down here. We want to go live with him. We want
to honor him. I'm going to sing his praises.
Folks, our religion has to finally come down to
what do you do? What do you say
to people? A lady in my cleaners is on my list.
She's a she's a younger lady. She
married a guy from the base. They don't
understand Abilene's a religious
town. That's kind of confused them a little bit.
And they have a new baby. And
the guy is at work all night. Every time I go
into the cleaners, she's on my list
now remember, I try to find her. Now that's not
always easy to do. Sometimes
she's in the back. But I tried it to talk to
her. One day I go into the cleaners
and she's obviously been crying. I say to her,
Linda, that's not her name. I say
Linda, is this a hard day? She says, yes it is.
I say, would you like to talk about
it a second? I know you're busy. Now remember
we're on the job here. I don't
want to I don't want to hurt this owner. I
don't want to offend. I don't want to
be the preacher standing on a stump in the
corner saying you will listen to the
gospel. I don't care if it's 2:00. And I say,
do you want to sing? Would you
like to talk about it a minute? She said, well
here it is. My baby's sick. She's
very sick. I haven't slept in three nights.
When I get home, I need somebody
to relieve me. And my husband is putting on his
cap and his coat to go to work. So
I say, I can only imagine how hard that is. You
are exhausted and then you're
more exhausted and then you have to report to
work. That baby won't wait. I go
out and put my clothes in the car and I sit in
the car for a minute and I think,
what does she need? Now can anybody here just
throw out what she might need? What?
Help for the baby? Did somebody say that?
Anything else?
Understanding. Good night's sleep. Y'all are
all on it. What else? Because I didn't
get any of those. I thought she needed a $20
bill. I thought that's what she
needed. I'll tell you why. When I was really
sick, a lady came over to visit my
wife and sat in our living room while there
were three loads of clothing to be
folded, apparently within view at least. That's
what my wife claims. And she said
with a sweetheart, honey, if there's anything I
ever do for you, just call me.
And she left and my wife, I think, screamed.
I'm not sure. But it
hit her, that seeing she didn't see, hearing
she didn't hear. Now for some
reason that came into my mind in my car. The
lady's on my left. She's in my pocket,
okay? And I think if she had $20, she'd order
Crystal's pizza. She wouldn't have
to cook. I could do that. I can't do it much,
but I could do it this time. Got
out of my car and I went back in and I said,
Linda, one time when we were in a
situation where we were really tired, my wife
and I, and by the way, in any service
to women, I verbally put my wife and I into
that conversation with regularity. I
am not going to be in jeopardy over
male-to-female ministry. Let's just get
that on the record because it's a bad day out
here right now, okay? So I
like people to know I'm happily married. I
mean, I'm gonna do that. But I said, you
know, when my wife and I were exhausted, there
was a man at the Town Crier
restaurant, which still exists here, in the
parking lot, who came up to me and
shook my hand. And when I pulled my hand back,
I had a wad of bills in it. I didn't
know the man. And he said, shut up. You need it.
I thought he's crazy. I still do.
I think I'm right. But he's crazy with love and
with a heart that knew
what was needed. I said, Linda, here's a $20
bill. Order pizza. Now she started
crying. I wanted to cry. Everybody wanted to
cry. Okay. I didn't cry. One of those
rare times I didn't cry. She wept a little bit.
I said, Shh, don't say anything about it.
The next time I came into the cleaners, here's
what she said. She said, I want to tell
you what happened when you gave me that. I
said, what? She said, I felt the love of God.
Now, she was not a church member. It led to a
study. She and her husband are
attending a Church of Christ now. I cannot tell
you they've been baptized.
I'm not going to make a story up here.
Something amazing happened. She felt the
love of God. Now, that's a pretty good thing to
do to somebody on your list.
Can't go around giving $20 bills out. I
understand that. I'll tell you what you
can do. You can go around with a cognizance of
human beings that you would
like to be a tool in the hand of God to touch
their life. It can be a word. It can
be a gift. It can be a service. I wouldn't
attempt to exhaust what it
could be. My question is, are you ready? We are
so wrapped up and I got to get
home. I got to do this. We have, I'll tell you
what, we are living a burdensome life.
We've got schedule we can't control. We've got
obligations we don't like, some
of which we have to do, and we seem to have joy
just sapped out of us. We're
functioning, but we don't seem to radiate, okay?
I wonder if, put your family first
on your list, make these names real people that
you touch, that you rub
shoulders with, and let a word to the Lord in
prayer again say, Lord, I am in
your hand. Use me. You can't continue to rub up
against people's lives and not be
used. Will it result in conversion? I didn't
promise anything about
that. I do know this. The Lord tends to use
human beings. They're vessels. They're
broken. They've received from him grace.
They're in Christ. Usually it's someone
in whose life you've glimpsed God's love. Am I
right? Now we're worried a great
deal about what all doctrine we need to be
teaching. I would just point us one
time to the passage in Titus that talks about
adorning the doctrine of God. It
simply means that there is the proper dress,
there is a dressing that
complements or highlights or shows the truth
about God. Why was it said they
love each other? I know you're Christians by
your love for each other.
Why does the old Apostle John spend his
apparently last days with this real
treatise, Holy Spirit guided, that says love
each other? Love each other. I gather
from that there was going to be a mighty
preaching of the gospel in the event
that Christians really did love each other,
that the gospel was going to be
being preached. Am I right? If we would like
people to believe more things that
are true, let's let them see God more. I think
it'll help. I don't know that they
need to see all of our beaten up Bibles, I
think they need to see the Bible in
our lives. And I don't want to be too esoteric
here, because there is
teaching. Somebody said to me, are you
different from that other guy that
taught on this workshop? You know, he taught
across the T's, dot the I's. I'm not
different. I can't quite confront as much as he
effectively does. I don't know
if his followers do, but he does well, because
I've been with him. But I'll tell
you this, I don't want people to interact with
my life on a regular basis and not
see God. And that's my goal. What I say, what I
do. I've got an old
reprobate on my list. He hates the church, he
hates Christ, he hates everything as
best I can tell, because the church mistreated
him years and years ago. And I
am praying and talking to him and telling him
that the Lord is keeping him
alive until he has another, another expression
of the gospel where he can
see that the gospel is tangible, it's loving
him. He's so hurt. He's so, you know,
you get hurt, then you get bitter, and then you
get back. And the way religious
people get back is by tearing down religion.
Some of the most religious
people in the world who get hurt end up tearing
religion down, as if it would
make them feel better, and it doesn't. It
doesn't make anybody feel better. He can hardly
stand for me to hug him. He can hardly stand to
say something which sometimes
has profanity in it, and me say to him, I
realize you're striking out. It's okay, I
can take it. By the way, there's an interesting
thing about the Lord God of
Scripture. He's not surprised by, and he's not
too small to deal with anything a
human being can do. And you think about that.
When you run around protecting God,
what you need to do is run around declaring him.
He's big. He made us. But bitterness is
hard to overcome. I do think about the only way
I know is to say, Lord, use me in
his life. If not me, somebody. You know, I'm
not gonna be all shocked at what he
says, because he's trying to find the shocking
thing. He's come up with some
pretty good ones, too. But we go on. That's
what, by the way,
rebellious teenagers do that, too. They think
if there is a phrase that you hold
sacred, that they can twist, that you will just
crumble in their midst. Don't
crumble. The Lord's big. The Lord's got a lot
of patience, and he's gonna love that
kid if you'll just hang in there. That's a word
from those who have
been there. The training examples that I wanted
to give you in this last session
are easy to give, and they're brief, and let me
just go through what they are. The
first thing that I wanted to mention was the
book by Leighton Ford that I think
is so amazing about telling your story. The
gospel is a story. What's really
happened to you and me is our life story has
met the gospel story, and Leighton
Ford trains third-world evangelists. He's, I
believe he's a brother-in-law of Billy
Graham, and that identifies him somewhat. But
what he's done is he's
decided that India, Pakistan, and third-world
countries need a lot of
encouragement in the Christian faith, because
the Christian faith is not well
established in those countries. So what he does
is he tries to train very, very
young people who preach, now obviously of all
kinds of faith, but here's what I
like about it. He tells them that what they're
going to be doing the rest of
their life is as natural as breathing. They're
going to be telling what
happened on the cross, and they're going to be
telling when in their life what
happened on the cross crossed their life and
became their story. So instead of me
saying I'm from Nashville, I was part of four
kids, I played basketball, in fact I
played it so long ago that my average is up to
32 points a game now in my memory.
That's my story. I used to like to drive to
Kentucky. I like quilts. I like, you
want to talk about my story? Let me tell you my
story. I can tell you the time, I
can tell you the place where the Lord God and
Jesus Christ saved me by his
grace, and I am now walking in Christ. That's
my story. So you can't get much
Tennessee out of me and quilts and basketball
and all that other stuff
without Jesus Christ. You're not going to get
it. I'm asking you today, not where you live,
not what car you drive, isn't your story the
cross of Jesus Christ? Yes? And do we
not boast in it? It is that of which we are
greatly proud. He who was no sin was
made to be sin so that we might become the
righteousness of God. Paul calls that
the message of reconciliation. He refers to it
as a ministry of reconciliation.
It's what we're about. By the way, this is the
biggest reason to tell a child not
to marry a non-Christian. The biggest reason.
Do not marry anyone whose story
is not your story. And this is a little bit of
a way station. I understand I'm on
a bias here, but I'm not soft on that anymore.
Our kids need to marry
cross-centered people, and if we don't start
talking that down around six, seven,
eight years old, and keep on. You are a person
with a different story.
Marry someone whose story is that story. Am I
wrong? Well, we've got all the way
and when I'm well you didn't yeah yeah doesn't
often happen but yeah. If the
length of our life is not the important thing,
if what is so important is that
God's story of redemption has become my story,
then that beautiful girl I marry,
what do I want? I just want her to be a person
whose story is the same story.
That's simple. The best thing to tell a
teenager is talk about Jesus right now.
You love that old boy? You talk about Jesus
right now. If he doesn't like it
now, he won't like it then. You know, and some
boys just shake their head. I hate
that, hate that, but it's true. Alistair
McGrath teaches at Cambridge
University in the winter, and he teaches at
Regent University in Canada in the
summer. He's got a wonderful book called
Explaining Your Faith Without Losing
Your Friend. It's as simply written. Here's a
guy with a Ph.D. from Cambridge
and more, and he wrote it where I could
understand it. I really appreciated that.
It's a little paperback. You ought to get it.
Explaining Your Faith Without Losing
Your Friends. I don't think it's totally
accurate because the faith he explains,
which is so centered on the cross, can still
make a friend go away. But the
reason he did it was he's in so many student
situations where the largest
dominant student culture is not a believing
culture, and what he was trying
to say to students is, explaining your faith
should be like telling where
you're from. It should be just as normal and as
natural because it's not too
good. You know, I don't tell you I'm from
Nashville to convince you I'm from
Nashville. I'm from Nashville. I don't care if
you believe it or not. In one
sense, it's true whether you believe it or not.
I want to tell you something. Jesus
of Nashville is the Son of God. Now, you can
decide whether you believe that or
not. I would love for you to. I'm not going to
compel you to. I don't twist your
arm until you do. That business is really
beyond me because you're a person of
somewhat free will. We have taken on a burden
that conversion is getting
people where they need to go. Any of y'all ever
tried to really do that? Make
folks go where they don't want to go? Any of
y'all 100% successful doing that?
Because I want to hire you. I got some folks I
want to go places. No, we really
aren't. Truth has its own intrinsic power. Not
to make people go where we want them
to go, but to testify to what is true in the
universe. And Jesus is the Christ. I
love Paul's little glimpse of the future when
he has the ability without even
saying he closed his eyes to envision every
knee bowing and every tongue
confessing. Do you think that's going to be an
amazing day? Carl Sagan's gonna
testify. I believe Jesus is the Christ. I was
wrong about the Cosmos. Had some
things right and the biggest thing wrong. And
you think of all these evil
people, which I won't name, but think of the
most arrogant non-believer
saying the sweet word of Jesus Christ. It's
gonna happen. We need to be sure we
are trained in saying it, that we love to say
it, because we're testifying to the
truth of all truths. I love to share with
people the little paperback, The Power of
Hope. Some people don't like it, but it's the
Gospel of Luke. Am I right? Is that
Luke, Jim? The Power of Hope?
But what is it in the New Testament? Is it Luke
and Romans? Okay. It's called The
Power of Hope. It's a little blue excerpt from
the Bible. In modern language, you
may not like that translation. I'll tell you
something about the New Testament
story of Jesus. Moderns have not read it.
Moderns have not read it. You hear what I say?
Which is why I don't understand why
Christians will not give away Scripture. It
seems like to me we ought to have a
nice little supply of Scripture to give away.
Read this story. This story has the
potential to totally revolutionize your life.
It's in the process of doing that
to me. What would be wrong with it? It's called
The Power of Hope. It's put out by
Navigator's Press. It's a nice little excerpt,
I believe, of Luke and Romans.
There's also one other resource I want to
mention other than the ones that are
on this table. It's called Friend Maker for God.
Ben Johnson lives in Atlanta,
Georgia, and he's taught for about 24 years
evangelism training, and he's got a
faith-sharing seminar that is just called
Friend Maker for God. These are
all mentioned. Somebody asked me this morning,
first thing, you believe in these
things? What their meaning is, is there any
line in anything that you wouldn't
stand for? Of course not. I mean all of its got
lines in it that that I would
rip and tear if I were redoing it. I'll tell
you something, though. I want to
train biblical Christians in telling their
story, and I'm willing to help them
learn the difference between meat and bones.
Now when you write the perfect
one, I'll use yours. I promise you. And I don't
mean that facetiously. I learned
this in hospital chaplaincy work. I was a
cancer patient twice. Some of you know
that. I wrote some little booklets, one called
You're Not Alone for People with
Cancer, and one called We're Fellow Strugglers,
where I tell them they find
something secure that cancer can't threaten,
and I found it in a father-child
relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I
had a chaplain once who told me
that ain't very good, and I said, I don't think
it is either. And he said, I talk to
people all day every day, and I tell them
better things than that. How many do you
talk to every day? Sometimes 20. Now let's see,
if you talk to 20 a day for how long
are you gonna live? I said, here's the point,
sir. There's lots of folks you're
not gonna talk to. Maybe I'm gonna talk to
them, or maybe they're gonna read
something I wrote. And I'm an old Tennessee
boy, and my granddaddy believed
you. You just worked with the tools you had
until you got better tools. Not
because less sharp tools were great, it's
because that's what you had. I feel like
some of us are saying my story's not as good.
That guy who was in prison, who was
on cocaine, who was 19 times almost killed by
the mafia, his conversion story
is what everybody needs to hear. Wrong, wrong,
wrong, wrong. The conversion story
that is needed is the one that is beside the
people in flesh. That's what's needed.
They're looking around to see if there's
anybody who's being changed by Jesus
Christ, and you're saying, over in Dallas there
is. I wish I could get him over
here. You'd like him. I want to say something
to you. Do not minimize the
dynamos of God that is within us. It is the
gospel. The times we think we're the
best, we're falling on our face. The times we
think we're the worst, God is using us.
How foolish we are. All we've ever been asked
to do is present. Present. I'm in
the army, count me in. And the Lord will show
us where he'll use us. Do you not
believe that? Do you not believe? How many of
your children came to faith through
an unlikely source? Would you just raise your
hand if you would say to me it
wasn't the best source, but God used it anyway?
All of you had great examples
that made your children come to faith. I doubt
it. In the Bible, he used a donkey.
Of such, one is speaking to you today.
Yeah. Leighton Ford is called the power of
story. The power of
story. It's in print. I try hard not to put
anything in here that wasn't in
print. That's so frustrating to people to get a
brand new book and everything's
out of print. It's called the power of story.
People are loving stories today.
There's storytelling conventions. People are
paying 1000s of dollars to go to
Somburg and Tennessee and other places to hear
stories. We have been told the
most exciting story, and it's true.
Explaining your faith is McGrath, M-C-G-R-A-T-H.
His last name is McGrath. His
first name is Alistair, A-L-I-S-T-A-I-R. Okay,
I want to ask you to come with
questions about what you've heard as such a
simple plan after I tell you the
reason all of this has been done. I want to
read to you something. In John the
15th chapter, the 8th verse, and in Psalm the
51st chapter, there is embedded in
both of those scriptures the greatest
evangelistic incentive that exists, and
it is simply this, to bring glory to God. What
we are walking among here are men
and women on this earth who were made in the
image of God, and they live as if he
did not exist. Now we talk about winning people
to Christ because they'll burn in
hell. I believe there is a hell. It is not the
greatest incentive. The greatest
incentive is to bear the family likeness and
give our Father glory. Even the
toughest thing said in the Sermon on the Mount
about forgiving our enemies and
praying for those who despitefully use us are
so that we will be children of the
Father. What is that? Act like he does. You'll
bring him glory when you do. The
biggest reason I want my four children to know
Jesus Christ is because God made
them. He has sustained them. He loves them with
an eternal love. He gave his only
Son for them, and I want all four of them to
give him the glory he deserves. Isn't
that the best incentive? Sometimes we become
very human-centered, but folks are
going to be lost. I'll tell you what's not
going to happen. People who walked on
God's earth, breathed God's air, lived in
bodies God gave, have souls God provided,
not giving him the attention, the credit, the
glory that he deserves. How foolish
can a human being say? You know, the fool has
said in his heart there is no God,
and fools continue to live, provided for
totally by God, giving him no notice.
That's really what's happening. There are two
groups on the earth, those who take
the revealed God of Scripture seriously, and
those who don't. Now there's all
gradations and variations and all of that, but
get it all the way down to it.
We are his. How many of us love that? So to me,
I'd like to see our preaching.
Somebody said, I preached 13 sermons on
evangelism. That really encouraged me. I
tell you what, preach 13 sermons on the nature
of God and you will also be
preaching evangelism. I'm surprised that we
think that the message of the Lord is
not evangelism. It is all designed to draw us
to him and shape us. We love
Romans 8:28. Read 29. For those he foreknew, he
predestined to be conformed
to the image of his Son. There it is. Now would
someone tell me whether Jesus was
evangelistic? Anybody know? Everybody here
wishes that could have been with him, and
of course we can, but everybody says, oh I
would have just loved to have been
with him. Would you have liked the ones he
reached out to, the way he did it?
Because he reached out to all of them. He told
the proud what it took to crack them
and make them humble, and he told the humble
they didn't need to look at the
ground, that he loved them, and they could be
appropriately proud of being his
children. What do you say to the Pharisees? You
say he said hard things to
them. What was the purpose? Anybody know the
purpose? To tell them off? To wake
them up? I would suggest to you everything
Jesus ever said and did was
designed for reconciliation purposes. So to me
evangelism training, just to get to
the bottom line, I don't think it's a program
you do this spring and then we
do it again sometime. I think it ought to be
the way the church breathes, and I'd
like to see you get either this book or some
book, convene some people in your
living room, and say the 12 of us will covenant
together to start seeing this
way, and hearing this way, and speaking this
way, and we will have lists that are,
if you would like to keep them private, but we
will have
accountability hearts with each other, and we
will ask one another about people
who are on our list, and we will pray for, and
we will serve people in the name of
Jesus, and we will speak his name with no
hesitation, and you tell me if that
happens, if something won't change. The first
thing that will change is us. Every
time I speak on marriage I tell lovely things
about my wife. Why do I do that?
Because I think she is the finest human being
I've ever known. I think she's the
finest woman. I think she's the finest mother.
I think she's the finest wife. You hadn't got
time. That's my wife. What about my Lord? You
know it's easy to do it in here. It
is really easy, and we just kind of all want to
do it. Get it out of the church!
It becomes your words of the day. Jesus has
been kind to me. If you can't say
anything else, here is a good one to start with.
Jesus Christ has been so kind
to me. People go, what? They may not ask. They
will notice. I'm
not suggesting walking the walk and talking the
talk and not walking the
walk at all. I am suggesting, though, that we
have been intimidated. Our church
problems make us shut up. We say, who'd want to
go to this mess? Well, that mess
is a group of people Jesus died for. I'm not
gonna quit the church. I don't know
about you. I'm gonna be committed to you as
ugly as you are, and if you ever got
perfect, you'd throw me out. We need to get
over it. What we're proud of is Jesus
Christ, and he has a church. Oh yes, he does.
He has a church. Somebody told me
one time, you don't need to be from the church
in Tennessee, and I said, how you
gonna do that? You gonna disqualify that group
over there? You don't like them? You
don't like the way they do church? That's what
he said. I don't like the way they
do church, and I said, you know, if you really
loved them, you'd go over and do
it better and show them how. I wouldn't be
caught dead being a preacher in
Tennessee. I said, if he's over there, you'd be
dead. Well, we need to get over it.
The key to honoring God is loving what he
loves, doing what he does. Am I right?
Loving what he loves, doing what he does. I'm
not telling you it's simple. I do
believe that the gospel life is not complicated
to understand. The issue is
paying the cost. It's the will. I'm asking you
to go home and within 30 days have a
group of 10 or 12 into your home with a simple
proposition. You might start it
this way. Aren't we dozen people needy enough
that we need to be talking more
about Jesus Christ to people we associate with?
Aren't we needy enough
that we need to be reminding ourselves of our
salvation in Christ? Aren't we
needy enough that we need to be trying to share
him with others who have no
hope? We have hope. Wouldn't it deepen our hope
to share someone with someone? We
talk in church about eternal life, about hope,
about all the wonderful things, but
we don't tell anybody else. It's a secret.
Reminds me of the clubs people are in
that you can't know the rules unless you're in
the club, and yet the gospel
is for all. Whosoever will may come, but if you
get there you got to get there on
your own. That's not true. So to me, will you
do that? How many of you would
covenant to do that if Bill Young had next year
in February another class that
you would say, I would come to it and I would
tell the truth?
Ooh, we're down to serious stuff, aren't we?
How many of you would do that in the
next 30 days? Not to please me. Maybe some of
y'all are so busy doing it you can't
do any more. Is that what it is? See, I don't
think so. Every time we hear a
powerful speaker for Jesus Christ, we go away
and we say something that is
patently false. We say, I wish I had his faith.
And I would suggest to you if
anyone speaks in such words and tones that
makes you believe he or she walks
with Jesus Christ, may I let you in on
something? There is space for you beside
him, beside the side of Jesus. I don't
understand this faith that is just this
superior faith we all wish we had. And this
great relationship with God we all
wish we had. Of course we follow that guy or
that gal to the car and they tell us
to get away, that they're unclean. I mean
that's what they do. Don't follow me. If
you saw anything in me of Jesus, praise him and
follow him, but don't follow me.
That's what they'd say, right, wouldn't they?
But we go away saying, Lord I wish I had
their faith. You don't have their faith, you
have their Lord. How many of you want
to write a book, A Second Touch, because you
need a second touch? Anybody? Start
sharing Jesus, you'll feel better. You'll feel
better. Little lady told me one
time, she was 80, her story's told in the book.
She told me, she said, Randy
Christians would feel better, they'd feel
closer to the Lord if they talk about
him. So simple. I told her she didn't been
talking like that, but it's true. It's
just the truth. What are you gonna do? Anybody
here gonna
pack their bags and go home? We understand that.
Pay your bills, we
understand. What are you going to do? I know
the next time of meeting with my
friends, I know where my list is, I know
everybody on it, I know what I'm doing.
You can say there ought to be more people on
it, that's fine. I'm gonna work
with what I can until I have more. I put too
many on the list, the guy told me,
reading my book, he said, good night, I can't
have that many people. How many can you
have? Well, I can think of five. Wonderful. You
start with five. Five's a lot for me.
I ask you to start today with three. Are you
gonna do it? Who would like to comment?
If we could turn the tape off, who'll tell the
truth? It's the end of the day.
We've got 15 more minutes of precious time, and
it is. We can't turn the tape
off yet, I'm sorry. It's against the rules.
If you put that one name on a card, I promise
you, within a period, you'll be surprised,
you'll start adding names to it. That's what
happens once you start thinking that way. I'm
not trying to accuse you that you
don't, but I didn't when I started thinking
that way. Here's what I decided
to do because I did it about prayer. Did you
know that there were periods in my
life I didn't pray very much? I'm sorry to tell
you that's the truth. I learned
to pray when I decided to pray where I knew I
would be, and I knew I would take
a bath. Now, this is crazy, y'all. I knew I'd
take a bath, and I knew I'd drive my
car. I started praying in the bathtub, and when
I got behind my wheel, and I prayed
there. I didn't realize how much I drive. I
don't take many baths, but I drive a
lot. When you get in your car and put your
steering wheel and turn that key on,
and the immediate impulse is to pray, you find
yourself praying a great deal. I
don't know if your prayer life needs any help
or not, but put it somewhere you are.
Everybody says, well, the Lord said get in a
closet and all that. I'm sorry. I was
too big. I didn't have any closet that I could
fit in. What the truth was is I
could not discipline myself, and I had to bring
real faith to real life, and now I
pray. That's what I've done with evangelism. I
put evangelism where I was
living, and I have led campaigns here, there,
and yonder, and I believe in them.
What I don't believe in is we do them, and we
are wonderfully exhausted
spiritually when we come back, and we just sit
where we live. I don't
understand that. I don't believe the Lord
understands it. South Africans we can
teach, but not Abileneans. What in the world
are we saying? Russians. I went to
Russia. They're great to talk to. Russians you
can teach. Abileneans you can't. Who
said this? Put evangelism where you live, then
you go some other places, and you
can do it everywhere. It needs to be a bit more.
Go ahead.
It's a very humbling thing because people are
so needy, and the truth is guys
and ladies, we don't know how to help people.
I'm not smart enough. I don't know
how. I just know so much that they need Jesus
Christ. I know that, but I have
studied these techniques until I'm exhausted,
and that's not to say they're
not good, but there's so many of them. I feel
like I'm putting together a Ford
truck, you know, and I'm not mechanical, but
these are human beings. What
always has troubled me is go to people when
they're receptive. How do I know
that? Do this first when you go to them and
they're receptive. I'll do the third
thing first, and then I'll be messed up. I
don't want to be a technocrat with the
cross of Jesus Christ. I want to keep it simple.
I have read, I was trained by some
of the best in answering denominational
questions. I want to tell y'all something
and they ain't asking them. They're not asking
those questions. I believe in
acapella music. I love it. I believe it was the
wisdom of God. I do believe it's
the wisdom of God. I've never seen anybody who
is used to
worshiping with all the accompaniment who
wasn't blown away by Christian
singing. Having said all of that, they're not
interested in talking about it. I'm
amazed we're training ourselves to talk to
somebody that doesn't seem to exist.
The people that I wrote the book for were
telling me about real work
associates, real neighbors, and real friends,
even second and third level friends,
and they were saying, these are the people that
I go to Little League Ball
with. These are the people, and they'd named
these normal things they did that
were exhausting them, and they were saying,
shouldn't I be speaking of Jesus?
I want to, shouldn't I? And by the way, the
thing about classes on personal
evangelism, I've never seen in my life one work.
I know you have, and I'm glad
you have. The place to put it is around a
comfort zone place, either your table or
a fellowship group like you spoke of, a place
you want to go. People who teach
personal evangelism classes have to work so
hard to keep everybody motivated.
I have a question. We had talked before class,
and at the congregation, we had been led to the
conclusion that evangelism is important, and
despite all we know, we were led to that.
Our study together about that grew up on
various things that you talked about.
One of the reasons I hesitated to respond to
your challenge was that we're about that.
We're doing it, yeah.
It's a little bit intended at this point, and
we're still working on it.
One of the things that we concluded towards the
end of a class, which was not a personal
evangelism class, but a class about God's call
for us to witness to the world.
One of the things we concluded was, through
that study, what you said, is that we all have
a story to tell, and that's what we need to tell.
One of the challenges I would put out to other
leaders of congregations, and one we accepted,
was that the last session, there were four of
us to tell our story.
That was not easy, and we didn't do it very
well, but fortunately, our congregation was
understanding and forgiving, and gave us
appropriate credit for our entire story, I suppose.
Just to think about, if you stood before your
congregation as a leader, what would your story
be? If we stand before congregations and tell
them that God has called them to tell their
story to the world, we don't have a story to tell.
But we found out that we did have a story, and
three to four of us were ready to tell the truth.
Yes, please.
I have a lot of things to share. I have
wonderful ideas to share, and I'm eager to
share them. A lot of them have been in the way,
and I've been trying for a few years, and I get
to do that one of these days.
I have a great ministry to share, and I was
telling you, my children started marrying, and
I started having sex with them. One of these
days, I have a great ministry to share.
One of these days, my father died, and he had
to take care of his stepmother, and so he and I
were dating, and he was a doctor. One of these
days, I had a great ministry to share, and then
she confessed.
She gave birth to me, and her brother did not
know Christ, and he was 90. I was alone, and so
I started dating him as a doctor, and I kept
doing this.
Out there in Africa, there's a great ministry
to share, and so we've seen little people here
and there, just sort of communicating, and like
you've had, I think they're so kind, curious,
and finally one day, I thought, you know,
I keep asking them to stop dating me, and it's
an evangelism thrill for me, just to be able to
share what it was, and that's one of the ways I
need it.
They're both testimonial-like writings that I
share with people from my own faith. I do
believe in print. I don't believe in print
without personhood, in that I don't slip them
under doors, but I do share them with people.
There is a place for people to give thought to
someone's story. It's not always that you blurt
it or that you say it when the timing is
questionable, but people are searching.
I am amazed at how rootless spiritually
Americans are right now. We're worried because
we think we've peaked materialistically, and
we're scared there's nothing there.
I'm talking about just sort of
cross-trans-country. We've got the technical,
we think, and yet we're worried that others are
about to supersede us, but when you have it all
and you're comfortable and you're empty, more
and more Americans are coming to that.
Now, what's sad to me is they're moving right
past the Christian declaration right into
Eastern religions. They're moving toward ritual.
They're moving toward what they perceive to be
a very strong requirement for discipleship in
the sense of a life that is circumscribed by belief.
They're looking toward paying a cost, and they
see Christians as they see it, not paying much
cost, that Christian is easy, and so there is
some asceticism.
I read an interview by Richard Gere, the actor,
who indicated that he had gone toward Buddhism
because it required him to empty himself and
not be so self-consumed. Where could he have
learned more than the Lord Jesus Christ?
I'm not suggesting he read it and repudiated it.
He repudiated, perhaps, a caricature of it in
his mind, what it was.
I was just going to say that he did a book that
talks about sharing the story, and there's a
number up here that listens to the storyteller.
He shared his mom's baptism story, and he
encouraged us to go back to our churches and to
get in a classic way to share baptism stories.
Well, my wife and I were both here, so we
thought, what do these things do? And since I
teach the week-to-night adult Bible class, I
did that one week to night.
I told everybody before they came, I said,
we're going to share our baptism stories.
So be prepared, if you want to be prepared. And
I did. We just got together, and there was
about 12 of us in there, 12, 13, 14, and we
just talked.
And it's no great, miraculous thing, but it's a
starting point.
Sure it is.
And that's especially what you share in your pamphlet.
Yes, yes.
And it just tells how you tend to decide to be
baptized. So something forced you to make that decision.
And it's neat, listen, it's especially neat in
a class situation, the people you know to hear
the history.
That's exactly right.
I've saved the last three minutes to tell you a
story, because none of you asked me, why did
you want to write an evangelism book?
I've been working 27 years in mass media
evangelism. Why in the world would you pick now
to write an evangelism book?
And I want to tell you why.
I went to Florida, Orlando, Florida, and I
heard a man lecture who was gray-haired, almost
bald and gray, in his mid to late 60s, tall,
erect, a Britisher.
He'd written a book that had helped save my
life, spiritually.
In 1973, when I was diagnosed with cancer, and
went through chemotherapy for a long number of
months, and by the kindness and grace of God, recovered.
The attack that Satan took on me was
essentially at the heart of whether or not I
was loved.
God doesn't really love you. He doesn't really
know your name. He doesn't really care about you.
The attacks were there.
Chapter 23 of a book called Knowing God,
written by James Packer.
James Packer taught in Britain for a long, long
time, and now teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The title of the chapter was called Sons of God.
It took all of the writings of the New
Testament about being children of God, and
simply wove them together.
Nothing new, not even spectacularly creative,
but it was all there in that chapter.
If you need that, go see that chapter. It will
just bring it together for you.
And I read that chapter, and I read that chapter.
And it really helped.
I saw that he was speaking. I was over here in
Abilene, and I saw he was speaking in Florida.
Thought he was in Britain, and I decided I was
going to go and thank him.
Now, you've got to get the picture of this, the audacity.
I'm going to go to a conference where 3,000 or
4,000 people are,
and I'm going to find my way to this guy, and
we're going to talk.
Well, that was an adventure in and of itself.
But I was patient because I'd come there to
thank him, and I stuck around.
Well, I'm a big guy, and he's about 6'2",
and finally, I mean, he wasn't going to walk away.
The line was still there, and I was near the
end of the line, and I got up to him.
And I said, Dr. Packer, you don't know me.
Great opening line for a friendship.
But your book, especially Chapter 23, saved my
life spiritually.
And he said something like, in a very British brogue
and very non-tactile, non-let's-don't-really-get-close-to-each-other
good, glad it did.
But that wasn't enough for me. No, no, no.
You're not getting off this easy.
I got on a plane, and I came to Orlando, and I
rented a car,
and I drove all the way over here to this conference,
and I've listened to all the other speakers,
most of whom were boring,
and I stood in line,
and I'm going to thank you whether you want it
or not.
And so this 6'6 guy said to him, if my memory
serves me right,
as a comeback,
I don't think you understand what I just said
to you,
which he had, but I didn't like his response.
And he said, You're talking about the chapter
on sons of God, aren't you?
And I said, Yes, Sir.
He said, That's the best chapter in the book.
He said, That saved my life, too.
I thought, Now we're cooking. Now he's alert.
And I reached out to him to shake his hand,
and I couldn't stop.
I hugged him.
Now, you've got to picture this guy.
Britisher, 3,000 people, tall, yodeling Texan
who all of a sudden descends on you
because he's going to hug you whether you want
to be hugged or not.
And I hugged him, and I held him, and he hugged
me back.
Now, what took place?
The overpouring of a grateful heart, right?
If I'd had $5,000 and that would have set it better,
I would have done that.
But the best thing I thought I could do
was to reach out and put my arms around him and
hug him.
That felt good.
That's James Packer.
Now, folks, we're dilly-dallying around,
and Jesus has saved us.
What are we doing?
We don't have time for this.
We're busy.
This is not sophisticated enough.
It's not enough of a plan.
It's too much of a plan.
It's too costly.
It's not costly enough.
It doesn't look pretty.
It's not purple.
Get down to the bottom line and hug Jesus Christ
by speaking his name and intentionally serving people
with the intention that he bring them to himself.
What better way to thank him?
You know one?
I'm not going to be singing songs like,
I must I go in empty hands.
I'm not going to get into all that.
I'm not on a guilt trip about who I must bring
and why I better bring them.
I just want to.
I tell about my wife in family conferences
because you can't get out without looking like
an idiot.
I start talking and everybody leaves.
No, you don't.
You kind of have this little dignity.
You listen.
I do it because I want to talk about her.
James Packer, Camilla Beckton,
illustrations always tend to wane.
They're not powerful enough.
Oh, how I love Jesus.
We sing it.
I think we who preach and we who elder
ought to become experts at meaning it when we
say we love Jesus. Experts.
On Valentine's Day, either the card went,
the flowers went,
something went,
or you didn't care.
That's the way it is in my house.
Maybe not yours.
We would say to the Lord,
it's just not done here.
In America, it's just not done anymore.
Is that what we say?
What would we say?
Why aren't we saying Jesus?
Would you tell me why?
It's just not done.
It's not accepted.
No, it's more than that.
It's not important to us.
He's not important to us.
So next time you go to church
and next time you take the supper
and you consider the body
and you consider that you're redeemed by the
blood of the Lamb,
there is a verse I hope will come to your mind.
It's a lovely verse.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
And we're going to stop officially here.
If you want to do some more problem-solving,
I'm here till 5 or 10 after 5.
Most of you who need to go to other responsibilities,
you feel free to go now.
The rest of us will convene up front here.
And if you want to problem-solve a unique situation,
I'm available.
God bless you.
And I hope you do not feel guilty in any sense
that's inappropriate.