Amen. All right, if you have your Bibles tonight, go ahead and turn to the book of Psalm 19. We are in the second of our series on evangelism. And I was sitting there sort of thinking about this topic, and it's always nice to be asked to speak or to preach. But with something like this, I kind of feel like when I was younger, You know, I enjoyed sports, but it was kind of obvious when I played, like I wasn't the best at them. And I remember a few times that, you know, being very confronted with my, confronted with my inabilities in sports. My, I think my average scoring in basketball is like 1.4 points a game. You know, that's kind of a humbling number. It's not like soccer, you know, if it's 1.4 goals a game, that'd be good. You know, so when I think about evangelism, I think I like the idea of it and I'm excited about the opportunity a little more than I feel like I'm good at, okay? Is there anyone else sort of with me on that? You know, I'm not the kind of guy that on the airplane, you know, I have... I don't have actually any conversion stories from airplanes, and I've been on quite a few airplanes, not like some great evangelist. It seems like you hear people talk, and they're always leading people to Christ on the airplane, the captain, the stewardesses, you know. I've had conversations with people about the gospel on the airplane. So, at any rate, as someone who is working and learning and growing in this area, I hope that I can help you a little bit from the Bible. There should be a handout associated with this somewhere out there. If you don't already have it, you probably won't find it now. But let's go ahead and turn to Psalm 19, verse number one. We're going to talk about Our role in evangelism, last week we looked at God's role in evangelism. And if you didn't get a chance to be here for that, I hope you will go back and look at it because to me that was probably the most exciting part. Not that this won't be good tonight, I hope it's good. It was exciting to think about the fact that God is more excited about people getting saved than even we are. Like this is the heartbeat of God. He's always been on mission trying to bring people to Him. The minute that the first sin was committed, He came looking for Adam and for Eve. And so God is really invested in this thing of reaching the world with the gospel. The crazy thing is, is that he entrusts the responsibility of proclaiming the greatest news ever given about his son, the Lord Jesus Christ to us. And that's just an amazing responsibility and a wonderful privilege that we have. And so we're gonna talk about what is our part in this. But I used illustration last week and I'm going to use it again because it was very clearly lived out this week in my life. I talked about how that, you know, when I was growing up, I thought I knew a lot about all things to do with construction. I thought I could plumb, I could wire, I could build a house from the ground up because that was pretty much what my dad was always doing and I was always there. And I remember even as like an 11-year-old, kid telling my dad, I don't think you should do that. You know, like I thought somehow I knew more than him. And what was amazing is he would listen to me. And then I tried to do similar things when he was not present. For some reason, it did not work out the exact same way. TJ had to come over to my house one time, and I think I was about to burn my house to the ground, because I was trying to wire a fan, and I was like, well, it's not working, so let me just reverse the order of the wires. You know, that didn't work. Let me add this other wire, because there's like seven wires in this box. You know, at one point the electrical panel was clicking like very loudly. I don't think it's meant to like sound like a tumble dryer, you know. And so I had to get some professional help. So I realized that I need help. And yet we partner up with God, just like I had the opportunity to work on projects with my dad who knows what he's doing or can figure it out. Even much more so, we have the opportunity to labor together with God in this thing of sharing the gospel. And so whether we feel adequate, whether we feel like we know what we're doing, God has chosen to use humble people like us And we'll talk about some of the ways that he does that. So in Psalm 19, verse number one, the Bible says, Let's pray together this evening. Lord, we love you. God, thank you for the opportunity we have to gather. Thank you for this new season, the summer season, Lord, as we've Schools are wrapping up and different things are finishing and there's new opportunities. People are more out as the weather gets better. And Lord, as we enter this new season of our life, as we're traveling maybe new places and meeting new people and have new opportunities, God, I pray that you would just use us, Lord, to be your instruments to share the wonderful news about your son. Lord, give us faith to believe that you can use us and give us courage and boldness to speak on your behalf. Help us to be able to live like Jesus, to be salt and light that will make a real impact in our world. For your honor, for your glory, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So I wanna begin by looking at some of God's tools. How is God working in this world? And so we see the first one here in Psalm 19, and this is a very, very powerful tool that God is using in the life of every person all around the world, and that is the tool of creation. And we see this in Psalm 19, verse one, which says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament, the sky, shows his handiwork Day into day utters speech, and night into night showeth knowledge. So the first way God is working in our world is he's using creation of lives of people to speak a very powerful message that there is a God out there, and every single day that happens, and every night that happens, and every time people look at the sky, or hear the thunder, or watch the lightning, or experience something in nature, they are hearing and knowing something about God. We can read over in Romans 1, verse 20, which says that the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they're without excuse. And so God is an invisible God, but the invisible things about God are clearly seen from creation of the world. So we can go forth with confidence Even when we're dealing with someone who says, you know, I don't believe in God. Where is God? If there's a God, let him show himself to me. And we think, what do we say to this person? Well, we can have a lot of confidence knowing that they already are well aware there's a God. They're already well aware of his eternal power in Godhead. And even if they don't believe, they say they don't believe there's a God, the Bible tells us that they already clearly see this God. There's a quote that may be on the screen here, but it says, This can be a powerful aid in communicating the gospel message, especially to those who have lived with little influence from the Judeo-Christian parts of society. So even as our world moves further and further away from a general understanding of the Bible, a general awareness of God, we still have this powerful truth of creation. You can read in the Bible about Paul when he went to Athens, a place that did not have the Scriptures, did not know the Scriptures, and he began not with the Scriptures, but he began with the truth about creation. So God is working through creation. The second way he's working is through circumstances. In Acts chapter 16, the Bible tells that Paul goes to Philippi, and the Bible says there's a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God. And the Bible says, she heard us. And then the Bible says, whose heart the Lord opened. And here's just one example in the Bible of a lady. She's at a riverside and Paul goes there. That's probably where the Jews gathered in the city because there was no synagogue. There wasn't that many Jews or enough to warrant a synagogue. And so he goes there and he meets her and he talks to her. And then the Bible says the Lord opened her heart. And one of the amazing things about the gospel and about the way God uses us is sometimes we're in a place that we think is just random or circumstantial, and yet God puts us there to open someone's heart. And he just uses different circumstances. I'm sure we've all seen that in our own life, and we've seen that in other people's lives. And perhaps God has even put you in a place to circumstantially use you to share the gospel with someone. One of the airplane stories, I don't have that many airplane stories, but I have one airplane story where I was on a two-leg flight, I think it was coming back from Kenya, and it was a flight where you had like eight or nine hours on an airplane. like eight or nine hours on a layover, and then another eight or nine hour flight. If you ever have one of those, by the second leg, you're just like a zombie. And I was really tired, and yet the guy next to me wasn't very tired. You know what I'm talking about? You know, I'm like great, you know? But I had eight or nine hours to wrestle with God. I had no excuses, like I gotta go somewhere. I'm in a hurry. I'm next to this dude for eight or nine hours. There's only so many times you can get up and go to the bathroom to avoid talking about Jesus. But I had an opportunity to talk to him about the Lord. He didn't get saved, but God put me by that guy, and I was able to talk to him some about the Lord. So, circumstances. Thirdly, Well, before I go to the third point, let me just mention just on that point, there are key times in people's lives when they're more open to the gospel. And one of the books that I've put in there as a recommendation, Art McRaney's, or Will McRaney's book, The Art of Personal Evangelism, he talks about there are certain times in people's lives that can be key when they're going through maybe something in their family, Maybe there's a death in the family or divorce in the family. There may be some kind of situation where maybe their life was spared through some kind of miraculous thing. Maybe there's an illness. Also, when people go through a change in their status, perhaps a new job. a financial change or some educational accomplishment. And as our world is more transient, these can be opportunities. Someone moves into your neighborhood, you know? That's a great opportunity to take them a tray of cookies and say, hey, I'm your neighbor, if I can help you. And by the way, here's a gospel track. So we look for opportunities when God can use circumstances in their lives. But the third thing is the church. The church, the book of Acts, if you wanna turn, turn to the book of Acts chapter one. The book of Acts begins by referencing the first book that the author of Acts wrote, Luke. And so he calls it in verse one, the former treatise. So he says, I wrote this former treatise, this former book, so that's Luke. And he says that contained all the things that Jesus began both to do and teach. Well, when you read Luke, you realize Jesus ascended at the end of Luke. But he says Luke only contains the beginning of what Jesus did and taught. So what's exciting about that idea is that even though Jesus ascended back to heaven, he is still doing, and he is still teaching. He's still at work, and the way he is at work is through his Holy Spirit in the church. And so we come down then to Acts 1, verse 8, And Jesus says to his disciples, but ye shall receive power. After that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you. And then he says, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and in the uttermost parts of the earth. So what he says to them is, Jesus was doing things and teaching things, but that was just the beginning. And now he's gonna keep doing things and he's gonna do it through you. And so then you read the book of Acts and you read about Peter, you read about Philip, you read about Paul, and you read about Jesus continuing to work and Jesus continuing to save, but he does it through the church. And that is continuing even to this day. When you read the book of Acts, it kind of ends like, Whoa, it's over? It just sort of just kind of ends abruptly because in a sense, it's not over. The acts of the Holy Spirit through the church are not over. They continue even to this day. And so the same teaching he gave to the disciples, he gives to us, saying that we are to be witnesses unto him to the uttermost parts of the earth. Turn in your Bibles, if you will, to the book of Acts chapter number 10. Acts chapter number 10 is a great example of how God relies so heavily on the church. So in Acts chapter 10, the beginning of the chapter, we're introduced to a man named Cornelius. Cornelius is a Gentile. He's a Roman centurion. Verse 2 says he's a devout man, so he's a very dedicated man. He fears God with all his house. He gives much alms or offerings to the people. He prays to God always. So he is seeking after God with everything he knows to do. Well, the Bible says in verse 3 that he saw in a vision about the ninth hour an angel of God coming to him and saying to him, Cornelius. And when he looked on him, he was afraid. He said, what is it, Lord? And he said, your prayers and your alms are come up for a memorial before God. Now this is interesting because look at verse five. What does God tell him? He says, send men to Joppa and call for one Simon whose surname is Peter. Verse six, he will tell you what you should do. So what's interesting about this chapter is, here's a man who is, I mean, he's seeking God with everything he has. He's doing everything he knows to do. And so then God gives him a vision, and God sends an angel. But rather than the angel saying, you need Jesus, the angel says, well, what you need to do is you need to send for Peter, and then he's gonna tell you what to do. And then Peter, he's several miles away and he's being prepared by God as well. And so God gives him a vision. If you know the story of all these unclean animals that for him as a Jew, he would not eat. And then the vision, God says, rise, kill and eat. He's like, no way, I'm a good Jew. I won't do it three times. And finally, he gets the picture that God is wanting him to step out of his comfort zone And about that time, there's a knock on the door, and there's three men that have come from Caesarea, and then he goes all the way back up there, and he walks in, and he's kind of prepared. He eats with them, and he begins to preach to them, and they get saved. And you're like, what is the point of that? Well, it's just interesting to me that rather than cut out the middleman, so to speak, God says, I want the middleman in there. I want Peter in there. Peter, who's a little bit uncomfortable, probably a little bit racist, probably a little bit like, I'm not so sure I wanna associate with these people. God's like, no, I want to use Peter. And what is amazing about that is that is the same way God is still working today. And so we're a little bit uncomfortable. We're a little bit out of our depth. We don't exactly feel like we really know what we're doing or we even really want to do this. And God's like, you're not getting off that easy. I want to use you. I could use an angel. I could do something else, but I want to use you. And so God is working in this world through the church to get the gospel out. There's another quote I have for McRaney, but he says, God initiates conversion, but uses humans. People have been and continue to be on the mind, heart, and agenda of God. Evangelism and conversion truly are spiritual activities. It is our privilege to be an active part of the process of evangelism leading toward conversion. Isn't that amazing? Isn't it amazing that God wants to use us? I mean, he could just, he could just speak. He could write it in the clouds. He could send an angel, but he's like, I want to use you. You're, you're, you're going to be my guy. You're going to be my lady. You're going to be my messenger. You're going to be my mouthpiece. God uses us, uses our labor in the glorious temple that he There are other things God uses, of course. We know he uses the conscience, Romans chapter two, 14 to 15. He uses the word of God and he will use a composite of various circumstances and people over time to bring about the salvation of loss. Now, I don't know if you guys have, there's like a graphic and it's probably gonna be virtually impossible to see. We'll put it up there just for fun. I don't know if you have it, but there's a thing called, it's the Engels scale. And basically, if they get it, that's fine, if not. But basically, what this diagram, if you can just imagine in your mind a complicated scale you can't see, just imagine. Everybody with me? This is super helpful. But basically, if you think about The point of the diagram is to explain that most of the time when people get saved, it's not the first time they hear anything about the gospel. There's usually several different conversations or encounters, maybe they had a family member, maybe they picked up a gospel track, maybe they saw something on the TV. And when we were in North Africa, where it's very little gospel witness. It was amazing some of the things people would talk about, even sometimes they would say they had a dream, they get satellite TV, just different things, different touches that they have, and God will work all those little steps, and then one day, they would meet a Christian and get saved. We had a lady one time, many years ago, when we were missionaries in Northern Ireland, and we did not see many people get saved there at all. It was a very challenging and difficult area, but one service, this lady walked into the service, first-time visitor, and we were excited about that. At the end of the service, I said, you know, I gave an invitation, I gave an opportunity, if you would like to believe on Jesus Christ, raise your hand if someone would come speak to you. She raised her hand. And so one of our ladies went out, took her to the back, went through the Bible, she got saved. We were like, what is happening? This just does not happen that often. Well, her story, she was from a very religious background, a very, you know, like false religious background. But what had happened is she had been away at, College over in England. Her boyfriend was a Christian. He had been witnessing to her for a very long time She came back. She said, you know, I'm gonna go to church and she got saved and so We were able to be there at the moment that she got saved and kind of in a sense reap We were like, yes, this is gonna make a great prayer letter, you know, we had a lady get saved but It was all those conversations, all those Christians she had met, the witness of her boyfriend, perhaps going to church in England, just various touches along the way that God used. And maybe those people thought, well, that didn't accomplish much. But what they did not realize is they were helping that person get one step closer to salvation. And so this really helps me because when I think about evangelism, it's kind of like my opening comment about scoring points in basketball. Like the whole goal of you got to get more buckets than the other team to win a basketball game, but there's a lot of little steps that lead to it. And if you can get a jump ball, if you can take a charge, if you can steal the ball, if you can play some defense, if you can do all these smaller little things that don't necessarily put points on the board, but help get you closer to putting points on the board, you are still helping the team to succeed. And so you might think, well, hey, I'm not great at just having those airplane conversations, just get someone to pray right there and baptize them, you know, in the airport and start in a church right there and, you know, Terminal 5, you know, that's not where I'm at. But hey, could you have a conversation that opens their heart a little bit more to the gospel? And I think the devil wants to discourage us to think, Man, you don't have many notches on your belt of getting people saved, but we work together with God. God saves them. We're all just part of the process of moving the ball down the field to score a goal, to change the metaphor to soccer. All right, what is our role in evangelism? What is our role in evangelism? So we're gonna, I'm gonna have one point here on what it is not, and there's a number of things on this list, then we'll talk about some things it is. But our role in evangelism does not include condemning, shaming, manipulating, saving, winning arguments, or selling. So I think one of the reasons that we tend to be uncomfortable with evangelism. We feel like we have to win someone over. We have to convince someone. We have to like sell something. We have to have a slick presentation. We gotta win the argument. We gotta, you know, smack them in the face with truth they didn't see coming. And just, I mean, we have to be good. Maybe you've watched like you've ever watched like that way the master guy, you know And he's out there on the streets of my was like, you know, and he's just like and they're by the end You know, they're like whoa, you know like and we're like I could never be that guy, you know I'm I'm not even I'm not sure I could be that quick with the gospel and we not that he's doing that but I think he's doing these things. But he is good, you know, he's good. I think he's Australian. So that helps you have a good Australian accent, you know, that can help you. But it's not condemning. We're not out there to like go around condemning. We're not out there to shame. We're not out there to manipulate. We're not even there to save them. We're not there to win the argument necessarily, and we're not there to sell something. But what are we there to do? Let's talk about our role here. First of all, our role includes being prepared. And there's a couple of things under that I just want to briefly mention. We're prepared through abiding in Christ. I do have an illustration, which I forgot to bring up with me, so I'm going to come back here real quick and grab it. It's a plastic bag with a stick in it, so it's really creative. So this is a stick from a tree in my yard. In John 15, if you wanna turn there, we'll have a verse up there on the screen. Jesus says this, he says, I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman. Every branch of me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit, he purges that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you, Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me." Here's the main verse. Jesus says, I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abides in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me ye can do nothing. So, If we're gonna share the gospel and be involved in evangelism, we have to be prepared, and we are prepared through abiding in Christ. And Jesus used the illustration of a vine. And he says here, he's the vine, we're the branch. So he says, he's the main trunk, and we're just a branch. So I took this off a tree. If I set this here, you know, by Sunday, it's gonna start to die. And by next week, it's just gonna be a stick that we're gonna throw away. It's not too beautiful to begin with. But if this could somehow get back on that tree in my yard, it would continue to grow, continue to be green. We're like this stick. We're, you know, we're not much to look at. We're not very good by ourselves. But if we can hang on to Jesus and let Jesus be really big in our lives, then things can happen. And he says here, he says, I am the vine, you're the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. So the first thing we gotta do if we're gonna share the gospel is we really just have to remember We're in Jesus, and Jesus is in us, and get his word in us, that's a lot of what this passage talks about, and let God just work through us. In a sense, it takes the pressure off. This little branch here, all by itself, doesn't matter how hard it thinks about growing, it's dying. But if it's connected to that larger tree, it will continue to grow. And no matter how hard, how much energy, oh, I gotta do more for evangelism. Oh, it's so good, it's so fun, I love it, I love it, I love evangelism. It's horrible. People are rejecting me, they're throwing my tracks away. I can't do this, I'm a failure. That's kinda sometimes what we feel. And Jesus is like, calm down, little branch. You are not the big tree, my friend. Just literally, I mean, The bridge, I ripped it off the tree with bare hands. It was amazing. But the bridge was just hanging out there. And it's just growing green leaves. And if we can just calm down and just realize there's a really big vine, and it's Jesus. And we rest in Him, we relax in Him, we rely on Him, and He'll begin to give us opportunities. He'll begin to give us words to say. and he'll begin to help us advance the gospel. So I think if you can kind of think like, if it feels really hard, like I gotta grow this all by myself, we're forgetting we're not the big branch. We're just a little branch connected to the main vine. So that's one way to get prepared. prepared through studying the Word. There are things we can do, 2 Timothy 2.15, the Bible says, This is not an excuse for laziness. But, so there's things we can do. There's, it's not the main thing. He does the main thing, but there's things that we are unable to do. We study the Word so that we rightly divide it. We have some verses. We know some, I mean, get John 3, 16, or a great one is Romans 6, 23. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. I mean, if that's all you got, that's a great one. John 3, 16. I mean, people have gotten so much mileage out of that verse. You know, you're like, hey, how's it going? Man, can I share something with you? Sure. There's this great verse in the Bible, John 3, 16. You know what it says? They're like, whoa, I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, you know, I love that verse. And you just give them, I mean, if that's all you had, you could do a lot with that. So you've got that, you've got that. You're like Barney Five with that one bullet, but man, this is a very powerful bullet, but you've got it. You've got John 3, 16. 1 Timothy 3, 15 says, sanctify the Lord God in your heart and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you the reason of the hope. So, okay, what happens? You're out there and you start talking to someone like, all right, Mr. Bible person with John 3, 16 in your pocket. What about all the suffering in the world? Didn't think about that, did you? I'm probably the first person that thought of that question, you know, and they're real smug about it, like, well, actually, like, people have been asking that question for a real long time. You read the book of Job before? It's the oldest book in the Bible. You know, but they're like, and you're like, ooh, I didn't see that one coming. Well, that doesn't mean you're a failure. This is an opportunity to learn, to go back and say, well, how would I answer that? You know, what would I say to that? And then you come back and you study the Bible. And what's kind of great about this is it really makes the relevance of the Bible in your life, it makes the Bible much more relevant, because you're like, man, I gotta get an answer. And then you're like, I know where I'm going. And so we study, and we're ready to give an answer. And if we weren't ready last time, you're like, not gonna catch me off guard the next time. We prepare through praying. Even Paul said this in Colossians chapter 4. He said, praying also for us that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ. He's like, pray that I would have a door. Pray for doors. I mean, pray for somebody to come up to you and maybe not quite like this, but sort of basically say, you're a Christian, aren't you? Yeah. Well, what do you think? Well, I mean, I wasn't gonna say anything but you kind of put me on the spot. I think what the Bible says I mean pray for God to just put some stuff in your lap like that where it's like I can't help I mean imagine the guy and imagine Paul and Silas in Acts 16. What must we do to be saved? You know, you're like Wow, I wish all of them are like that you knock on the door. Good morning What must we do to be saved? You know, you're like You know, so, but pray for doors, God can do that. It's happened to me where, like, I mean, I go back to that, my one experience on the airplane, I haven't had that many conversations, but literally the guy started talking to me, he's like, what do you do, you know? And I'm like, I don't wanna talk, but man, God's like, no, you're gonna talk to this guy about me. And I was like, all right, we're gonna talk. But God, I felt like God opened a door. So prepare to praying, being filled with the Spirit, So we're prepared. Then the second thing we're doing is we're going to people. So we're preparing our hearts. We're getting filled up with the Lord and we're trusting in him. We're having faith. We're resting in him. We're abiding in him. We're like, Lord, you're going to have to do this through me. And then the next thing is we just go. Mark 16, 15, and generally we go places. Very few people never go anywhere. So you just go somewhere and then you go and you start talking to people. Matthew chapter 11, verse 19, the Bible says Jesus was a friend of publicans and sinners. We talk to sinners, you know. This can be scary, but we do it. You know, we talk to people that don't know Jesus. We become a friend to them. Jesus deliberately went through Samaria to talk to the Samaritan woman. So we're prepared, we're going to people, thirdly, then we talk about Jesus. Isn't it amazing how we can talk about it? We can be comfortable talking about everything but Jesus. We were at a restaurant on Tuesday night, and someone went by our table and was like, that's a good game there. And somebody at our table was like, it is. And there was no way we were watching that game. I was kind of watching because I had a good angle. But they're like, talk about sports. In the UK, we talk about the weather. We can talk for hours about the weather. And it's literally the same kind of weather the whole time. But we just talk about it. Ah, it's terrible. It's the worst. Ah, I've seen worse. It'll probably get worse. But then the shift to Jesus, that's where it's challenging, but we gotta bring Jesus into it. For me, one of the things, and we'll talk about this maybe more next week, but one of the things that helped me was a little question of, so do you have any kind of spiritual belief? A question can be a great way to shift the conversation. Have you ever had any thoughts about God or Jesus? You just, and you know what? It's usually never as awkward as you think it's gonna be. It's usually never as difficult as it's gonna, as you think it's gonna be. So we gotta bring Jesus. And in John chapter four, Jesus brings Jesus into the conversation with the woman at the well. There's the well there. So they talk about water, and then he's like, not so subtly, hey, have you ever thought about living water? And then they get on to religion, then they get on to Christ, and then Jesus says, I that speak unto thee am he. It's sort of subtle, but it's not that subtle. Jesus is like, let's just move the conversation right along and get over to the Messiah. And we have to have the courage to do that. But if you think about it like this, and I've used this illustration before, It would kinda be like, I'm with someone, I'm like, I gotta get my nerve to talk about my wife. All right, I gotta tell him about Terry, but it's gonna be awkward, and I'm scared to do it. It really shouldn't be that way, and it's not that way. But it shouldn't be that way with Jesus. He's supposed to be our Father, our best friend, our Savior, our Lord, our King. So if we can think about it in terms of that, He is the most amazing person our whole life, and we should just treat it like that, and just make it normal. Hey, let me tell you about the most amazing thing that ever happened to me, I met Jesus. But the devil is gonna fill our minds with a thousand reasons why this is the wrong time the wrong person and the wrong idea So we got to talk about jesus. We got to get jesus in the conversation Teach the word of god We don't have a lot of time, uh to spend well, it still feels terrible to say that but we're running out of time But we've got to teach the word of god. They got to know what the bible says. That can be a great way To move it from well, what do you believe? This is what I believe. Well, that's not what I believe. Well, that's what I believe. It's like Okay, what do we do with this? But what you can say is, hey, let me show you something the Bible says. Have you ever read the Bible? And we got it on our phone, you know, so we can say to them, can I show you something that, I'm not gonna, I always say this, and it's not really true, but I'll be like, I'm not gonna preach to you, but can I show you something from the Bible? Or I'll say, I'm not trying to convert you, but can I just show you something from the Bible? You know, I kind of am preaching, kind of am wanting them to get saved, but you kind of can disarm it, you know, just, can I just take two minutes to show you something from the Bible? And it's amazing how God can use that in their life. So we've got to get the Word of God in there. Live a Christ-like life. We want to live the kind of life that is a light and salt and they can see our good works. They'll know the way that we love one another. We're His disciples. Obey the Holy Spirit. Obey the Holy Spirit, Luke 12, 11 to 12, it says, the Holy Spirit's gonna teach you what to say. And, you know, in those moments, just remember you have God the Holy Spirit with you. And how do you go about it? What verse do you give them? What formula do you follow? What method? What did Travis say that question was? Do you have any, I can't remember what it was. Just calm down and what's the Holy Spirit laying on your heart to say? You have God in your life and one of his jobs is to give you what to say. So just listen a little bit and say, what's the Holy Spirit want me to say? And then we gotta have the courage to say it. And so we've got to obey the Holy Spirit. We do our part to plant and to water, but we trust God to give the increase. We're just planting and watering, but God is giving the increase. 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Our primary responsibility is to be obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit and preparing and sharing his faith. And if you're saved, you know when the Holy Spirit's leading you. I know the Holy Spirit's leading me. I do not like it when I don't follow the Holy Spirit's leading. I know when he's leading me, and we wanna listen to the Holy Spirit, and then we wanna obey. And then lastly, we assess readiness, and we appropriately persuade. It's okay to reason a bit. It's okay to try to convince. It's okay to even encourage them, to persuade them, but we have to also be sensitive, is God working? We don't have to feel like we have to, in a sense, close the deal every single time we talk. We just trust God. Hey, it's just something to think about. Man, I would encourage you. Life is short, and this may be one of your last opportunities. You need to be saved, but if you have any questions, let me know, love to be of help to you. And so we're just trusting God to, in a sense, close the deal. We're not feeling like we have to do all of the work. We can ask questions. and ultimately we trust the Lord. Let me give you this last verse, Colossians chapter four, and what will be done. Colossians four, verses two to six. If you wanna turn over there real quick. And just notice Paul's heart on this matter of sharing the gospel. The guy like Paul, you think he would never be afraid, he would never be concerned with what to say, but he says in Colossians four, he says, verse two, continue in prayer, watching the same with thanksgiving, With all praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward them that are without redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how to answer Every man and I and I think just the care and the concern and the sensitivity that comes through in those verses He's like pray for me that I'll know exactly what to say Because man, I got this great mystery about Christ. He says you guys be careful Really be careful how you live and how you walk and how you speak so that you can know how to answer Every man those be great verses for us to pray for one another Let's pray together this evening. And as we bow our heads and as we have just a short time to think about what is the Holy Spirit speaking to us about? Maybe we're stressing too much about this. Maybe we're relying on ourselves and we're trying to convince people. Maybe we're feeling inadequate. But would you just pray to the Lord as he's worked in your heart and just say, Lord, I wanna be more available. I wanna be more open, I wanna be more surrendered, and God, I just want you to work through my life to help people learn about your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God, we love you. And we are so very thankful for the opportunity that we have, not because we're worthy, not because we are able, but because you have saved us and called us and given us your Holy Spirit, and that you have empowered us, God. And so we give you the glory, we give the honor, and we want to rededicate ourselves to be your vessels to share the wonderful message about your son, with the world for whom you died, and we ask these things in Jesus' name.