I do want to share a story with you tonight, but before I do that, Jeff asked me to share just a little piece of our ministry that sometimes people are unaware of. It's a super rich blessing to us. Both Jeff and I, for all of our lives since we gave our lives to Christ, have had a huge burden for missions. We love missionaries. Missionaries are my heroes. So one of the sweetest things about our ministry is that we have had, in particular, we are able to collaborate with an organization, I believe it's out of Florida, with a man named John Conrad, whose ministry is called the Carpenters Project. And what Brother Conrad did is he was a businessman, but he retired early. I think he was very successful. And he has put his energy into translating into languages of unreached people groups, and then getting organizing teams to go over and build churches. So we just feel so blessed to be able to help John with material. This just came to us. One of the places that he has translated our material is in Ethiopia. And as you know, that is a very difficult country to reach. It's an unreached people group. And there is a gentleman named Burhanu. I have no idea if I say these names correctly, but he's not here today. to correct me, but we just got this message from him. I just got it on my email today. But he writes, Brahanu in Ethiopia writes to John and he says, I am receiving calls daily from Addis and outside Addis Ababa. in Orthodox churches of over 300 people who are secretly studying and passing the exchange material back and forth between people. So the thing that's significant to me is this has to be done in secret. But praise God, these believers are distributing the message of the gospel through the exchange material, and we just feel so exceptionally blessed to be part of that. Carpenters Project has translated exchange material into a nation. It's a minority language called Miso. It's also been translated into Burmese and Chen. Those are, of course, languages in Myanmar. In Amharic and Oromo, those are in Ethiopia, and they've taken it across the border to South Sudan, a part of the world that Jeff and I have been intensely concerned for. So, praise the Lord for the way he gives us as believers the ability to collaborate with each other to reach the world with the gospel. We've also had our material translated, I smile about this, it's been translated into Georgian, but not the kind in America, the country of Georgia, through a wonderful missionary. He has also helped us to translate it professionally into into Russian, and then through the exchange we were able to hire a professional interpreter, translator to do all of our material, including information on the app in Spanish, which we have used extensively on the mission field. It's been translated non-professionally in many languages. I don't even know all of them. Years ago somebody did it in Dutch. It's been done non-professionally in Portuguese, in German, and in French. So we just get so excited that God is using the exchange in ways that are past our, I guess even past our dream. The story I want to tell you tonight, do you have a slide for this? This is a story of Laura. It comes from Wixom, Michigan, and it's a pretty special story right now. It's significant to Jeff and me because the church that Laura and her husband attend, the pastor and his wife are going to be joining Jeff and me soon for a seminar, and we're training them. how to teach people the exchange so that they can reach people in their sphere of influence through training, just as Jeff and I do. So, Laura, when I got her story, I titled it this, The Power of an Undeserved Kindness, and I think you're going to understand why I titled it that. God uses very challenging experiences to bring gospel opportunities our way. Laura works in downtown Detroit, and there was a woman in her department that was extremely abrasive. Everyone avoided her. She was just plain challenging to work with. One day, someone gave to Laura a bouquet of flowers, and Laura displayed those on her desk at work. And this very difficult co-worker came by Laura's desk with her phone, shot a picture, and then she posted it on social media as if they were her flowers. So you can imagine Laura's response to that. So as Laura looked at it, she thought, you know, I could just ignore this. I could become offended or I could reach out to this woman. And she sensed God speaking to her in that still small voice that you and I have experienced as believers. She sensed God leading her to give this difficult woman a bouquet of flowers. Her words were, really, God? But that's what she really believed God was doing, so she obeyed, and she bought a very simple bouquet of flowers, and she gave it to this difficult co-worker. And when she did, the woman looked at her and said, That is the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me. Can you imagine that being the nicest thing? But indeed it was, and it actually It actually began to form a relationship between Laura and this difficult woman. She would often come by Laura's desk and talk to her, but one day in particular, she came in tears to Laura's desk, and she said to her, That's a big question, right? A big question that's kind of hard to answer at work. She gave her a simple answer, but this is what she did. She said to this woman, she said, I have a four lesson Bible study that I believe will help you find the meaning of life. Would you do that with me? And the woman agreed, which Laura was shocked knowing where she had been just a few months previous to that. So they began doing the exchange Bible study in their time off of work. The first lesson just went really well. Those of you who remember, the second lesson is on God's justice, and it's a dark lesson because God's justice is very dark. It's beautiful, but it's a fearsome thing if you do not know Jesus. And for whatever reason, Laura and her friend had very little time, and Laura was concerned. You know, here we're going to talk about something so critical and dark, and we have little time to do it. So she gave her problem to God. And when Laura wrote her story, this is what she said. She said, it was as if God suspended time. When you get to the end of the lesson, it gives you the opportunity as the people that are studying it to ask your Bible study if you want to know the rest. So normally you would go through all four lessons, but it says at the end, if you want to know the rest, ask your Bible study leader right now. So they're actually reading the text there, and the woman says, well, go ahead. So Laura did go ahead, and she gave her the gospel, explaining to her not only is God holy and just, but God is loving. He reached out to us. He provided a way that you and I can be close to him. And he offers that as a gift, a gift of grace. And there, that very difficult, abrasive woman was transferred from darkness to light. And I say that. because she continued to work with Laura and people would come by Laura's desk and they would say, what happened to her? Because she was totally different. She actually began sharing the gospel with people in her sphere of influence. I remember one was her grandmother and the other was her boyfriend. And then later on, Laura, as we should all do, she not only gave her the gospel, but she discipled her using Living the Exchange. And we have a story of a transformed life because a co-worker decided, instead of becoming offended, to reach out to a person who was definitely in need. So those of you who are changing my slides this evening, we're going to have to work together, because a little different challenge tonight than normal. The first thing I want to do, go ahead and put that next slide up, and I'll just say next slide, and we'll be OK that way. Is that OK with you guys? I know it's what we're going to do tonight. We believe that partnering with the exchange is really the idea of enabling thousands of people to receive gospel training and literally hundreds of people being saved all over the world. It was exciting to us to begin to hear stories coming out of Ethiopia and South Sudan and many of those stories inside of the Orthodox Church, they actually took the exchange Bible study and redid the cover to look a little more Orthodox Church-like so that it would be acceptable and able to be used to reach those inside the Orthodox Church. It's just really, really exciting to see what the Lord is doing. So the Exchange is a ministry of training God's people for relational evangelism and discipleship, and many of you understand the concepts of the Exchange. I'm not going to try to go through those tonight. I will, at the end here, have a time frame in which we're going to look at a little bit of the newer training that we're developing. But if you could go ahead and do that next slide, I should tell you when to do the next slide, when I am doing the next slide, if you want to go on to the next one now. So far, and it keeps very, very accurate records, we have trained in 227 different locations and have trained a little over 9,000 people in the 11 plus years. We're in our 12th year now as exchange people. And we offer several different seminars now. So we have different kinds of training. If you could do the next slide. Events. We do our basic exchange seminar, which is what we did here at your church. By the way, I will tell you, we have shortened that training slightly. And I know you guys are going to be very disappointed with us, but we don't give quizzes and tests anymore. So I know that's probably very disappointing to you. But now, see, Alex is down here groaning because he took it with Baptist World. They do quizzes and tests. And he had to take quizzes and tests. But I'll tell you, he did an excellent job. And then we do an exchange refresh seminar where we go back into church and train. The refresh seminar is there to help those who have already been trained and to kind of pick up the people who have come to the church since the last time we were there. The busy world we live in, we're finding ourselves needing to adapt. And so we have begun an exchange weekend seminar in which we do the first half of that training and we leave people with enough training to be able to do effectively an exchange Bible study with someone. Sometimes the people enjoy that training well enough that they invite us to come back the next year and we continue the training with the next six hours of training and teach them how to articulate the gospel in a one-time gospel presentation. You probably remember, but our discipleship material is called Living the Exchange, teaching people how to live out of the reality of who Jesus is and how to have a relationship with him on an ongoing basis. And we teach a seminar on discipleship training as well. And then we're just beginning a new seminar in conversations with Jesus, and we're gonna give a little tiny foretaste of that to you guys tonight. I don't know if you ever think about this, but when we think of the exchange, if we get the next slide, please, we think of missions. We try to give about a quarter of our time to the mission field, and here are just several of the places where the Lord has given us privilege to be able to train. When Pastor said that we have been everywhere, it's not quite true. I've never been to Europe. In all of our world travels, we never had a stop and trained in Europe, but we have been to several different places around the world, and we praise the Lord for those opportunities and privileges. This summer, we took the exchange to Kenya and spent three weeks there with this beautiful couple that you see up at the top there. Would you be praying for them? Lexi and George are home right now. Lexi is having some severe health problems and George is struggling with some health issues as well. And I believe, this is a young man that we had the privilege of training when he was a senior in high school in his local church. He went off to Bible college and he told me, he said, you know, the only way I know how to give the gospel is through the exchange. He said, when I get to the field, I want you to come and help me train our people there. And so this summer we had the privilege of doing that. George grew up in Iraq at a very young age. He and his mother escaped, fled. I don't know if you've heard any of the stories of going over to Athens in boats. He actually was born, I started to see he was born in Iraq. His mother was from Iraq. He was actually born in France. because his mother got on an airplane and began to fly and went into labor and they landed her in France and that's where his birth certificate is from. He speaks fluent Arabic and the tribal languages in South Sudan are so totally different that the trade language in South Sudan is Arabic and so he has started a church, this is unheard of, with three different tribes represented from South Sudan And they're using their common language of Arabic. And it's interesting, that church is actually in Nairobi. And a lot of people come to Nairobi. It's kind of a cosmopolitan place. And their plan is then to be able to work from there back into South Sudan. We also had the privilege of training in the United States of the Baptist world missionaries. And that's where we met Alexander. And then as well. Went to Peru this summer and worked with a another missionary family there. So just if you could get the next You're doing it. That's awesome This is just a beautiful picture in Kenya that I loved and wanted you to be able to see and That's Mount Kilimanjaro. And we often try to take people with us to the mission field, especially to Kenya and the Philippines, which we didn't get to do this summer. We take people and we go classroom to classroom and give the gospel. And this is our niece. She has traveled with us both to the Philippines and now this summer to Kenya. And then if you give the next slide, this is the group, one of the four different groups that we trained. in Kenya. This is the group, next slide please, that we trained in Chicago and if you look in the very back there you will see Alexander and then this is the beautiful family that we had a chance to train with in Peru and this is one of the locations where we trained in Peru. We have found that if we just go and do training and don't leave gospel tools that the training doesn't last very long and it doesn't go very far. And so we're, if you can get that next slide, you got it, you're doing great. We've decided that it is imperative to be leaving tools. One of you came up to me and said, It works, because I did the exchange Bible study. The very first tool that we try to introduce in a church is the exchange Bible study. I personally believe that most any Christian could do an exchange Bible study with an unbelieving friend and be able to lead them to Christ. It's very, very simple, very easy to use, and we've heard stories of hundreds. and probably closer to thousands of people being saved using the exchange Bible study. If you would just do the movement there, we also have, you're going to have to do it more, that's great. Living the Exchange is the discipleship material that we use, and if you've never studied Living the Exchange, it is an exciting book. It doesn't deal just with the doctrines of the Bible, but with the dynamics of the Christian life. How do we live the Christian life? How do we get the energy of God? to live out of our lives. And then Giving the Exchange is the book that we use to be able to teach people how to give the gospel. I believe that these books have been republished since the last time we were here and so it may be that you don't recognize those specific books. If you would go to the next slide, we just finished a book called Conversations with Jesus. I know the pastor ordered several of these, and he will have them available for you in the next little bit. I don't know when you're going to do that, but we'll have those available for you. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more tonight. We're working on a new book right now. In fact, Anna and I wrote some emails this morning talking about that. And this is not the way the book will look, but this is just a glimpse at what's going to be inside. It is a a book for tweenagers, that's my name for them, fourth grade through seventh grade, taking the exchange Bible study and then bringing it down into concepts and language that can be understood. We have the privilege through some generous donations to do some really, really nice artwork. And we've got a professional artist who's doing the artwork for us. Very excited about that. And of course, if you get the next slide, you know about the exchange tracks. These also are tools that people can use. The GPS up in the corner is the tool that most people use to be able to go through the gospel. I don't know if you've done it yet, but next slide please. We also have the Exchange app, and the app is basically taking everything that we have and putting it down into one tool. If you would be praying about this with me about our app, two things. Number one, I have a problem to announce, and that is that Google took our app down. It's gone. If you have it on your phone and you have an Android, you can keep it, but right now it's not in the store. It's actually just a glitch with some of the requirements that they have changed, and we are in the process of reformulating and meeting those requirements, and we'll have it back up quickly. So I apologize for that. We will let the pastor know as soon as that is back up. So if you have a Android or a Google based tablet, they are available on both the phones and the tablets. You'll be able to get those again soon. If you have an Apple phone or tablet, you can use that now. All right, I'm going to go ahead and shift gears. That tells you just a little bit about the exchange. We are really bad missionaries. We are missionaries, but the reason we're really bad, I'm going to stay behind here tonight. Oh, you want me to put the thing on? That would be nice. The reason we're really bad missionaries because we don't have a table but we do want you to know that the need is genuine. We had some dear dear people who from the very beginning of the exchange supported the exchange for a thousand dollars a month who graduated to heaven recently and we are missing that income. and are just asking God to give us churches that would raise up those funds. And so if you would be praying with us about that, we would appreciate it. I have to shift slides, or not slides, but notes as well. And I think from this point on, I won't have to say next slide, and you'll see it there. Start with our missions moment this evening, and just a very, very simple story. My hero of all heroes is Hudson Taylor. He was the founder of the missions He spent 51 years in China. During his lifetime, the society was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to China who started 125 different schools, directly resulted in over 18,000 people being saved during his lifetime. and as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work, and well over 500 locations as well. So this is indigenous. And if you know anything about the work in China today, there are people who can kind of take their lineage all the way back to those who came with the China Inland Mission. He was still in his teens when God called him to missions and I don't know if you knew this but the average age I am told that people surrender to missions in churches. is in their third through sixth grade years. I don't know if you knew that or not, but many, many, many, many young people are touched in conferences just like this and we need to be praying for our own young people to be touched. He decided that going to a field that had no support line whatsoever, it would be helpful for him to have training in medicine and so he got a job with a doctor and he was helping the doctor with medications and with treatments and just learning how to take care of people in medical need. And the doctor would pay him for this, but the doctor was very forgetful and often forgot to pay him. And he purposely chose never to tell the doctor and remind him to pay him because he said to himself, I'm going to be living in China and in China it's going to take four months for my letters to get home and four months for someone to write to me and send me money. I need to learn to trust God alone. Well, he was living that kind of a life. He was actually living a very spartan life. He was eating gruel. I don't even know what that means, but I envision it as oatmeal-type food. I have no idea. And he was eating that twice a day and giving himself just enough. He had enough food in his pantry for two more meals when he was out on a Sunday afternoon doing visitation. And he was in an area where he had been roughed up in the past because of his preaching. And a man that he recognized as someone who has been very cruel to him in the past came to him and said, would you please come with me? My wife is in dire health danger and I need someone to pray. He asked him, he said, why don't you get the Catholic Church? And he said, they won't come. They want to charge money. And his heart was touched, and he followed this man and went up a creaky set of stairs and into a room who had no furniture. And on the corner of the room, there was a pallet with a woman who had just given birth. And she was clearly in, I mean, her biggest problem was she just, did not have enough nutrition. There were several other children in the house. All of them had the distended bellies of those who were without food, and he realized what this woman needed more than anything else was a good meal. Hudson Taylor said he would gladly help this family, but he only had one rather large coin in his pocket, and he knew he had no more provisions. He said that he decided, let's pray, and he said he usually in those days received great comfort from prayer, and so he said, I began to pray and realized it was almost as if God was saying, you hypocrite. How can you pray and ask me for money when you have it in your pocket? And he reached in his pocket and he said those people had no idea what kind of a sacrifice he was making. And he handed them this money and knew that it was going to probably save this woman's life. And he says, I went home with my pocket light and my heart lighter. Because he recognized that that day he had crossed over a threshold in which God had put him through a test and he was willing to take that test. That evening he took, oh by the way, I forgot this. As he was arguing with God, and Alexander told you don't ever argue with God because God always wins, because God's always right. As he was arguing with God, a promise came to mind. and proverb that says, he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. And so on the way home he told the Lord, Lord please don't make this a very long loan. The next morning as he was eating his last breakfast, the post came and an envelope and he was very surprised at that because none of his family would send post on the weekend because they didn't want the postman to have to carry post on Sunday. And so he had no idea where it came from, no signature, no ability to be able to tell where it came from. It was padded, and so when he opened it up, there's a pair of leather gloves in it, very beautiful leather gloves, and he's thinking. I don't know what you're thinking, but this is what I would be thinking, and he was too. I can't eat gloves. And as he pulled the gloves out and was looking at them, a gold coin fell out of the gloves, which was ten times larger than the coin he had just given away. And not only does God repay loans quickly, but he pays great interest. And that was just one of the many, many lessons that I could share with you from the life of Hudson Taylor. One of the things, if you have ever, how many of you have ever, maybe I shouldn't say read, how many of you have in your library somewhere the secret Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. How many of you have that in your library somewhere? Yeah, the reason I say it that way is because I've met lots of people who had it, not very many people that have read it. It actually came from a two-volume set of just a biography of his life by his daughter-in-law. And in it, she had recorded some of the teachings that have so drastically impacted my life with what I call the Christ life. Not I, but Christ living in me. And these are the five truths that he learned, that he taught me, and that is, number one, the futility of my flesh. I can do nothing in my flesh to commend me to God, even now that I'm saved. My flesh doesn't serve God. And by the way, I don't know if you knew this or not, but when you got saved, your flesh did not get saved. It will. It will, because one of these days we're going to get a glorified body, but it didn't. Number two, the fullness of my Savior. Everything I need is found in him and he is in me. And number three draws on that resource, and it is the foundation or the fountain of my surrender. It is when I surrender to God that the fountains of God's blessing in my life are able to open up And God pours his grace into my life. And then as a result of that, the filling of my spirit. I don't know if you've ever thought about this or not, but being filled with the Holy Spirit is not some special feeling. It's actually not some special living. It is just simply saying, I am going to live this day not in my flesh, not in myself, but in the power of the Lord. And living in dependence on Him is being filled with His Spirit. And then the last truth that Hudson Taylor taught that I learned was the fruitfulness of my service. God doesn't fill us so that we can be full. He fills us so that we can be fruitful. And it is only when we are filled with the Spirit that we can be fruitful. and God uses us. Those are the five basic truths that we teach in Living the Exchange, and I think that you'll find that to be something that would be helpful. Just one last thing that I think is very helpful for us to recognize about Hudson Taylor that made him such a successful missionary and missionary leader is that Hudson Taylor was one of the first missionaries to ever wear Chinese garb. Up until this time, any missionary that went to China continued in their English garb, and Hudson Taylor recognized that that was a barrier between he and people around him. And Hudson Taylor was one of the first people who began to help us recognize the cross-cultural needs of missionaries to be able to consider the culture that they're going to and to recognize the need to adapt to culture And I think this is insightful for us, especially a church like ours, where we have plenty of gray hairs. As culture changes, it is necessary for us to learn how to adapt to culture without adopting the moral undertones that are going with culture. And so it is a very difficult walk to walk, but I love the fact that Hudson Taylor effectively did that. and can teach us that. Okay, I've got lots of different pieces tonight, so here's my last piece, and let me just see how much time I have left. I'm just going to give you a couple of concepts from the truths that I've learned about conversations, and then the book, Conversations with Jesus. And I'm going to need to skip slides here, so if you will find, learn the art of asking questions. And you just kind of have to keep going through here until, I think it might be the next one. There are builds inside of these slides and they don't turn as quickly as you want them to, so they'll get there eventually. And here's what I have observed about conversations. There are two skills that if you will learn These two skills will help you to be able to be effective in conversations. There is one underlying attitude that must prevail if anything is going to work, and that one underlying attitude is that you must genuinely care for that person. So showing genuine concern and care for that person is necessary. Being interested in that person, that's that underlying attitude. And the two skills that will put you in great standing in learning how to be a conversationalist is, number one, to ask appropriate questions. There's all kinds of things that you can learn about that. Let me just give you a point about that. I'm going to skip some of these. If you would just go to the next one. One more. There you go. I believe that if you will learn how to ask questions that allow you to go from surface conversations to a little deeper conversations, that you're gonna find the opportunity to get into gospel conversations much more easily. So people have asked me all the time, how do you turn conversations to the gospel? And I tell them, if you're talking about turning the conversation from the weather to the gospel, I don't know. I mean, I have no clue. But if you're talking about... A relational problem that this person is having and the fears that they're experiencing because of this relational problem, man, that conversation is really, really close to the gospel because I can simply say, you know, I certainly face difficulties like that as well that cause me fear. But frankly, it's my relationship with God that helps me with my fears. Let me ask you a question. How would you describe your relationship with God? And so, I don't know if you've ever thought about this or not, but these basic soul needs are found in every single person, especially those without Jesus. Loneliness, because the human soul needs contact. Emptiness, because the human soul needs purpose. Fear, because the human soul needs security. And love, because the human soul needs to love and to be loved. And then lastly, guilt, because every human soul carries the weight of guilt and needs forgiveness. So as you're having conversations and you are asking questions, and they're talking, and you are listening. allow those conversations to be steered to the real issues of life. And when you get yourself to one of these four or five soul needs, I just will tell you it's not going to be difficult to turn the conversation to the gospel. Here's what I'm afraid our problem is. We want to just go in and say, would you shut up and listen to me? I got to tell you about the gospel. And we give them the gospel and they're thinking, man, that guy is really weird. And off we go. And I believe that God wants you and he wants me to learn how to be good listeners. And so if you turn the slide again. Two things I want to share with you about being a good listener. Number one is just the value of good listening. Listening shows respect and I don't know if you've ever heard this equation but shared experiences plus respect equals trust. Shared experiences plus respect equals trust. So literally, what you have to do is you have to be able to spend time with people, you have to show them that you respect them, and they will begin to trust you. And think about this. Can you imagine someone being saved because they got led to the Lord by someone they don't trust? I actually think trust is an extremely important ingredient in a relationship. So if we're gonna just say, so what makes a relationship helpful to the gospel? I think trust is one of the main ingredients. Obviously affection is clearly involved as well. And by the way, listening shows respect. So if we will just learn how to ask questions appropriately to get conversation going and listen, we're going to be able to build trust. Listening builds relationships. Dale Carnegie said, you can build more, or you can make more friends in two weeks by becoming a good listener than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you. So, listening builds relationship. Listening builds loyalty. John Maxwell says, most people consider themselves pretty good listeners, but most people cannot listen well. I don't know about you, but when I hear someone like John Maxwell, a relationship expert, say that most people don't listen well, that makes me want to listen to him. By the way, if you're listening right now and you didn't catch what I just said, you're probably one of the people that need to be hearing it. Listening literally takes concentration. We have to do it on purpose. It doesn't happen unless we do it on purpose. And then lastly, listening shows you care. And of course, you know the statement, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. And let me just quickly give you a few traits of good listeners. So when you're listening, by the way, this is the next slide, when you're listening, don't just wait for your chance to talk. That's not listening. That's just waiting. Have you ever been in a conversation where the person is standing there and you can, you know, and as soon as you shut up, they talk about something, you're totally off subject. And what's the first thought that comes to your brain? They weren't listening. Yeah. So it's more than just waiting your chance to talk. It's focusing on your friend. You have to be careful because sometimes you can actually be focusing on what you're going to say and not really listening to what that person is saying. Your whole desire is to listen so that you're earning the right to be heard. and to demonstrate Christian love to that person. Great listeners don't talk about themselves, so when you hear the word I, I, I coming up in a conversation, it is time for you to start asking questions. Great listeners show their friend that they're listening to them. Let me show you how to kill a conversation. Hang on just a second, just one minute, I gotta take this. Yeah, yeah, I'm serious. This thing is a great device, but it'll kill conversations. And when I take this out and start focusing on this instead of the conversation in front of me, I literally have just told the person, what you're saying isn't nearly as important as what I have to say or what I have to do. So show your friend that you're listening. One of the ways you can show your friend you're listening is by looking at them, paying attention to them. But another way is by responding verbally to what they say. Sometimes you can sum up what they've said and it makes them aware that you've been listening, but probably even more important and more valuable is if you will just simply ask a follow-up question. Now this is really, really valuable because you know what you're doing when you ask a follow-up question to what they just said. You're asking them to go deeper. And that's our goal of conversations, is we wanna go from these surface conversations down into real conversations and when we're talking about heart matters. And so when you're asking follow-up questions to whatever it is they're talking about, you're going deeper and deeper and deeper into the real issues of life. I'm going to skip some of these. Let's skip the next slide as well. And there should be a summary slide coming up somewhere soon. And on the summary slide, that was not good. On the summary slide, it's just going to help you see our ability to help people. Let's go, let's don't go. Let's go back one, go back one. Two, no. There we go. If you'll go one more ahead Right there. So I'm just gonna read these off screen because I can't find them in my notes Don't just wait your time turn to get a talk great listeners Don't talk about themselves show your friend that you're listening to them track with your friend and learn some basic talking rules That will help you because we believe that conversations can get you to the gospel. Conversations with Jesus is a simple book in which we are observing the conversations that Jesus had in the Bible. John said Jesus did a lot of other things that are not written in this book, but I wrote this book that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you would have life in his name. Literally what John is saying is I wrote the book to make believers out of unbelievers. And I believe it's a great book to study with an unbelieving friend. You have an atheist friend, one of the best things to do with your atheist friend is to study the Bible with them. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And if you will go to Conversations with Jesus and study it through the book of John I would urge you to do it with your red letter edition of the Bible in front of you so you can see the red letters, black letters, red letters, black letters as Jesus has genuine real conversations with people. I think it's interesting to us that the very first words, so if you're looking at red letters in the Bible, the very first red letter words you're going to come across in the book of John is a question from Jesus. What are you seeking? And I think it's a foundational question in people's lives. What are you looking for out of life? How are you, you know, we're just helping them to see there's more to life than just surface stuff. It's interesting as well that when Jesus found someone who would listen, his ultimate goal for them, the ultimate question for them was, will you follow me? And so I think it's interesting that we see in the very first conversation Jesus has, kind of an entry level conversation and the ultimate conversation And I love the question that Jesus shows that we talked about when we were here before, come and see. And it's so relational. So they were asking, where are you staying? He didn't give them information. He asked them to come with him to show them, relationally connect with them. Let me just give you a few observations from the book of John. in the conversations that Jesus had, and just a couple of things that you'll notice from each conversation. Number one, he talked to Nicodemus. And you guys know these stories, so I'm not going to go do any background on them. Notice that he spoke to Nicodemus on a theological basis. They started at theology because that's where Nicodemus lived. Does that make sense? He was a teacher in Israel. He worked to move Nicodemus to think and to converse on a deeper level, and you will see this over and over and over as Jesus has conversations with people. He is constantly moving conversations to a deeper level. Even though Jesus was kind, he did not hold back essential truth from Nicodemus, even though it was shocking to him. And sometimes I'm afraid that when we give people the truth, we don't want to talk to them about justice because that's going to be talking about hell and that might turn them off. And I'm just telling you, Jesus never held back essential truth. And then Jesus did not expect Nicodemus to make a decision the first time he talked to him. You know Nicodemus? Right now, make a decision. You're out. Next. In fact, it's interesting. We see Nicodemus three times in the book of John, and it's not until that last third time that we recognize that this conversation with Jesus impacted him, and he did become a believer. The next chapter, we see the, I call her the outcast at the well, because she was not just a woman, but clearly a woman coming to the well. at a time that was not conducive and I think it's interesting that it starts that particular conversation with this statement, Jesus had to pass through Samaria because Jesus was looking for this woman. And he spoke to her on a practical basis. So just like he started this conversation with Nicodemus way up here on an intellectual, theological basis, he started this conversation down here with her on a very practical basis because that's where she lived. I just love this, that Jesus goes to where people were. and took them there to the truth about him. He graciously spoke to her and asked her, would you give me a drink? And when you see that phrase that says that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, literally those words could be translated, the Jews don't use the same utensils Samaritans do. So when Jesus asked for that ladle, It was shocking to her and it drew them together. I mean do you see what he's doing here? He's connecting himself with her and then of course he offered her a better source of water. I think it's interesting that the very first person that Jesus revealed himself to as the Messiah is this woman. I mean, it's shocking to every Jew that reads this book. It's shocking because she's Samaritan, because she's woman, because she's immoral. And yet Jesus came to save such. It's beautiful. So it's interesting as you study this conversation, look for tips on conversations because you're going to see them. But ultimately what Jesus did in that conversation was he revealed to her who he is. And that's the ultimate goal of every conversation is to help people see who Jesus is and how he can meet their needs. I'm going to skip the invalid at the pool, I'm going to skip the woman caught in adultery, both of these are powerful stories but I'm going to end with the man born blind and I just think it's interesting that the disciples saw this man and immediately wanted to know whose sin was the cause of this blind man's blindness and you know he's born blind. There's a couple of things about this being born blind that is significant. In the text it makes it very clear no one, I mean this is the very first time in history, no one had ever heard of a man being born blind being able to see. I mean this is not just a notable miracle, this is a miraculous miracle. This is amazing. So, the Jews believed that every ailment in life was a result of some specific sin that someone had done, and so they want to know. This guy was born this way, so was it him? I mean, he's the one suffering, but he wasn't even born. It had to have been his parents. Who was it? And I think it's interesting. We learn a lot about these contrasting perspectives because the disciples were focusing on the past. Why did this happen? And Jesus is focusing on the future. He's focusing on the fact that God's power would be displayed in healing this man. And the focus between these two is significant because most of us want to look back and say, why? And God says, let's look forward and say, what can God do to bring glory to himself in this circumstance? It's cool because Jesus allowed this blind man to participate in his own healing and he makes mud out of saliva. That's kind of like totally out of our bandwidth. We can't even understand that. But there was actually a thought process of the day that there was medicinal value in saliva. I know that wasn't what healed him, by the way. God healed him, Jesus healed him. But it's interesting that he put that mud on his eyes and then he told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. And John supplies for us this information which means sent. And I just think it's important for us to recognize we can give the information but the person we're talking to has to make the decision. Does that make sense? They have to participate in their own cleansing. God has to do the work but God lets people make decisions. Interesting. this phrase, so he went and washed and came back seen. I mean, I love the way John portrays miracles in his book. They are so totally understated. I mean, if this was the wealth and health people, you know, they would have had thousands of people watching and angel feathers floating down and gold dust coming down. I mean, this would have been awesome and we all need your money now. And it's so understated. And whenever you read the man's account of what happened, it's just that same understatement. And it happens three times in the passage. Really, really beautiful. This is interesting. Jesus heals him and then leaves. And it's not until he comes back later and takes him into a deeper conversation that he actually tells him who he is and how he can be saved. And I think it's interesting for us to recognize that Jesus often touched people once, twice, thrice. He didn't necessarily expect them to get saved the first time they talked. It wasn't that he was afraid, it wasn't that he was hesitant to talk, that's us, it was that he was patient and he was letting this work happen in their lives and I think you and I can learn from that. So here's a summary for you in terms of being able to use conversations and the book conversations to lead people to Christ. Number one, learn to ask questions and listen. lead conversations from surface to soul just like Jesus did over and over and over, he led conversations deeper, show compassion and patience and persistence. Those two P's words are really helpful, patience and persistence and then our ultimate goal is to see Jesus revealed to our friend and if you and I will just simply live that life I believe that the Holy Spirit of God will not only take the words that we said on the outside but will reveal to them on the inside who he is. I think it's interesting that Alexander tonight says that he's been in church multiple times but it was that one time that all of a sudden he is interested. What is that? That's the work of the Holy Spirit and you and I can expect the same Holy Spirit to do the same work in the people that we work with. So tonight there are no questions at the end. You know I've been doing that every night trying to bring you to think about these things. But I would just ask you would you begin to consider how can I become a better conversationalist by learning how to ask questions and listen carefully and then How can I use the Word of God specifically and possibly conversations with Jesus to be able to see people come