just the opposite. He accused me of being dangerously unbalanced and morbidly preoccupied with twisting everything into a God thing. I pointed out to him that we had had many many discussions about sports and politics, music and culture and none of those discussions had strayed into theology but he wouldn't hear of it. It's too much, he said. I said to him, okay. I said, you tell me What is enough and what is too much? And that's the question that I want to ask this morning. You know, we are evangelicals. We are supposed to be particularly aware of the Great Commission of Matthew 28, literally Jesus' last words on earth. He said, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. and behold I am with you always to the end of the age." Now Paul describes his own sense of urgency to Christ's command by saying, woe to me if I preach not the gospel. Now is that you? I mean is it enough? Is it too much? And the question we want to know is what does God expect of us? What is the point, what is the purpose, and what is the power in preaching the gospel? First I want to look at the point. What is the point? I want to go back a little bit of my own personal history because the first 10 years of my Christian life were years in which I understood the answer to that to be a no-brainer. I mean, you preach the gospel to save souls. I mean, I was told repeatedly by the dear ones who disciplined me that God was looking for soul winners. And so I was trained to be a soul winner by people who took that mandate seriously. And we went to the classics on soul winning. We went to the Roman Road and the Four Spiritual Laws, which are two very influential evangelical publications, and I learned through them how to present the gospel. And much of what they told me was very, very valuable, but some of it, I believe, was simply mistaken. Now, my teachers pointed to Proverbs 11.30, which says, He who wins souls is wise. And they pointed also to the statement by Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, where he says this. He says, Though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more. And to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews. To those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law. So I understood from these dear folks that our job was to get people saved and win them for Christ. And you did that by being persuasive, you did that by being persistent, even becoming all things to all men so that you could have the opportunity to present the gospel. Now let me tell you, much of that was right on. I learned the value of knowing the gospel and how to present it. I also learned that sharing the gospel was a sacred responsibility that seems to have gone by the wayside these days. We would go out by twos, we would go out witnessing because the world was lost and it desperately needed the gospel. And that was the good part and all of that was true. But the enemy, the enemy has a playbook for everything, including presenting the gospel. You see, the point of the gospel is not particularly saving the lost, as crucial as that is. The point of the gospel is the glory of God. Jesus in his high priestly prayer in John 17 verse 4 says this, He says, I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you've given me to do. See, Jesus understood that the primary purpose of His work and the primary purpose of our work is to glorify the Father. Paul understood it as well, and he expressed it in Ephesians 1.11. He says this, "...in Him also we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory." Paul's saying we are predestined according to God's purpose, but that purpose is to the praise of His glory. That's the point and purpose of our existence. God says you are the crown of my creation. We are created by God to glorify Him. That is to illustrate to our own lives who our Creator is and what He does. And that's what should drive us in our presentation of the gospel. And when the point of preaching the gospel shifts, as it has for many, many years, when it shifts from glorifying God to simply saving souls, well, it moves from the highest possible goal down to a very good goal. And something gets lost in the translation. The gospel begins to lose some of its hard edge. The ends begin to justify the means. And so I start preaching a gospel that is all good news, with very little of the bad. I start out by telling folks that God loves you and has a perfect plan for your life, even though nowhere in the entire Bible will you ever see the gospel presented like that. You know, look at Peter. He starts out by first telling folks the bad news in Acts 2. He says, This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. That's the bad news right up front. Then he gives the good news. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. So what is Peter doing? He is glorifying God by telling folks who God is, and then he's telling them what he's done. And the results follow. It says, Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You know, three thousand people found Christ that day through a method that would absolutely horrify church planters today. Now speak the truth in love and thereby unleash the power of the gospel. I know deep down for many, they just think, oh, that plan's just not going to work today. People need to have their felt needs identified, and then they need to know how the gospel is going to fulfill those needs. That's the standard idea. Folks, that's perfectly backwards. I mean, folks need to know more than anything what the truth of the gospel is, because it defines the greatest need they will ever have. And here's the problem. It's a need they probably don't even recognize. And that's to get right with God. Now I'm afraid Peter was way, way too blunt for our tastes today. I mean he just told folks that it was our sin that put Christ on the cross and then he told them the very men who crucified him were doing exactly what God had designed and that there was but one way to get right and that was by repentance. I mean, I understand it's our task to understand the time and it's our task to understand our culture and to understand the best way to present the truth of the gospel so that it will be fully grasped. But to understand something, the power to grasp it, the power to make it real doesn't come from our persuasiveness, it comes from the Holy Spirit. I mean, think about it. When do you hear the church today preach about the wrath of God? or about the judgment to come, or about hell itself. I mean, those very concepts have become anachronisms. You know what anachronism is? It's another 50 cent word, but it's a perfectly appropriate 50 cent word. This is the way the dictionary defines an anachronism. It says, a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned. See, God's holiness, and his wrath, and his judgment, and even the thought of hell is now so anachronistic that folks think that somehow, magically, these things no longer exist. Out of sight has become out of mind, but out of sight and out of mind does not mean out of existence, despite what many folks think. And you know, for many of those ideas have become, okay, they're there, but they're the crazy uncle that the church keeps in the upstairs attic. You know, they may acknowledge that it's real, but that it won't go away, but it genuinely hopes that we somehow keep them out of sight. Well, the problem is you can't do that and still do justice to the gospel. Because part of preaching the gospel is preaching the whole counsel of God, and that's good news and it's bad news. Now, you've heard me say it many, many times, the good news minus the bad news is simply the nice news. It's the God of the fluffy marshmallow who's basically here to cover our sin with his blood without any thought that God has saved us for a purpose and that is to be to the praise of his glory. And the problem is nice news saves nobody and it glorifies no one except man himself. It's news about a God who doesn't really exist. If you read popular culture you're going to be coming away from it convinced that all the God today cares about is niceness and tolerance in the environment and personal rights. The reason why today's God identifies so much with us in our humanity is because we've made him up. He's the product of our own minds. He's a man-made God. And because he's a manufactured image whose passions now are uncannily similar to ours, We understand we have met God and He is us. And sadly much of our world can no longer fathom what the real God really cares about. And what He really cares about is His glory. And what His glory consists of for us is the manifestation of His character and His attributes. In other words, we glorify God in our existence on earth by manifesting and demonstrating in our lives who God is and what He does. That's the point of the Gospel. And that leads me to my second point. What is the purpose of preaching the Gospel? Well, the purpose is also His glory. I mean, there's a difference between preaching the Gospel to glorify God and preaching the Gospel to get people saved. Now, the purpose of preaching the gospel is always to get people saved. I mean, it's to expand the kingdom of God on earth. I mean, the Great Commission, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Certainly, that's part of sharing the gospel. But that goal is secondary to the goal of glorifying God. Now, it's a small, but it's a very important distinction. And let me explain. You know, we often say that God's Word never returns void, meaning that every time we share the gospel, we have moved somebody closer to the kingdom. At least that's what I was taught when I was a brand new believer. But that's not necessarily so. And time and time again, in my early discipling, I was directed to Isaiah 55 as a proof text, that the gospel properly presented would always move someone towards becoming a believer, because after all, God's Word never returns voids. Well, that's absolutely true. It's just that our understanding of what that means, I believe, is skewed. You see, that passage in Isaiah that we're so fond of quoting actually says this. It says, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55 11 says, my word will not return to me void, but will accomplish that which I please. I don't know that we ever ask ourselves just specifically what it is that pleases God. I mean, is it just the salvation of souls? Or is it the glory of God in the salvation of souls? Because if salvation is the only goal, then every time the word goes out it needs to accomplish that. And that's a big problem because it obviously doesn't. And oftentimes people are deeply offended at the gospel, at least at the real gospel. And they laugh and they mock and sometimes they curse and oftentimes they ignore the word as it goes forth. So then in that case, how does it not return void? How does it always accomplish, quote, that which pleases God? Well, here's how. This is Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 2.14. He says this. He says, Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? See what Paul is saying is when we spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ, God always, always leads in triumph. Now it doesn't always look that way, and it doesn't always feel that way. And all we have to do is look at Paul's circumstances when he said this to understand that it was not that way for Paul as well. This is what he said in 2 Corinthians 1. He says, For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. So we ask, How is it that someone who is on the brink of despair can say that spreading the fragrance of Christ always results in triumph? Well, it's because an honest presentation of the gospel always, always accomplishes that which God pleases. Folks, if you get anything at all this morning, understand the most important aspect of sharing the gospel is not winning souls the way I understood the term 25, 30, 40 years ago. Sometimes it means being on the brink of despair. Still, it's a triumph. And the reason it's a triumph is that honestly bearing witness to who God is and what He has done for you always, always brings honor and glory to God. And it does so regardless the response that we get. And that's our purpose in sharing the gospel. And when the person that we're sharing the gospel with is convicted of sin and he repents and he embraces Christ, God is obviously glorified. However, when the exact opposite takes place, When he or she laughs, or mocks, or curses, or ignores that gospel, they still bring honor and glory to God. And let me explain how. See, it's our job to spread the fragrance of Christ, period. I mean, if the gospel is received, we are, according to verse 16, the aroma of life leading to life. We bring honor and glory to the mercy of God. But if the gospel is rejected, we still bring honor and glory to God. we become, according to verse 16, the aroma of death leading to death. And so we bring honor and glory to the justice of God. And God alone knows. See, we seldom realize that every single thing we do here on earth is being played out before a vast cloud of witnesses, either for the glory of God or not. Hebrews 12 1 says therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses Let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us Now think about this for a second. Do you ever think of your life? As you're running this this great race And it's a race that's being intensely observed by the powers of light and by the forces of darkness and they're equally concerned about God's glory being either affirmed or or denied. And the kingdom and all the saints that have gone before us want nothing more than the glory of God affirmed and the enemy of our souls equally want to see us actively denying that glory. We think we're just sharing the gospel. We don't realize this has cosmic implications that extend way beyond this world and way beyond our capabilities. So we understand our job is simply to spread the aroma of Christ. God readily acknowledges that saving souls is way beyond the power of human persuasion. He says, to the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? Well, the answer is no human being. You see, it's God's job to see that His Word never returns void. And it's our job to accurately and lovingly present it, knowing that no one is sufficient for these things. Let me illustrate with just a couple of stories. These are stories that go back many, many years for me. A long, long while back, a man was presented with an opportunity to present the gospel. He was an electrician. He was working in an apartment in Michigan, working for the landlord. He was fixing up an apartment for a young couple that was living there. And while he was working there, he spoke directly to that couple about their need to get right with God. The young man that he spoke to had lots and lots of questions, many of which the electrician really had no answers for. All he really did was he bore witness to what Christ had done to his life. He told the young man he had been an alcoholic and that Christ literally had saved his life. So in the course of their conversation it turned out that the man in the apartment and the electrician both had the same hobby and the electrician said, hey why don't you come over to my place for dinner, meet my wife. So the couple went to the electrician's home for dinner. And at the dinner there were even more questions about Christianity, and some of them were very difficult, and it was apparent that the electrician didn't have answers to these difficult questions. In fact, the electrician might well have thought that evening was a disaster item. Perhaps he felt like a fool, I don't know. But the couple was embarrassed, the evening ended with lots and lots of these questions still just hanging in the air. So we ask ourselves the question now, was that a triumph? Or did in fact God's word return void? The answer to that is only time will tell. Trust me, time will at some point shout out whether or not this was a triumph because God says that someday that very conversation is going to be replayed. In 1 Corinthians 3.13 he says, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it. Think about this event. It had no sinner's prayer, it had no conversion, it had no success, yet it was a triumph. And it was a triumph not for the results but for the intent. See, it was the electrician's intent by being obedient to bring honor and glory to God. It was God's intent to be glorified in this regardless the outcome. And so perhaps the electrician was a fragrance of death unto death. But at least the electrician spoke up and either God's mercy or God's justice was honored. You see, understand that's what a witness for Christ is all about. It's all about honor and it's all about glory. And it's not about confidence. It's not about a sales pitch. It's not about closing the deal for Christ. It's simply to spread the fragrance of Christ. And if you understand the goal is the glory of God, you will not fail. You can't mess up a sovereign God's plan. To be sure, you can always grow, you can learn more and more scripture, you can develop the ability to share Christ. As 1 Peter 3.15 says, this is, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that's within you. But understand, you can't and you won't spoil God's plan. For me, recognizing that, understanding that, fully believing that, revolutionized my witness for Christ. I finally realized it's not my job to win, but to stay tuned to God's Holy Spirit. It's God's job to do the rest. I just spread the fragrance of Christ. And if you understand that, you won't panic, you won't fret when things don't go as they plan. And I think you all know they seldom do. Now many, many years ago, this is another old story, my son Seth was in second grade. He's 28 now, so. But this is to give you an indication of where things have gone. The school that he went to was blessed with a strong group of teachers who really loved the Lord and boldly shared the gospel, even with the context of the public school. Now, I look back and I say, I doubt very much that they could do that today. And Janice and I pray for them every single day, and Jan and I were once in a parent-teachers conference as one of the teachers. And they were sharing the stories of how they were sharing the gospel. She said another teacher and her were witnessing to a third teacher and they were excited to see that her interest in the gospel was growing. She was asking all kinds of questions and they could sense that the Lord was drawing her. Then one day she asked her fellow teachers, would you wait for me if Christ comes for his church? Well, one of the teachers said, that's not really possible. She said that we believe that Christ's return is imminent but it's absolutely unpredictable. She told me that she didn't want this teacher to put off her decision for Christ until Christ returned. And so she wanted her to know that this was something that the whole church lives with in this sense of anticipation waiting for Christ's return. So she decided to illustrate how thoroughly the church believed this by restating the truth from the mouth of babes. And there was a whole bunch of babes right there in the class. So during a break she calls Seth up to the front of the class and this little group of teachers. And she asked him point blank, Seth, who is it that's coming in a twinkling of the eye? Seth looks at her and he doesn't have a clue. So he's just kind of sitting there. So she decides to give him a little more time because after all, Seth's a pastor's kid and she knows that. So she says to him, Seth, who's coming like a thief in the night? She said, suddenly his eyes lit up and he just burst out, Batman. I've said we control nothing oftentimes when we share the gospel. And that takes me to my final point. See, if the point and the purpose of proclaiming the gospel is the glory of God, it should be obvious now that the power of the gospel is exactly the same. It's rooted in the glory of God. Jesus in Acts 1 gave final instructions to his disciples. This is what he said. He said, but you will receive power. when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Jesus says, you will be my witnesses. Now, witness is a noun, it's not a verb. Witness is not what you do, it is who you are. And who you are is just as important as what you say. I mean, I say it all the time, our walking and our talking has got to go together. And when your life and your words line up and the gospel is presented, there is power. And God is glorified. There is triumph. And God is glorified. So my question for us this morning is, are you a witness for Jesus Christ? I mean, are you enough? Or are you too much? Now I want you to ask yourself a question right now. When was the last time you shared the gospel with someone? For me, it was last Saturday. I had the privilege of my neighbor's son, who's now 34, stationed in South Korea. He's a helicopter pilot. He called me up. He said, hey, I'm back visiting my parents. Can I come touch base with you? I said, sure. So we came up. We had a little bit of small talk. I said, I know you want to talk about spiritual things. And so we had a two and a half hour conversation. I mean, he's a flat-out atheist. And so he presented his stuff, I presented my stuff, but he knows, I've known the kid since he was a little tiny baby. He's 34 now. But I can't tell you what a joy it is to just go back and forth and share the gospel with somebody. And I left, I said, you've got my number, you've got my text, you know, shoot me a question whenever something comes up. And I understand as I'm having this conversation with him that I'm not sitting there trying to close the deal. I'm not saying, unless I get him to say the sinner's prayer, this is a total failure. I'm saying, I'm here to present the aroma of Christ. What he does with it is God's business. And that gives me incredible freedom. So if the answer to the question is, when have I last shared the gospel? If the answer is a long time ago or never, you have to ask yourself this question. Why do you think that is? I would suggest to you that fear plays a very prominent role. I don't know my Bible. I get easily confused. I'm not good in confrontations. I don't want to be thought of as a religious nut. You name it, we fear it. And I can identify with all of these fears. I've been there. I've feared that. But the solution is the sovereignty of God. See, if God chose us before the foundation of the world, if you believe that He is sovereign over all of mankind, if you believe He purposed to make you His child, do you think you have any chance of preventing that? Do you think anything has any chance in the entire universe of preventing that? Because if your answer is yes, find that and go worship it, because it's God, and not God. See, if God answers to anything in this universe, including the free will of His creatures, then He's not fully sovereign. Can you imagine God up in His heaven, biting His nails, hoping against hope that we find the courage to do what we're supposed to do? Otherwise, He's stuck. I mean, do you really believe that God would place the eternal destiny of another human being into the fallen, sinful hands of us? You think God's crazy? Every thought, every word, every deed of every human being at every single second flows through God's sovereignty. Now we may get cold feet, we may disobey, we may even deny our Lord, but God will never, never be stopped by our sin. So from Earth's perspective, we all appear autonomous. From Heaven's perspective, nothing is left to chance. And this is not a new perspective. It's exactly what the disciples in Acts believed. It's what gave them power. It's what gave them boldness. You look at Peter in Acts 4. He's just come from being arrested. He's healed a man who's been crippled from birth, and he's praying for boldness, and he lays out the bad news surrounding the cross in Acts 4.27. This is what he says. He says, For truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together. So he says, Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel are all gathered together against Christ. That's an awful lot of bad news, but the good news is presented in the very next line. It says, they were all gathered together, quote, to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word. I want you to picture the scene here. You've got Herod, you've got Pontius Pilate, you've got the Gentiles, you've got the people of Israel all on one side. You've got God on the other side and there's no contest. There's no contest at all. And Peter declares how the cross is all of God's doing. He says they were all gathered together to do whatever God's hand and God's purpose determined beforehand to be done. Now don't ask me how. But in the mystery of God's sovereignty, Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel all freely did of their own free will exactly what God determined beforehand needed to be done. Jesus went to the cross fully aware that a sacrifice had been orchestrated, planned, and executed not by the will of puny human beings but through the will of puny human beings by the sovereign hand of God. Paul prays in Romans 116, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. He says the gospel is the power of God for us who believe. God describes us as the very same power that worked when he raised Christ from the dead and that power flows through us when we share the good news of Jesus Christ. And you may be thinking, well, that sounds good, but that's not been my experience. I mean, I feel awful powerless, not powerful, when I share the gospel. I get that. I mean, to see friends, acquaintances, and loved ones, their relatives, they're all adamant in their unbelief. To see that is to feel at times helpless, hopeless, and angry. It's like having to watch a slow motion nightmare that you are powerless to change. And it may seem worse still if you believe in the sovereignty of God. And if you believe Jesus is insistent in claiming in John 15, you didn't choose me, I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. If you believe Ephesians 1-4 that He chose us and Him before the foundation of the world, you may think, well what in the world is the point of trying? Now if the choice belongs to us, at least everybody's got a chance. But if the choice is God's and He's already made it, then what is the point? of sharing the gospel. Let me tell you, I'm the first to admit that there is a great danger in this understanding of God's sovereignty. It's the danger of fatalism. It's the danger of, K Sarasara, what will be, will be. And it leads to a loss of passion. It leads to indifference. It leads to the frozen chosen. And God's going to save us. Alexa, why bother sharing the gospel? You know, the exact same argument applies to prayer. If God's going to do what He's going to do, why not stop praying? Why bother praying? Why not just say the Lord's Prayer one time and one time only when you reach the age of reason? Just say, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. And say, that's the end of it. And there are people today who believe and act like that. Why pray? Why serve? Why share the Gospel? God does it all. And there's a name for many of those folks today, and that name is unbeliever. You see, if you are a child of God, there is something critical you have to understand. God lives inside you. 1 Corinthians 3.16, Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? And so if God is living inside you, He is ceaselessly at work transforming you into the very image of Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 3.8, and we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is also Spirit. Romans 8.29, we are predestined to be conformed to the image of God's Son. And so if God is conforming us into the very image of his Son, then we can't help but have the same passions that he had. And those passions include prayer and proclamation, sharing the good news of the kingdom. So if those passions are absent from your life, if you're a member of the frozen chosen, perhaps it's time to wonder and ask yourself maybe if you're not simply just frozen. Woe to me if I preach not the gospel. See, that's a passion that should mark every one of God's children. And I tell you what kills that passion is two things. The two things that kill it are ignorance and fear. And they both come from the church. The ignorance comes from the church that no longer preaches or teaches the whole counsel of God. And the fear comes from the church that teaches the power and preaching the gospel comes from you. But it doesn't come from God. And both of these are lies and both of these cripple our witness. God's not looking for lawyers. He's looking for lovers. Men and women who know Christ alone can transform lives. Men and women who know that the point, the purpose, and the power of preaching the gospel is first and foremost the glory of God. See, it's point is not just saving souls but spreading the fragrance of Jesus Christ to those who are being saved as well as to those who are perishing. And it's purpose is to advance the kingdom and glorify God by obeying the Great Commission. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. And thirdly, its power, and this is critical, its power comes from God Himself, who desires that we triumph in Christ simply by spreading the fragrance of His presence as a witness. And whether it glorifies God's justice or mercy is solely up to God's sovereign choice. Who is sufficient for this, God asks? Who has the power to make the words of Scripture bring life to the spiritually dead? I can assure you it's not you and it's not me. It's God. And all God wants is a witness whose life demonstrates who God is and what God does. Because that's what glorifying God is. And that's victory enough. See God does the rest. You may not sense victory when you honestly share the gospel. You may get mocked and you may get ignored. You may feel like a total failure just like that electrician. I reckon he had no idea that God took absolute delight in his witness. That God gave that presentation of his gospel his power as well. And I know that because he was the very first person to ever share the gospel with me. Janice and I were the couple that were invited to his apartment in 1971. It was two full years later in 1973 that I came into the kingdom. And I guarantee you, as far as that man still thinks, that night was a total failure. I mean I had all kinds of questions and he didn't have answers and when we parted company I knew he felt like a fool. But someday we will meet again and he will find out that that dinner that's long ago forgotten, that that dinner was a divine encounter that God used to start me on the road to his kingdom. He will learn that God delighted in him that evening. So how about you? I mean, maybe God has got you thinking about sharing the gospel with your neighbors, your friends, your acquaintances. You can start today by praying for them. You can ask God for opportunities. I'm not saying you pin somebody down and you bash them over the head with the gospel. You don't do that. But you're on your tiptoes. You're asking God for the privilege to be able to present the gospel. And then you look for opportunities. And then you listen for the Holy Spirit's promptings. Because He's the one who sets the agenda. We wait on Him. That's what witnesses do, and they all say, woe to me if I preach not the gospel. So we pray, we seek opportunity, we listen to the Holy Spirit, we spread the fragrance of Christ. And each time we do, we triumph. Let's pray. Father, I just, again, I thank you for the privilege that we have been given. It's just an incredible privilege that we have the keys to eternity. The keys to eternal life, the knowledge that will give people the ability to live forever and reign with You. What a privilege, Lord, and what a struggle to share that privilege with people who want no part of it. Give us the ability to realize that the power to do this doesn't come from us. It's not in our persuasiveness. It's not in our ability. It's in Your Holy Spirit's sovereign choice. Give us the courage to go out and simply be a witness. Simply spread the fragrance of Christ and leave the rest to you. I pray in Jesus name