well, I don't know. And I looked at my friend and I'm like I thought you said she was ready to be baptized. She's like she said she was.
Speaker 2:And I'm like has she repented? She's like, well, not yet. And I'm like I really haven't done anything that bad. And I'm like, huh, interesting, like the Bible says we've all sinned and fallen short. And if you say you're without sin, you're a liar, you know. And she's like, yeah, I mean I can't really think of anything. And I'm like, so you've never told a lie before. And she's like, well, this one time, dah, dah, dah, dah. I'm like you've never, you know, done X, y and Z. And she's like, oh, yeah, she's like I didn't even realize that was wrong and like we just begin to explain to her, give her examples of what sin was. And then, all of a sudden, the next thing, you know, she's weeping like and she's like I am a sinner, you know, and she begins to repent.
Speaker 2:you know she got baptized that night, so it was really cool.
Speaker 1:but no, that's so good and that's important. I love when you share practical examples like that, and that's what we want to do on this podcast is we don't don't want to just speak in theory, we want to give you examples because we are are hoping that this, this listening to this podcast, will actually encourage you that you can do it. This is this the. The goal of this podcast is not to say, is not to just criticize, it's not to criticize really at all and say like oh, the church is missing it here and missing it here. It's to say we're missing it here, but it's so much easier than you think if you would just make a few different shifts, which?
Speaker 1:you're thinking and just trust the Lord. Trust the Lord, that's right, and just step out and actually do it yourself. And so the biggest reason that we speak out against the institutional church system is because it creates an unbiblical clergy lady divide.
Speaker 1:If you don't know what that means, that just means that we have somehow separated Christians based on their professional level in different facets, and so we've got professional paid Christians versus the regular members of the church, and what that does is brings up kind of the next segment of our talk of the church, and what that does is brings up kind of the next segment of our talk. What that does is it? It puts all the responsibility on a select few and it relieves the responsibility of a bunch of people, and so you end up with a large majority of the church and go. You can ask yourself if you're watching this podcast or whatever, or start asking people around. Ask them how many people they've led to Christ, ask them how many people they've shared the gospel with. And if they have, ask them have you ever in that told somebody they need to repent of their sins? Then ask them if anyone has ever responded to that message, and you will be alarmed at how many people have not only never done that or they've just tried it once or twice.
Speaker 2:Or they didn't even know it was their responsibility, right? That's the scary part.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Like a lot of where the institutional church is at right now is that you come to be fed and you go out and you come back to get fed and then you just go back to your day-to-day life and then you just come to get fed Like the best, the 10 best ways to have a good life, or the 10 best ways to pray, like there is so much to more to the Christian walk than just learning to how to have a prayer life. Is that important? Absolutely, I have. I love my prayer life. Like I feel like that's one of my strongest areas in my life is my prayer life.
Speaker 2:But there's so many more things that we get to do, you know, and evangelism is one of them. Like the Bible literally says, like you have to bear fruit, you have to. So why are we not bearing fruit? And fruit is not just good character, that's a part of it. But if you are actually connected to the vine of Jesus, you can't help but to manifest Christ everywhere you go and it will come out in all of your conversations and you will lead people to Jesus. It's not your pastor's job to lead people to Jesus. Your pastor's job. Pastor's job the elder above you who's gone a little bit farther along than you. His job is to make sure that you know how to share the gospel, right? Yeah, yeah, not to do all the things.
Speaker 1:That's a really good point. There's two things that made me think of. One is if you look and we, again, we do believe in the five-fold ministry, the gifts of the spirit, we believe in the shepherding gifting Again, we do believe in the five-fold ministry, the gifts of the Spirit. We believe in the shepherding gifting. We think that shepherds, known as pastors, now taking the CEO position in the church. It's unbiblical, Right, the way that they race to that level in just maybe every Sunday preaching a message. Stuff like that We've talked about that in other podcast episodes is wrong.
Speaker 1:But the shepherding gifting is there In the, the fivefold ministry. If you look in Ephesians, chapter four, it tells you what the purpose of that is. It says those people are gifts to the body of Christ, right, so that they can equip the body of Christ to do the work of ministry. And so what we're not it's so funny is is we take that and we see it's just to express your gifting. So if you're a teacher, you just teach. If you're an evangelist, you're the one that evangelizes Instead of understanding that if you're gifted in evangelism you evangelize, but then you teach and train others to evangelize.
Speaker 1:If you're a teacher, then you actually teach others to teach, and so your gifting should be inspiring others to begin to do the work of the ministry. But what we're seeing is that the one with the gifting is doing all the ministry, and the scary thing is is listen. This is um. I recently, uh, recently, got to uh sit down with a group of guys and talk with John Brevere and um, his, his heart it was, it was just. It blew me away.
Speaker 1:Uh, the, the message that he shared with us and the conversation that he shared with us, and it's his life message. He talks about it everywhere he go he goes. But he began to talk about, um, the elementary principles of the faith, which is found in Hebrews, chapter six, uh, and it talks about the uh, uh. In the end it talks about final judgment, which is something that we either don't talk about in the church a lot or we don't actually discuss what it looks like for believers to be judged. So we talk about, hey, unbelievers are going to hell, this and stuff. But what does it look like when you stand before Jesus? And he started bringing up scriptures, specifically talking about full and partial rewards and like really thinking about life and what we do in light of eternity, really thinking about life and what we do in light of eternity.
Speaker 2:Not getting caught up on works-based salvation, but understand that there are works for us to do after we have our initial salvation encounter with Jesus. Yeah, let's touch on that real quick, because I think that a lot of people hear what you're saying and you're like saying you're trying to earn your salvation. Some people may argue that with what you're saying, salvation. Some people may argue that with what you're saying, what we believe is that there is nothing you can do to earn your salvation.
Speaker 2:It's a free gift through Jesus Christ, his death and burial resurrection, given to anyone who will respond. It's a free gift, right? But once you are born again, there's good works to be done.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay. So that's what Ephesians chapter two and three is talking about. It says you've been born again into good works. So those works don't keep you saved, those works don't get you saved, but those works are a manifestation of your salvation.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Is that clear?
Speaker 1:Work out your salvation. I think we're clear this is crazy.
Speaker 2:Work out your salvation. I think we're clear. This is crazy. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Yes. Why the fear of?
Speaker 1:the Lord, and that's what he was talking to us about is a healthy fear of the Lord. It's a fear of not being with the Lord.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:It's not. You're scared to be with him. Right, you're drawn to him, but you have this healthy fear of the Lord that if you don't actually do what you're called to do, then you stand before him and you actually have to give an account for what you did in this body, the words that came out of your mouth or didn't come out of your mouth, and so just thinking of that perspective can really help you have a healthy fear and understand that I was given a massive gift. We forget, we so easily forget. It's like a little kid that gets a bunch of Christmas gifts and it's all exciting for the first week and the next thing, you know, it goes right into the toy box, into the pile. Right, I think that's what we as Christians do a lot with salvation.
Speaker 1:We do that, we toss it back there and we move on with our life and we just kind of go around the routine and we go to church and we do all these things and we're like salvation and we do all these things and we're like salvation actually never, we never. There's things Jesus told us to do so that we would. The reason we, you know, do communion, the Lord's supper, is so that we can remember what Jesus has done for us and we can relive that and the Holy Spirit will remind us and then all of a sudden we can develop that urgency in our heart again. There is no urgency in the church. Right For salvation, it doesn't. Our urgency doesn't have to come from a doom and gloom message to say Jesus is returning tomorrow. Whether or not Jesus is returning tomorrow or 10,000 years from now, the person in front of you might not make it until tomorrow. That's right.
Speaker 1:So the message is urgent, no matter what, for all, and we have to understand that this is our responsibility. So if you didn't know that, you know, that's okay. But have that revelation, have that understanding, that aha moment, repent and say Lord, where do I start? What do I do? Teach me, he'll show you. It's his heart and his command. If Jesus commands you to do something, then he also gives you the grace and ability to do that.
Speaker 1:So we don't have to be scared that we're just the one person that is never going to know how to share the gospel. Or we give them all the excuses, lord, I don't know how to speak in front of people, or I'm not good at communication, or you know, blah, blah, blah, or I don't have friends, or or whatever. We don't do that. And so then we, you know again, push off everything onto the professionals and to the pastors, and then half the time you take them. You take them to your church service. They ain't getting the gospel anyway.
Speaker 1:So it's like what do we do? That's why this message is so urgent and so important. I want to say one side note. If you're wondering, well, what is the gospel right? Well, you can look in scripture. But also if you want to see a video on that, the first two videos on our YouTube page is me sharing the gospel. They're years apart, but different ways, simple ways, one where I kind of use some cups and things a demonstration to share the gospel, and the other one is just me sharing the full gospel.
Speaker 2:And if you listen to my testimony, you'll hear me share the gospel through my testimony. So there's three ways on how to share the gospel.
Speaker 1:It's pretty much the first three videos. Oh, no, no, no, it's that and it's our first episode of this podcast, that's right, we share the gospel there. It's how just about the true gospel. It's about the proper response to the gospel as well, what we get into in that first episode. So we want people to know that, first and foremost, that's what we're about, because everything goes to that, everything comes back to that.
Speaker 2:That is the most important thing, so that's why we emphasize it on this channel a lot. So what do you think? How do you think our version of basically what we talked about before consumer Christianity has played a part in being a barrier for evangelism in the church? Well, that kind of sparked that thought sparked my mind, when you were talking just then about like opening up your salvation as a gift and then putting it in the toy box. I think that people think that salvation is all about just getting to a destination or a place you know. So I got saved, so I can go to heaven. Well, that's the issue, though. Like the, the reward of being saved is getting to go to heaven. It's not salvation in and of itself.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense. So if you walked out your salvation here on this earth with fear and trembling and the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge and understanding so let's get the fear of the Lord and then, after you receive salvation, walk out your salvation with fear and trembling, Like there is a mission to be done. There's a reason why you don't just get zapped out of here as soon as you accept Jesus as your savior. Well, first of all, you got to walk it out to show that you're a faithful, and then, second, you have to. There's a mission that you're on. There's a mission to be accomplished. It's the most important mission that you will ever live for. You are only on this earth the Bible as a vapor of time. It's like a whoosh in the light of eternity. Right, that's right. And then, when you get to eternity, are you going to be the janitor cleaning the toilet? Are you going to be the one that is ruling nations?
Speaker 2:I think people think heaven is just like this place, where there's streets of gold and you get this massive mansion and you just eat at this feast all the time. If gluttony is a sin here y'all, gluttony is a sin in heaven too, You're not going to just eat at a table all the time you know what I'm saying. Like the rules aren't going to change when you get there. It's just going to be much easier to live by because you're not going to have the temptations and a nature of sinfulness and a world of sinfulness around you but and we're going to have a full revelation of who Jesus is. So we won't even think about temptations like that. But when you get to heaven, there is rewards, and the Bible talks about positions being given like tasks to be done. I don't want to be the one that's sweeping the streets of gold. I want to be somebody who's like actually who knows ruling a city, like taking care of a city. You know, and I know Mormons got some weird beliefs about planets and things like that. I ain't talking about that kind of stuff, but that's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 2:But what I am talking about is there's responsibilities that will give into the equivalent of what you did here on earth. And I don't do things for Jesus just to get rewards. I do it because I had a radical revelation that he loves me and His love for me has filled me up so much. I respond to Him in love. So I can't help but to think about Him, to meet with Him, to serve Him, to love Him. But at the same time, I'm highly motivated by wow, if I do a really good job steering this life on this side of heaven in every area of my life, and have the fear of the Lord in every area of my life, wow, like, what reward will come with that, you know? So those are things I think about, but I don't necessarily do it for the reward, but it's exciting, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the thing that we'll kind of wind down with is something that you said. You said something about motivation, like what motivates you, and there's a scripture in that same meeting I was talking about earlier that we started to discuss, and that was the scripture in John 4, 34, where the disciples come up to Jesus and they know that he hasn't eaten any physical food in a while, and so they're asking about food and he turns to them and he says my food is to do the will of my father, who sent me, and accomplish his work. And I think we slot, we skim right past that and understanding either what that meant or we think it was just for Jesus. And I've realized over time that if we are, if we are losing energy in our spiritual walk.
Speaker 1:if we are drifting, if we are complacent, it's because we have stopped seeking and stop doing the will of God in the works he has prepared for us. So people think they're like man, I've already got a lot on my plate. How could I be doing those things? And we don't realize is that when you begin to do the will of God for your life, okay, there are certain things that are laid out in scripture Like this is the will of God for your life. People think it's mysterious. It's laid out in scripture, like the some of the things that are the will of God for your life.
Speaker 1:uh, uh, a certain, a certain yeah a certain thing that you do, right, your your vehicle, on how you you minister to people and stuff like that. But when you step into that, uh, the will of God is food for your life. What does food do? It's nourishment. It's nourishment for your body. If you don't eat, you tend to have less energy. If you eat healthy foods, good foods, you tend to have more energy and more strength. So think about that in a spiritual sense. Jesus was saying I have food you don't even know about. Right, and that is actually doing the will of God and accomplishing his work, Meaning that's what sustains me. That's right, Right. Man shall not live by bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Speaker 1:So he was saying all these things. He was relating bread and food and nourishment and strength, all with hearing the voice of God and doing the will of God. So people look at certain people that are walking in the will of the Lord and they're accomplishing all these things and they're like how do they have so much energy and so much passion and why are they doing all this? And they think it's. It's because we uh rest a lot, or drink an energy drink, or you, uh, maybe you just maybe you're just called different.
Speaker 1:Like they're just different and it's like no those are the people that found the will of the Lord for their life and they began to walk in it and their spirits were energized because of it.
Speaker 1:And so we constantly live our life shedding off all of the things that are not God's will for our life, right, kicking off all of the things that are not God's will for our life, right, kicking off all of the things that so easily entangle us and trip us up on this race, because when it gets into the fourth quarter, when it gets into that last lap of the race, you only think of this uh, we're, we're.
Speaker 1:We forgot to mention this, but we just did a like a five and a half mile hike this past weekend and, um, it was, uh, it doesn't rain in Texas, but for some reason it poured and rained on our hike.
Speaker 1:And, uh, we drove an hour and a half away, did a five, five and a half mile hike and uh, and of course I had my five-year-old, so about two, two and a half miles, I carried him on my back he's about 40, but I had about, basically, I had about 45 pounds of weight on my back, okay, so whenever it stopped raining, he was ready to get out and I sat him down and was like woo, like I feel like I could run the rest of this thing. But we walk around carrying all this extra crap and wonder why it's so difficult to accomplish God's will and his tasks in our life. So I think a lot of our relationship with Christ and why it's so important to stay connected with him and hearing his voice is because he will call out those things in our life that are just weighing us down, that are good but not God. So we shed those things off and we can actually run with strength and what he's called us to do, and stamina and we become energized.
Speaker 1:But if you're not connecting with him, if you're not, you don't have a prayer life. If you're not doing all those things, you're not going to be able to see those things, you're going to have blind spots, right? Same thing with being in community. You're not going to have other other brothers and sisters in Christ around you that are going to be able to call those things out that, that they can see that maybe you're blind to that are holding you to do you hit them all. Can you imagine hearing that?
Speaker 2:That's the goal I tell people all the time. Like my greatest, I picture what judgment day is going to look like. With fear, but with excitement too, you know, with with the fear of the Lord and like gosh Lord, I really pray that like I've represented you well, um, but also with excitement because I, I know him, like I know the man Jesus, I am the bridesmaid with oil in her lamp and I'm. If I go to sleep and I wake up and my bridegroom is there, I'm going to be like still burning, still burning, boo. You know, like I just am so excited.
Speaker 2:That's that solar power yes for the day that Jesus comes back, but at the same time thinking about that like sorry, I just lost my train of thought because I got caught up on my burning lamp.
Speaker 1:Still burning, still burning, boo. It made me think of that, this scripture where I think it's in the gospel of John, and John is talking about himself, but he talks about himself in the third person and he's like and one of the disciples outran the other disciples to Jesus and I'm like bro, we know you're talking about you. He's like just saying I got there first, I got there first, yeah, but I think about that.
Speaker 2:Like you have to throw off everything that can entangle you from running this race. Like the devil's greatest tactic for a believer is to distract you with good things but not God things. So if you're doing a bunch of good things but you're not seeing people repent and turn to Jesus, like reevaluate what you're doing. You know, keep maybe doing what you're doing, but add preaching the gospel into it. Maybe that's the spark you're missing, or maybe you're just completely missing it because somebody told you you know, standing behind the camera at the institution and videotaping the pastor is your will and is his will, god's will for your life, but you've never had the opportunity to actually make a disciple, like that's. One thing that gets me is like I will hear people say, hey, I feel called to preach the gospel, or I feel called to be a speaker of my testimony, but they've never even made a disciple. I'm like what are you doing with?
Speaker 1:your lives.
Speaker 2:That's square one. Like the only reason you get a platform is because you've actually been doing what Jesus has called you to do. You know what I'm saying. Not because you filled out the paperwork or your Bible college says you qualify because you got a degree or because you've just been saved. Like just because you say yes to Jesus doesn't give you a platform right away. If you're looking for a platform right after you met Jesus, or even two years after you met Jesus, but you've never made one disciple, humble yourself, go back to the drawing board, share Jesus with the people at work or your wife or your whoever doesn't know Jesus. Disciple them actually. See them walk out their faith, see them reproduce. Once you've seen them reproduce, you know you've done a good job. Let that be your litmus test, not, oh, I spoke in front of 25 people today, or a hundred people today, or 200 people today. Like, actually make a disciple first. What do you have to tell anyone on a stage if you've never?
Speaker 2:made a disciple in your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can be massive deception.
Speaker 2:Your platform is man-made.
Speaker 1:I know it was for me and even though I was asked to speak, even though in front of like a middle school group or something like that, and people would say that was an amazing message yeah, because I prepared my butt off for it Do you know what I'm saying In the way of preparing a message not preparing my heart and people would compliment me on that, but there was no fruit. There was no real fruit there was no discipleship.
Speaker 1:There was no discipleship. There was no fruit. That remains, and so people don't understand. We get it backwards. We want the platform first and then we want to ignore actually making disciples, the stuff that's not seen and a lot of people don't understand that the people that are—most people that are truly authentically successful on the platform are people that spent years in the ditches and in the trenches actually building people and doing it when no one was looking.
Speaker 2:I think of that Forrest Frank song. He's like it's talking about he's putting in good work and he's like you haven't seen me in the closet for the past 10,000 hours. I've been putting in good work and now you see this, but it's because what I've done behind closed doors. So if you're not on your face before the Lord, you behind closed doors. So you know, if you're not on your face before the Lord, you're not sharing your faith on a regular basis with people and people aren't getting changed around you like don't seek a platform, um, seek the feet of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, amen, that's so good and so hopefully, we, we. That was understandable for you and just a blessing to you to hear, uh, some of the practical stuff. If we need to, you know, do a part two to this and talk about how it translates over into discipleship and what that looks like practically. We'd be glad to do that. Let us know in the comments if you're on YouTube and, like I said before, there's not a ton of videos on our YouTube channel or on our podcast, so head over to the YouTube channel if you want to hear the sharing of the gospel. There's two very practical videos of us sharing the gospel on there. Brooke has her testimony on there and then, of course, rechurch. Episode one is all on the true gospel. But yeah, let us know down in the comments if there's something additionally you would like to know about this topic we talked about Very, very important, but otherwise, thank you so much for watching, listening wherever you are and tuning in Get your butt out in the game.
Speaker 2:Stop being on the sideline and share your faith.
Speaker 1:All right, see you in the next one, guys.