SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Not sure if it's good for me to go after that or not, you know, but hopefully you guys can participate in the tailgator coming up.
SPEAKER_00: If I don't know you, I'm Jeff Pittman.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the executive pastor here at Spring Lake, and I'd love to connect with you after the service if you don't know me uh yet.
SPEAKER_00: I want to show you a picture of a buddy of mine.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh Emerson, picture of Emerson.
SPEAKER_00: Uh when I first met Emerson, he was much shorter.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like really short, like that, that taller show.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we used to, before I came to Green Bay and worked here, um, I worked in a church in Illinois, and my daughter had dance class at the local community center, and she was young enough that you couldn't like leave her and then go do errands and whatnot.
SPEAKER_00: You had to stay there during the dance class.
SPEAKER_00: And so I was sitting there uh in the waiting room with a bunch of other parents and their siblings.
SPEAKER_00: And Emerson's uh sister was also in the same dance class, um, and he was sitting in the waiting room there playing it along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you don't know, you don't know me well enough, I have four girls.
SPEAKER_00: At this point in my life, I had two girls, and so I had pretty good much, was really good at playing Barbies.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Kitchen was really good, you know, any kind of house type of playing that was really good at doing that.
SPEAKER_00: But Emerson was playing trucks, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So he had these monster trucks that he would play around in the waiting room.
SPEAKER_00: So I loved being there during the waiting room so you can play trucks with Emerson.
SPEAKER_00: And before I think I'm too kind of a creeper, you know, that way, uh, I did talk to his parents, you know, I make sure I don't play with random kids in the middle of waiting rooms.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I talked to his parents.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I got to get to know him over time.
SPEAKER_00: His his dad, Mike, uh, became a good friend of mine.
SPEAKER_00: He's a mechanic, and it's always good to have a mechanic as a friend because I am not a mechanic, so that makes it really good as well.
SPEAKER_00: And we started helping each other out because our friends are our family started getting closer.
SPEAKER_00: My daughter and his daughter became best of friends.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Emerson's mom was part of uh my my wife's life group for a while, that inner circle as well.
SPEAKER_00: So our our our our our lives started intermingling a little bit more over time.
SPEAKER_00: I remember specifically uh the day I was a pastor at the at that time as well, uh, where they came to church for the very first time.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, we weren't expecting it, they just kind of showed up.
SPEAKER_00: My wife remembers specifically exactly the day the moment that happened because they're going through a difficult season at that time and really felt that was a good moment for them to connect back to God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they had come from a more of a traditional church background, and but God really wasn't oriented the big orientation in their life, and so to see them grow in their faith was really exciting for us as a family as well.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as God would have it, um we could have really good friends along the way, but God moved us up here to Green Bay to be a pastor up here at Spring Lake, and so our lives kind of diverged for a little bit there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's that's a little helpful to see some Facebook pictures and get some updates that way as well.
SPEAKER_00: But last summer, uh my my church, my previous church called me up and said, Can we come to Spring Lake for lunch on our way down from summer camp?
SPEAKER_00: So they're up in summer camp in Northwoods, come back to Chicagoland, they need a place for lunch, they come by Spring Lake, the Bellevue campus, and so we're serving them lunch.
SPEAKER_00: And who do I see?
SPEAKER_00: Emerson! Emerson is there, but yeah, he's he's taller at this point, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it was good to reminisce with him a little bit as well, but more than anything, he's doing so well in his faith.
SPEAKER_00: Like he is strong, he's in a great youth group, he's got some great friends.
SPEAKER_00: We connected with his mom later on uh this last this last summer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and she's actually leading one of the ministries at my previous church, and they're just doing so much, they're thriving in their faith as a family.
SPEAKER_00: And my family got to be part of that, just a small part of their journey that God had him on to come back to faith into God.
SPEAKER_00: And it all started because I was playing trucks with a little kid in a waiting room.
SPEAKER_00: Just this little step that helps us interact with people's lives in hopes that we can help rub off on them in some form or fashion so they can come to a saving relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's their story, the Emerson's family's story, but many of our stories are similar.
SPEAKER_00: We are we have our faith here because we had people who invested in us over time.
SPEAKER_00: There's relationships over time that brought us closer to God and brought us closer to a church family.
SPEAKER_00: And when we talk when we talk about evangelism today, sometimes we think evangelism is meant for these like spiritual superheroes, like these delta forces, the Navy SEALs of Christianity, are the ones that actually really go out there and evangelize into this world.
SPEAKER_00: But what we find is the most often the most effective is everyday Christians just living up their faith in the world that God has brought them into.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're in the midst of this uncomfortable series, and sometimes uh these uncomfortable topics are things like there are biblical truths that we have find uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: They're hard for us to understand, they're finding hard for us to really embrace.
SPEAKER_00: Ryan had one of those um a couple weeks back.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, sometimes the difficult, the uncomfortable topics are like hot button topics in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: Like the Bible says this about what we should be doing more up morally, but the culture around us says this, and there's a there's a disconnect in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those topics are there.
SPEAKER_00: Though this topic today is not either one of those, uh, but in my almost 20 years of vocational ministry and about 25 years of being a believer, there are only a few things that make Christians more uncomfortable than sharing their faith, than evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: And the stats actually bear this out.
SPEAKER_00: It's about 80 or 90 percent of believers want to share their faith.
SPEAKER_00: They're somewhat open to sharing their faith with people in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: But when it comes back down to how many people actually do share their faith, it drops down to 30 or 40% of believers share their faith with people in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: My hope is that we all leave today with a desire to share a faith, but also some steps to share this good news that people desperately need to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what makes evangelism uncomfortable?
SPEAKER_00: Well, for many of us, we just feel unprepared.
SPEAKER_00: Like we don't have the tools in our toolbox to share our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Probably the most the biggest one is it risks relational dynamics.
SPEAKER_00: When you have a non-believer in your life, whether it be a family member, a coworker, a neighbor, a classmate, whoever that might be, and you start sharing your faith with them, that relationship might change.
SPEAKER_00: That might change.
SPEAKER_00: That's a dynamic we're risking when we share our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes this makes us face our own fears, our own doubts in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: As we dive into this with new believers, sometimes it makes us face our own our own concerns and our doubts as well.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are just scared of non-believers.
SPEAKER_00: Like we're so afraid that they will influence us too much that we don't want to interact with them at all.
SPEAKER_00: So we put this like this barrier, this bubble between us and non-believers, the non-believing world around us.
SPEAKER_00: And many of us just don't know what to say and how to say it.
SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of all these concerns, which are real concerns, Jesus speaks and commands all of us towards evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: See, Matthew 28, it's a very popular verse, you've probably heard it before, Jesus said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: Now, while Jesus shared this verbally with his disciples, this is something that's meant for every believer from that point on in history, which means that this scripture is meant for us.
SPEAKER_00: We should read this and say, this is what we are supposed to do also.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, to go.
SPEAKER_00: It's an active term.
SPEAKER_00: So we're supposed to go out into the world to share our faith.
SPEAKER_00: It isn't passive in a sense of like sit there and just kind of wait for them to come our way.
SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to like sit in our house and hopefully they knock on our door and ask us what who Jesus is and how we can have a relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: We're actually supposed to go out into this world to what?
SPEAKER_00: To make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Now, disciples means followers, so we're supposed to make disciples and make the followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That is our call in our world, is to go as believers to go out and make followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And the key part of this, which is the last verse he has here, is that he says, I am with you always to the very end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: We don't go out to make followers of Jesus without Jesus being with us.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would argue that he's already been out ahead of us, anyways.
SPEAKER_00: We're just come alongside him.
SPEAKER_00: He's already looking to reach people.
SPEAKER_00: And he can use us in the midst of that.
SPEAKER_00: We join him in the midst of his mission to reach people.
SPEAKER_00: So we just follow God in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: He's with us and he's ahead of us in our efforts towards evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why is it important to evangelize?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first and foremost, it's because God tells us to evangelize.
SPEAKER_00: And being obedient to God is worth it's the only reason that we need to share our faith because God tells us to do that.
SPEAKER_00: The second reason is really important is people might respond to us.
SPEAKER_00: People might become believers in Jesus and change their life, and their life might be transformed dramatically.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the third reason is really important is that it strengthens our faith as well.
SPEAKER_00: So when God asks us to do things, even if it's hard for us to do these types of things, it does strengthen our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Doing hard and difficult things that God calls us to is a pathway towards growth in our own personal faith.
SPEAKER_00: See, there's no such thing as a mature believer who does not share their faith with others.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we think of a mature believer as one who knows their Bible the most and is deeply connected and serving everywhere in our church, but if they also are not sharing their faith, they're not a mature believer.
SPEAKER_00: Now at Spirit Church, we have this mission to love God, mature in his character, reach the world.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we think that's kind of a linear path.
SPEAKER_00: Like we're supposed to love God first, and after we love God, we mature in his character, and at that point we reach the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how we might want to look at it.
SPEAKER_00: We want to look at more of a circular vision of that, something that all complements each other.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the best ways we can love God is by reaching the world.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the best ways we mature in his character is by reaching the world and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00: They all support each other along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, my story is not too uncommon from people who grew up in Wisconsin here, is I grew up in a very traditional church setting.
SPEAKER_00: We went to church on a fairly regular basis, but I would tell you, my life wasn't oriented towards God.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the Lord of my life, he wasn't the leader of my life.
SPEAKER_00: I kind of did life the way I wanted it to, and we just kind of went to church every so often on the side.
SPEAKER_00: And then I graduated high school and went to college, went to the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and it just so happens I started making some friends with people who lived on my dorm floor in the dorm building I was in.
SPEAKER_00: We did uh classes together, we had meals together, we hung out together.
SPEAKER_00: And over time I got to know these other other these friends of mine so much that they trusted me, I trusted them.
SPEAKER_00: And they invited me to this organization called Crew.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know what Crew is, it's a faith organization on many college campuses around this country and around the world as well.
SPEAKER_00: And I got ingrained into this faith community and got to see what they were doing, what they were like.
SPEAKER_00: And I was really compelled by them.
SPEAKER_00: They lived a life that was different than mine because they had a faith in Christ that I did not have.
SPEAKER_00: So the point that I was so compelled that I gave my life to Jesus, my freshman year of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and my life has been changed dramatically ever since.
SPEAKER_00: And a key part of that is that these students invested in me.
SPEAKER_00: Now those students could have gone to school, they could have huddled around each other and kind of protected themselves from the heathens around them and the rest of the college.
SPEAKER_00: They could have gotten their degrees and kind of went on there with their life, but they didn't decide to do that.
SPEAKER_00: They actually went to school and started to embrace relationships with people who didn't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And one of those people was me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so thankful that they decided to do that.
SPEAKER_00: To follow the command of Jesus to share their faith with people who don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm thankful for those students, but you also have those people in your life as well.
SPEAKER_00: Who are the people in your life that helped you join and helped you grow in your faith?
SPEAKER_00: Was it a family member?
SPEAKER_00: Was it a coworker, a friend, a classmate?
SPEAKER_00: I can imagine you're probably thinking those people are coming to mind right now.
SPEAKER_00: These people who have invested in you deeply.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what if the majority of the reasons why evangelism makes us uncomfortable were alleviated?
SPEAKER_00: What if there is an accessible way to evangelize that is reachable for all believers?
SPEAKER_00: I believe there is.
SPEAKER_00: As we move forward with the rest of our time, I'm going to share a tool that's been really helpful for me and many other Christians as to share their faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's from two brothers who are pastors in Chicagoland, Dave and John Ferguson.
SPEAKER_00: They actually wrote a book on it, it's called Blessed, and so you can actually look up the book on Amazon if you really want to dive into deeply.
SPEAKER_00: But I found this tool to be really helpful for everyday believers to take some steps to share their faith.
SPEAKER_00: And now bless is an acronym, and so every letter of blessed stands for something, and so we'll go through them each one at a time.
SPEAKER_00: And the first one is the B, and that means begin with prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus did this regularly.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, before calling his 12 disciples, at that point, Jesus had a big crowd of people just follow him along.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, hundreds of people just kind of follow Jesus, which he actually called his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: But he wanted to make these 12 specifically into the apostles, like these special 12.
SPEAKER_00: And before he did that, he went on a mountainside and he prayed.
SPEAKER_00: And if Jesus is doing that, we certainly should be doing that as well.
SPEAKER_00: We should be consistent prayer for the people around us and for ways for us to share our faith.
SPEAKER_00: So, what should we be praying for?
SPEAKER_00: First and foremost, we should be praying for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Specifically, that our hearts would align with God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: And in Matthew 9, we get a glimpse of the heart that Jesus has for non-believers.
SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew 9, uh Matthew chapter 9, we'll start in verse 37 or 36.
SPEAKER_00: It said, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: They said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
SPEAKER_00: Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
SPEAKER_00: Here we see a glimpse.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus loved these people so much, this crowd of people, he said he had compassion upon them.
SPEAKER_00: They were harassed and they were helpless with sheep without they didn't have a leader, they didn't have a way back to God.
SPEAKER_00: His heart deeply groaned for them.
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, the world around us doesn't always view Christians as people who are all extremely compassionate people.
SPEAKER_00: But I wish it was because when our hearts align with Jesus', our hearts have compassion and care for people who don't know him.
SPEAKER_00: We're also praying for us to have non-believing friends.
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the big steps that some of us need to do is actually to have friends who don't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have friends who don't know Jesus, it's hard to evangelize.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to have this call of evangelism if you don't have that.
SPEAKER_00: So one step is to pray for us to have friends, like good, solid, trusted friends who don't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We also pray for wisdom because navigating relationships is difficult.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dynamic experience.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to ask for wisdom of how to navigate these relationships as we move along along there.
SPEAKER_00: We also pray for non-believers, that their heart would be open, that their posture would be soft for us to receive this good news of Jesus, that we can have openings, develop trust, and develop a relationship with them.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that most people who are unchurched are willing to have, are willing to listen to us about our own faith.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, 80% of non-churchgoers want to hear about your faith and how you came to that realization of your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Most often we're fearful of those conversations because we think, oh, they might reject us in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: The majority, the vast majority of people are open to hearing a friend's journey towards faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're also praying for opportunities.
SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine calls this missional, missional divine appointments.
SPEAKER_00: So he's trying to find how does God give us opportunities to talk about our faith, maybe to develop a relationship with somebody along the way.
SPEAKER_00: That's a scary prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Because God often answers it.
SPEAKER_00: If you pray for opportunities to talk about Jesus this week, God will often bring you an opportunity to talk about Jesus with people even this week.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, we are praying to join God's mission.
SPEAKER_00: Like we mentioned before, God's ahead of us, he cares about the people we're sharing our faith with more than we do.
SPEAKER_00: And so we just come along alongside him in that journey.
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like for you to pray in preparation for sharing your faith?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the B.
SPEAKER_00: The L is to listen.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus Austin was a key example of someone who listened for people.
SPEAKER_00: There's a great story when Jesus is coming into his town of Jericho, and there's a man sitting on the edge of the town gate who's blind and he's begging along the way.
SPEAKER_00: He sees, he understands that Jesus is there, so he calls out to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine why he's calling out to Jesus, because he wants to be able to see, right?
SPEAKER_00: He wants to be able to change his life from being a blind beggar in this regard.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus goes up to him, but he doesn't just solve his problem.
SPEAKER_00: He asks him a question.
SPEAKER_00: He says, What do you want me to do for you?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus constantly was asking questions to understand people, to understand how they tick, what their background is like, and to help them along on their own journey.
SPEAKER_00: The same friend before calls these compassionately curious questions.
SPEAKER_00: So we ask questions to people.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to understand what makes them click, what hinders them from God?
SPEAKER_00: What do they need?
SPEAKER_00: How can we help and support them in this regard?
SPEAKER_00: And this is important because when we are answering questions of faith, we want to answer the questions that they have, not the questions that they don't have.
SPEAKER_00: In my story, when I was in college, I was wondering about the personal aspect of God.
SPEAKER_00: Was God really good?
SPEAKER_00: Was he really loving and was really personal?
SPEAKER_00: Can I really interact with them in a personal way?
SPEAKER_00: It would have been a mistake for my friends to start out by talking about how sinful I was, because I knew I was sinful.
SPEAKER_00: I was very committed about convinced about that already.
SPEAKER_00: I was really understanding about how close God can be with people.
SPEAKER_00: And they did a great job of demonstrating how close they were with God as well.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it doesn't mean that we change the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel does involve having sin in our lives, and we have to understand we're we're sinful people.
SPEAKER_00: But when we listen, we understand the hurdles that people have and we can address those hurdles and those questions.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe another example is many folks believe that they are in right standing with God due to being a good person.
SPEAKER_00: They believe in God, but they misunderstand the pathway back to Him.
SPEAKER_00: It would be a mistake to spend too much time on the existence of God because they're already convinced about the existence of God.
SPEAKER_00: It makes more sense to spend time on talking about how a works-based gospel, like earning your way back to God versus different than a grace-based gospel than that story.
SPEAKER_00: But we only know that because we listen and we understand who they are and what makes them tick.
SPEAKER_00: Another example is that some folks clearly understand their sin to a point where they feel unlovable and too far from God, and that God would never be able to reach out and save them.
SPEAKER_00: We've all as a pastor, we meet some of these people sometimes out and about in town, and they say they never can even darken the door of a church.
SPEAKER_00: Like they they know that their sin is so bad, they don't even come close to a church.
SPEAKER_00: No one is too far from his saving works.
SPEAKER_00: That'd be the better time, the better way to spend your time.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that we only understand that when we listen and we understand our people more.
SPEAKER_00: See, we often pray for opportunities to speak, and we should be praying for opportunities to listen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the E in the blessed practices is to eat.
SPEAKER_00: It is something that all of us do, and it's a great bonding experience that every every everyone does several times a day.
SPEAKER_00: Something that Jesus did as well.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 9, starting in verse 10, it says, While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
SPEAKER_00: On hearing this, Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
SPEAKER_00: But go and learn what this means.
SPEAKER_00: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
SPEAKER_00: You guys should be hanging out with non believers.
SPEAKER_00: Like you should have a regular habit of making sure you're hanging out, having meals, doing things with people who don't know don't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did it, we should also be doing it as well, in hopes that we develop relationships and they come closer to God.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that non church goers are very like very likely to say yes to you if you Invite them into your lives.
SPEAKER_00: There's a study that I've done years ago that asked non-churchgoers, what are they more likely to say yes to if they're asked to come to participate from a churchgoer?
SPEAKER_00: Make sense?
SPEAKER_00: When people, a churchgoer, asks them to come to a Bible study at their house, they're more likely to say no to that because that's that's kind of an awkward position to be in, maybe intimidating in that regard, to come in someone's house, sit in a circle, open your Bible in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: They're a little more likely to say yes to come to a weekend service, especially if you have a good relationship with them.
SPEAKER_00: But they're probably, they might be doing that just kind of out of obligation because they want to save that relationship.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, more than maybe they want to come towards that.
SPEAKER_00: One of the two highest things that they'll say yes to, one is a service project that your church is doing.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have an opportunity, if we're ever doing a service project here at Spring Lake, invite your neighbors to come with you, invite your coworkers to come with you, and they're more likely to say yes.
SPEAKER_00: But the number one thing they're more likely to say yes to is to come to your house for dinner.
SPEAKER_00: Just invite them into your life.
SPEAKER_00: Non-believers are in your life, wherever you interact with them, however you rub shoulders with them, invite them to come over and have dinner with you.
SPEAKER_00: Invite them to come over to have a fire in your backyard, to have s'mores, to have barbecue, whatever that might be, invite them into your life.
SPEAKER_00: A good friend of mine calls this missional hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: So you just want to be overly hospitable and welcoming people into your world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is called E-tier because everyone does it and accessible to everyone.
SPEAKER_00: You should do it, you should be interacting with people during your eating times.
SPEAKER_00: But doesn't it's not restricted just to eating.
SPEAKER_00: It's really any kind of activity that you can do with other people.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a sports fan, watching a game with someone does the same exact thing that eating would do here as well.
SPEAKER_00: Any kind of hobbies or interests that you do, invite people to join you in the midst of that as well.
SPEAKER_00: If you're going to the park with your kids to the playground, great time to catch up people who and ask people to join you as you go in and do life together.
SPEAKER_00: Invite them into your life.
SPEAKER_00: What are the things that you do regularly that you can involve others into?
SPEAKER_00: If you can have trouble thinking about that, you all eat, so you take advantage of meal times.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first ask in the blessed practice is to serve.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was a servant.
SPEAKER_00: In Mark 10, uh, this is Jesus' words.
SPEAKER_00: It says, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his right life, give his life as a ransom for many.
SPEAKER_00: See remember, at this point, you've prayed for people, you've listened to them, you spent time with them, and maybe shared a meal with them as well.
SPEAKER_00: So you know exactly the best way for you to serve them.
SPEAKER_00: However, when we first moved here nine years ago, I had four daughters, and I still have four daughters.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that back then, I had a second grader, I had a four-year-old, a three-year-old, and a two-year-old, and especially the younger three, had a really hard time with any kind of new babysitter because they were of the age that just freaked out over any kind of new person around.
SPEAKER_00: So we have plenty of Spring Lakers that are willing to babysit for us, so my wife and I can go for a date, but my kids were not having it at all.
SPEAKER_00: So my wife and I had a spell that we didn't have any kind of date nights in that during that season.
SPEAKER_00: I remember being at work one time, my wife gave me a call and said, Jeff, we're going out for a date tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about that.
SPEAKER_00: Who's watching the kids?
SPEAKER_00: And basically what happened was a neighbor in our neighborhood had gotten to know us, they had kids around the similar ages as us, and our kids were playing at their house.
SPEAKER_00: So much so that that neighbor told my wife, like, hey, why don't they're doing really well here?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you just leave them here and you and Jeff go on a date?
SPEAKER_00: Now she knew the best way to serve us because she had understood us, she listened to us, she had understood, became friends with us to know how to how to care for the Pittman family.
SPEAKER_00: And that was such a blessing for us as well.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to be similarly, we want to look around what are the best ways that we can serve people in our neighborhoods and in our worlds.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a few weeks back, we actually challenged Sprint Lakers to do this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, if you remember Love Your Neighbor Week, we challenged you to do something that one week to love your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And we had some great responses from that.
SPEAKER_00: We asked you to kind of type in some of the, to share some of those responses.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna share a couple of them here because I think they're really they're really cool.
SPEAKER_00: One Sprint Lakers said that she brought my next door neighbor a pan of homemade lasagna.
SPEAKER_00: Her kids had baseball games that evening, so she was appreciative dinner was already made.
SPEAKER_00: I love that story because she knew that neighbor well enough to know, like, hey, this is a busy season, yeah, baseball all the time, all the kids' activities are really busy.
SPEAKER_00: How about I just make her a meal and serve her that way?
SPEAKER_00: Another spin Laker said, I took someone to visit their elderly mother in the nursing home and then treated her to lunch.
SPEAKER_00: And this one took some time along the way, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because she actually traveled with someone to a nursing home and then actually took out some and spent some time with lunch.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes serving people, there's sacrifices we have to make for other people.
SPEAKER_00: In this case, it was time.
SPEAKER_00: But what a great example of a caring for someone by being with them, by visiting their mother, and also taking them to lunch.
SPEAKER_00: Laura Smilaker said, I spent the day helping a co-worker with household and yard chores because she's injured and unable to do them herself.
SPEAKER_00: It was another great example.
SPEAKER_00: So at work, she obviously knows that this co-worker is injured and has limitations what she can do at home, and so she steps in with this co-worker, who's also a friend, obviously, and helped her in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: This is from a middle schooler.
SPEAKER_00: It said, I babysat my 10-year-old and two-year-old neighbors this week for free.
SPEAKER_00: It was a great experience because I just loved getting to help them out.
SPEAKER_00: They were really grateful for my help, and that made it feel all the more cool.
SPEAKER_00: So even middle schoolers can find ways that I understand how can I serve someone and help them out in their time of need.
SPEAKER_00: The last one I'll share is I met a woman at work and we started talking about how similar our lives were.
SPEAKER_00: She asked if we could get together to continue talking.
SPEAKER_00: She was excited about a new friendship.
SPEAKER_00: This felt like a God thing.
SPEAKER_00: I think it was a God thing.
SPEAKER_00: That God brings people along the way and brings people into your life that you were supposed to defend, befriend, and also care for.
SPEAKER_00: What if we were known as people who were regularly stepping out to serve the community around us?
SPEAKER_00: The people knew that that's the people who could jump in and help out whenever there was a need.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the last S here for the best practices is story.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible is filled with stories that are meant to help us share how life is or how who God is.
SPEAKER_00: If we need a story of how God forgives, we have the prodigal son right there.
SPEAKER_00: If we need a story about how close God is, we have the story of Jesus who walked with his disciples and walked on this earth to help people.
SPEAKER_00: And there's plenty of different ways that we can share our stories as well.
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple of different stories we have.
SPEAKER_00: One, we have our story of faith, what we often call our testimony.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we came to faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we all should have this.
SPEAKER_00: So you should have it in some regard, you should be good at it, you should practice and make sure you're ready to share about how you came to faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But you also have stories about what God is doing in your life and how He's how He's how you helped help you in a time of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: So when you have a friend of yours who has a financial struggle, you can share of a story of how God helped you through a financial struggle.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a story about how God helped you in a parenting situation, and when a friend of yours has a parenting challenge, you can share how God helped you and met you in the midst of that parenting situation.
SPEAKER_00: When crisis hit your life, and the reality is that crisis hits everybody's life, you can share how God met you in the midst of that crisis when people are going through their own crisis.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be ready to share the God's stories that are happening in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, we get to the point where we share the ultimate story, the gospel story.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about how sin has brought destruction upon our lives and the world's reality and the world.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we are separated from God.
SPEAKER_00: We have no way back to him on our own.
SPEAKER_00: But that's where Jesus comes in.
SPEAKER_00: And through his death and his resurrection, we have a pathway back to God.
SPEAKER_00: So we can have a relationship with him now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: If we would only believe and trust in Jesus as our Lord and our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be ready to share that ultimate story in hopes that they will respond to that story and come into the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you feel comfortable about evangelism, my hope is that your concerns and fears were tempered, maybe even a little bit today.
SPEAKER_00: You can take comfort knowing that God doesn't ask us to do something he isn't willing to lead us in.
SPEAKER_00: He's not going ahead of us.
SPEAKER_00: We are just following him.
SPEAKER_00: That everyone is capable of evangelism because it's part of God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: And that we have the greatest story in the history of the world to share with a story with a world that desperately needs to hear this.
SPEAKER_00: See, my hope is that evangelism can move from something I have to do out of obedience, but something we get to do, that we found opportunities that we're excited and eager to share about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: You are excited with opportunity, but and but also the potential for more people to come into the kingdom of God and that we along the way would grow closer to Jesus in that journey.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is your next step?
SPEAKER_00: What do you need to be doing differently?
SPEAKER_00: If this hasn't been a priority for you, make it one.
SPEAKER_00: Make this a priority for your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know many non-Christians, make some friends.
SPEAKER_00: That's your that's your homework.
SPEAKER_00: Make some friends who are non-believers this week.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't feel adequate, use this blessed tool.
SPEAKER_00: It's worked well for me, but there's other tools out there.
SPEAKER_00: Get equipped, get used to whatever it works for you to feel like you're equipped and ready to share your faith.
SPEAKER_00: If you simply lack interest or compassion for the lost, pray.
SPEAKER_00: Pray your heart would align closer to the heart of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, you will care and you will want to share your faith with people as you walk around your world and realizing that they don't have a relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When we all grow and grow in our faith, God's mission is expanded and we bring light into a dark world.
SPEAKER_00: We bring life in the midst of death, and we provide hope to the hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: That's a mission that's worthy of our lives, even if it makes us a bit uh uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Father, we see this call in our lives a share of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And we see it first and foremost that there's so much in the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We want to model that.
SPEAKER_00: We want to follow in Jesus in that regard as well.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that you would give us that you would identify the areas that we need to grow individually.
SPEAKER_00: That if we need to have a stronger heart for the lost, Father, I pray you would give that to us.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray if we need to have more interactions with non-believers, that you provide opportunities for that.
SPEAKER_00: If you if we need to get more equipped and just more prepared, would you give us opportunities?
SPEAKER_00: Would you help us along the way to prepare us?
SPEAKER_00: But our hope is that people in our lives that you bring us uh across, people who don't know Jesus, they will come a step closer.
SPEAKER_00: And that more and more people will join into your family, and more and more people will come to know you as Lord and Savior, and the kingdom of God would advance.
SPEAKER_00: Sir Sons, let me pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
unknown: Amen.