Evangelism Training Week 1 with Pastor Greg - July 8, 2026

Pastor Greg provides an overview for our Summer Evangelism Training classes, looking to 1 Corinthians 15 and the Book of Romans. The class is designed to help believers share testimonies and spread the Gospel, using the Love Worth Finding / Evangelism Explosion training tool.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Thank y'all for being here. So let me pray and then we're gonna get we're gonna get started. Lord, thank you for today. And uh as we start talking about evangelism, we are overwhelmed and grateful that you allow us to participate in the spreading of the gospel. You don't need us for it, and uh and but you let us be a part. You give us opportunities to share, you bring people into our lives who are searching and use us to point them to Jesus. And so we thank you for that. And I pray as we go through this month and we study these things as a church family, I pray that you'll stir the heart of our church in individuals to step into this process and begin to be soul winners. Jesus told us in Matthew 9 that we are to pray for workers because the fields are white to harvest. And so we're going to be this month, Lord, calling out to you for people to be stirred, to learn, to take up the challenge, to start sharing Jesus with people. Lord, that's our prayer, and we ask that you make this an encouragement to that process. In Jesus' name we pray. Everybody said, Amen. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. Uh this this course has two aspects, and it's not really a course. Matt and I are kind of making it up, so we're we're gonna team do it, and Dave's group is actually gonna help us tonight. Um, and it's made up of two components, okay? It's made up, first of all, of this class, and uh, and we're going to be, Bobby, we're gonna, you got these for podcasts, right? Yes. We're gonna re-recording these so we can put them on the chapter and first podcast. So people who are traveling or whatever can listen and be a part and all of that. And so we're gonna do this that that's this class component. And then the other component is we did this several years, we had a we had a good response. Uh Evangelism Explosion, which is a longtime training program that's really, really good. A number of our folks have been through it. Our church at one point in its history was a massive EE church. When you hear people say EE, they're talking about Evangelism Explosion, and it's just a training program. As you probably are aware, I'm on the board at Love Worth Finding, which is the intellectual property of Adrian Rogers ministry. And they worked, uh Love Worth Finding worked with EE. Bellevue was also a big EE church, and they worked together, those two organizations, to create a kind of a first layer online training program. And it's really well done. And anybody who's been through EE will recognize the program. It is EE and it's got those guts to it, it's got that DNA to it and that process. But it's really good because it has things like a video where you watch somebody have a conversation with somebody or get into a conversation so they role-play what you're teaching to learn you how to do that. And it's very simple. And so what Dave is going to do in just a moment is he's gonna come and like log on and show the first video so that everybody knows you can do this, it's easy, and we'll work everybody through this so you can do that. Now, Matt and I are gonna set a date, uh, probably the end of August, first September, uh, when everybody gets back from school, we want to have a banquet and a celebration for everybody that completes the online training course. And we can help you do that, okay? Um, if you make all four of the five of these, whatever it is, we'll include that too. We're not trying to exclude anybody, but we're trying to get a let's finish this, let's go through this. We're trying to create an elevation to it. And uh, you know, if it's only staff guys that do it, well, y'all are gonna buy our dinner. But we'd love for everybody to be a part of that, and so it's really easy. The tutorials are not very long. It was designed to be an entry-level, anybody can do it, evangelism training program that would equip you with an excellent DNA program so you can you can function in sharing the gospel with somebody. And so that's really our goal, is we want to be able to develop soul winners in our church. And that's really important. So I'm gonna ask Dave to kind of walk through the process for us of how you log on uh to the program, and nobody's gonna see you. We have a church program, we're in a cohort by ourselves, and it's great because as you go through these tutorials, there are places for comments and questions, and you can share stuff that you're learning, and so it's really fun for our church to be able to comment to each other as we're going through it. Dave?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Okay, thank you. So I've been passing a basket around, and inside the basket, I think there's some people, you'll just sort of pass that backwards. Most of you have already received a slip of paper, and it has a rather obscure bit of coding in the front, and right after that it says Love Worth Finding Evangelism Explosion. Uh the actual address of our cohort has something like, oh, I don't know, 120 letters in it. So uh didn't want you to have to be spending 30 minutes at your keyboard typing in your browser. So we've got a shortcut. The shortcut is there on the left. When you type the shortcut into your system, it will take you to the Love Worth Finding Evangelism Training page. And you'll notice those of you that have got really sharp eyes can see it says Dave Scarupa invited you to join Love Worth Finding Evangelism Training. You'll enter an email address, you'll uh get a password, most of you, as soon as you put the password in, it'll be saved to your browser. You won't have to worry about losing it or anything like that. The great thing is, Love Worth Finding has put together this cohort, as Pastor Greg said a few minutes ago, so that we can sort of see what's going on. And if you get stuck somewhere, if you have a problem uh going forward, you can call during business hours, ask to talk to me, I can take a look at where you're at, and we can solve it together and we can move forward with that. You're kind of jumping ahead on me, Matt, but that's okay. Let's go ahead and get right to that. This is what happens when we have staff in here. Uh so if you did participate in the training online last time, and if you do use the same email address, it should log you in automagically. It should be just fine. But this is an opportunity if you've changed your email address or maybe you're moving some things around and you want to do a new address, then you can go ahead and enter and you're gonna be fine. Most everyone who participated last time, I went and checked. That was almost well, actually it was a little over three years ago that we last did this. So, in what we've done is we've gone ahead and wiped everybody's slate to the beginning. So we're all starting off on equal footing. Now, if you have a problem with that, go talk to somebody else about it, okay? But what we'll do here is you'll enter your email address. Let me see if I can increase the magnification here. There you go. You're you will enter your email address, hit continue, or those of you who have Google addresses, you can continue with Google. And then let's just enter an address here. Well, today I'm gonna be Bob Dyer. That'll work. Okay. And we'll continue. Bobby, we'll sort this out later. And we register. And now it's as simple as that. Okay. So it's as easy as that to register. It only takes a few moments. Uh you'll get an email receipt, and then you're just ready to get started. Once you are started, you can scroll down, start. You're given instructions as to a passage of scripture that you're to read and meditate upon, and then it simply has a handful of easy questions for you to respond to to get you thinking a little bit deeper about each one of those passages. From time to time, you will be encouraged to watch videos. Um you have people sharing comments from their reading about what they thought about that particular passage and things like that. Great, great exercise.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

And all those comments are only First Baptist people who've signed up on this together. So it's a way for us to do this together.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

All right. So let me go back a little bit. There's an old show business expression saying, never work with animals and never work with live technology. We're not we don't have any animals in here to my knowledge, but we're doing the live technology thing. So let's go ahead and go to the cover. From time to time, you'll see videos.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Hello, I'm Kerry Vaughn, president and CEO of Love Worth Finding Ministries, and I'm honored to welcome you to our new evangelism training course, Every Believer is a Witness, provided by our partners at Evangelism Explosion. Throughout his ministry, Adrian Rogers had the privilege of calling Dr. D. James Kennedy a friend. And the two shared a special bond because of their mutual emphasis on evangelism.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

So the video is playing pretty seamlessly. And if we can play the video through this and onto those screens, it'll definitely play on your phone or on your home PC. Pastor?

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Thanks, Dave. Um, so that you can see that is an incredibly easy thing. I mean, he literally did it right there in front of you, and uh, and so it's easy to do, and it really is good because it'll give you some teaching. You saw the scripture references, it's built on scripture references, and then there'll be a like a video scenario where somebody witnesses to somebody and you walk them through the journey as you are sharing Jesus and witnessing to somebody. Now, one of the things we'll do in here, we won't show the videos in here every week. We may show every now and then one or something, but what we want to do is we want to give you a chance to ask questions, to dialogue on that, and then we have things that we're gonna teach that support what we're doing in this evangelism training deal. Does that make sense? Any questions? Anytime you got questions, you just wave at me, holler at me. Okay? All right. Let me uh let me walk you through two things tonight, which is why we're why we're doing this. Here's the first thing. When you evaluate studies that people like George Barna and others have done on behaviors and patterns of Christians, uh evangelical Christians, one of the things they've studied for years is um what are our biggest hangups about um witnessing? Why do we not witness more? Because all the stats are very bad. It's an incredibly low percentage. I mean, you see things like one out of ten Christians lead somebody to Christ knee to knee, knows to know. Knows to know. And so why is it that way? Well, uh, there are two things that most often come up. The first one is I'm gonna mess it up. And the second one is I'm gonna get asked a question that I don't know the answer to. Those are the two main things that people indicate are fears. And so what I want to do is flip that on its head, and I want to give you biblical reasons why you cannot mess it up. It works, and number two, you don't have to worry about what you don't know. What you do know is what matters. Okay? So let's start with that second one. And if you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Now, here's the first thing that all of us need to understand. If I'm gonna share the gospel, then I need to be able to know and define the gospel properly. I need to know what the gospel is in a technically accurate and basic, shareable way. Now, let me give you an example. We talk about this as a staff all the time. People uh come to join the church, they'll come down the aisle or they'll call us during a week or catch me in the hall, and they go, we want to join, ready to join. And if you watch, here's what happens. When somebody comes down the aisle, this is the way the conversation goes. They come to Matt's aisle or Dave's aisle, or if I'm down here, it goes like this. Tell me about you. Well, I'm excited. We feel like God's led us here, so we want to be a part of the church family. And my question, my first question is always this uh Is there ever been a time in your life when you made Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior and you got saved? And the answers, nine times out of ten, are, well, yeah, I grew up at First Baptist in, you know, Texarkana or SmackOver or something. Or, yeah, I was baptized, or man, I've always loved the Lord. I was grazing a Christian home and, you know, I always knew God loved me, and so yeah. Well, okay, that's not the gospel. That is not a biblical testimony. That does not explain to me that you got saved. And we have training with our staff designed to ferret out of lifelong Baptists who don't know how to state the gospel or how they got saved so we can figure out what their spiritual condition is. It's incredible how many people can't do that. And it's the kind of thing you never take for granted. And so here's what I want to do. Let's make sure we understand the basic tenets of the gospel, right? And so here's what it says in 1 Corinthians 15. You can't you can't get any clearer than this. I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel. I mean, this is it. This is what he says. This is a gospel I preach to you. This is the gospel you received in which you stand. So when that person comes down the aisle and tells me they're joining the church, they need to be able to say this right here, right? And by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. In other words, this is the priority definition of the gospel. I would remind you of the gospel I preached, verse 3, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. Number one, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. Number two, that he was buried. Number three, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and number four, that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than five hundred at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have actually fallen to sleep already. And so what he says is here is of first importance the foundation of the gospel. Jesus Christ died for our sins. That means all of us are sinners, right? We're sinners by birth, by nature, and by choice. All of us are sinners. There is no one so good that they don't need to be saved, and there is nobody so bad they cannot be saved. Right? We're all sinners, and Jesus stepped out of heaven to go to the cross and pay the price for our sins in our place. So that's the first thing. The second thing, he was buried. That means he was dead. That's what he's trying to communicate. Jesus did not swoon, he was not hiding, all these weird theories that come up out of that. Look, you can either believe it or not believe it, but you can't change what the Bible says. And Paul is making clear Jesus was buried. He died for our sins. He was dead, he was buried. He took the full wrath and punishment of God for our sins. Okay? And then the third thing, Jesus rose again. He rose again on the third day. Why the third day? Well, a couple of reasons. Uh we talked about this two weeks ago with the Elijah deal. Anytime you see the number three, a lot of times that relates to the work of God. Because three, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So when something happens on the third day, it's some kind of indicator that God's put his thumbprint on it. The second reason for three days is that means he was dead. He had been buried for three days. He was gone. You know, when they pulled Lazarus out of the grave, their comment was, surely by now he stinks. Right? And they could have said the same thing about Jesus. If you watch enough cop shows, you know, they tell you Rigamortis sets in and all this other deal, and they can time the death. Like Jesus was dead. He paid the full wrath and punishment of our sins, and on the third day he rose again, conquering death and sin. And so that is the essence of the gospel. All of us need to be saved. Death is God's judgment for sin. He loved us so much that he sent Jesus out of heaven, lived a sinless life, and then his life had no judgment attached to it because he never sinned. Jesus would have still been alive today if he hadn't given himself on the cross because there was no death because he never sinned. But he voluntarily went to the cross and there he died on the cross so that his sinless death would have no judgment attached to it. Our death has judgment attached to it. When we place our faith in him as our Savior, there's a spiritual exchange that occurs, and he gives me his righteousness, and he covers my sin and his death on the cross. And then he rose again, accomplishing that new life, that resurrection of life. And so that's the gospel. Every time we share the gospel, we give the invitation, we share the gospel. Every time we baptize, we share the gospel. The Bible says we are buried with him in the likeness of his death, and we are raised with him in the likeness of his resurrection. Or another verse says, we are raised to walk in newness of life. 2 Corinthians chapter 2 says, if any man's in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, all things become new. And so we you have to have in your minds with clarity, this is the gospel. This is it. Now, when you start getting questions about stuff that you think you don't know the answer to, it doesn't matter. That is a misdirect that you know people have in their minds and they're struggling with and all that because they're trying to come up with something else, and you don't need to worry about how many angels dance on the head of a pen or what the third pinky toe of the beast was in the middle of Revelation or whatever. You don't have to be able to unpack the 70 days in Daniel. You don't have to know all that. You know, what about people in Africa that never heard of Jesus? You don't have to know all that. That's not the gospel. There are answers to those questions. There are theological answers to those questions, but that's not the gospel. And that's not what that person needs to hear. That person needs to hear. You're going to split hell wide open if you don't let Jesus deal with your sin. And Jesus loved you so much he dealt with it personally and died for you and paid the price for your sin. He rose again. And if you'll place your faith in Jesus Christ, he'll save you. And he'll save you for all eternity. I mean, that you don't have to know any of that, but you do have to know what the gospel is. You need to be able to define that clearly, right? You can define it in your own words, but Paul states it as explicitly in Scripture as you possibly can. This is the gospel, these are the things of first importance. Christ died on the cross, he was buried, he rose again. When you get to Romans chapter 10, and he's talking about evangelism in there, he says, how we're saved. If you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And so the resurrection is vital to that. I had a um uh some girl in college I was dating in uh at the University of Texas when I was there. I spent a year at the University of Texas. It was my year abroad. And we got in this argument, and she went to a Baptist church, been there all the time, and we got in this argument, and she was going on and on about the death is what mattered, the death is what mattered. I'm like, you need to read your Bible because 1 Corinthians 15, when you get past the gospel, the very next statement he says is if there is no resurrection, there is no gospel. There is no completion of the gospel. Right? I didn't date her very long, by the way. So that is what we need to understand. And you understand the resurrection because that's what brings the new life to it. Now, questions about that? I mean, I know it sounds basic, but I'm just telling you, it's incredible how many people can't say that. And I can give you testimonies. I've done over 150, I lost count in 150 number of weddings I've done. And what I always do in premarriage counseling, I start off with if marriage is a picture of salvation, I gotta know y'all are saved. Plus, the Bible tells me I am not allowed to join unequally unbelievers and believers. And so I got to I need to know y'all are saved. And I mean I've had several grooms and brides I've led to Christ right there in that moment. Every mission trip that we go on, you have to write out your testimony. And I can't tell you multiple times I've had people, God was working in their life and he used a mission trip to get them there, and they'll come in my office and they'll say, Greg, I can't turn in this testimony sheet to get ready for a mission trip because I don't have one. I need to get saved. And I said, Well, that's why God brought you on this trip. He made you sign up so you get saved, right? I mean, I've had Sunday school teachers get saved. I mean, it's incredible. And so it's important that we rehearse that, it's important that we know that, and it's important that we go through that. When you share your testimony, when we teach that here, we teach often this is who I was before I got saved, and this is how we teach it. This is how I met Jesus. You have to explain how you met Jesus and trusted him as your Savior. Not that you love the Lord, you grew up in church, got great parents, and all this other stuff. I mean, that's great. That ain't how you got saved. I placed my faith in Jesus Christ when I, you know, when I recognized that he died for me and rose again. And then this is who I am now after I got saved. Now, you'll hear me a lot of times when I give, when I will share my testimony briefly, a brief version of it in church as a part of sharing the gospel. And I do that purposefully. I'm not looking for, I'm not, I'm not lost for something to say. I've been here long enough, y'all know I'm never at a loss for something to say, right? I'm not trying to make up something else. I am intentionally training a testimony. And you have heard it, if you've heard me at all, say this. I grew up in a Christian home, and I my parents were loved Jesus, and in our house, every time we got in trouble, every time we broke the rules, my parents throughout all of our childhood would tell us, look, that was sin. The Bible calls that sin. You spoke back to your mom, you dumped on your little brother, you lied, you didn't clean your room, we told you to, whatever it was, and the Bible calls that sin. And you don't understand that yet, but one day you'll understand that, and I'm going to punish you so you know that sin is punished. And one day you'll know that Jesus loved you enough, that he took your punishment on the cross, and that's how they trained me. And we got that lecture sometimes five times a day, right? And then when I was um nine and a half years old, I was sitting on the front row of the balcony up there. Uh, and when I tell y'all I was raised in the balcony, I really was. I was raised in the balcony. Y'all back row people aren't far enough away. You gotta get in the balcony. And I can't tell you what the sermon was about, but I can tell you at the end of that invitation, Dr. Rogers said, No one will ever love you as much as Jesus because nobody will ever take your punishment from God in your place. And that's what Jesus did for you when he died on the cross. And at that point, all that training of my teachers, all that Sunday school, all that stuff, it all clicked. And I came down the aisle and I walked down this aisle in that church that we were in in downtown Memphis, and there was a deacon named Dewey Burton, and I talked to one of the staff guys, and they connected me with Mr. Dewey, and he took me back into counseling room, and I got saved. And that's how I explained I met Jesus. It has the gospel, you heard it in there. I knew I was a sinner, I described that sin. I described Jesus how much he loved us, that he paid the price for us on the cross. And my decision was specifically to place my faith in Jesus Christ as a Savior because he died for my sins on the cross. Does that make sense? And so you need to write out your testimony and you need to make sure that you clarify in your testimony how you do that. You need to have a two-minute version, a five-minute version, and then we're gonna have coffee for an hour together and unpack more of the details. But you've got to have a short version that you can share when God opens the door or you're talking with someone. Make sense? And so everybody needs that. You need to have written down that short version. You need a two-minute version and a five-minute version. Now, the other thing I'll tell you is when we give invitations here at church, I give invitations, not because we're necessarily trying to get people to walk the aisle. Obviously, we're trying to get them saved. And I don't care if they walk the aisle now or they catch me out in the parking lot after service is over. Nobody cares. Obviously, we're seeing baptisms, people join and all that. So we give the invitation so that people know you got to make a decision with what Jesus talked to you about in your heart today. That's why we give an invitation, right? They come in the invitation, great. Come out there, great. If it opens the door to have that conversation, great. However it is they get there, we don't care, but we're putting in front of them every week, you have to make a decision, right? And so when I'm giving the invitation, you will hear me repeat certain things very specifically. And I am repeating those in a specific way, and I'm repeating them almost by rote so that they get driven into the minds of the congregation so that if they ever get in a circumstance where they need to share Jesus with somebody and they're panicked or they're not confident, all they have to do is revert back to what they've heard in church and repeat the invitation. Does that make sense? So how many times you hear me say that? When you give your life to Jesus, um, you take your life, everything that you've been, you ever you are and you ever will be, and you give your life to Jesus. That's how you place your faith in him, right? And there are certain things I say and I repeat them over and over and over because I want them to be driven in on purpose. Does that make sense? Good? Questions about that? No? Alright, good. Now, let's talk about another part of that. Um, I'm gonna mess it up. I can't tell you how many times I hear that. And so I think those Barna studies and all that are right. And sometimes it's mixed in with if I get a question I don't know the answer to, I'm gonna do all that kind of stuff. Now, let me just tell you real quickly, if you don't get anything else from night, this is what you get right here. Jesus saves them, not you. And you are not more powerful than Jesus. So you literally cannot mess it up. That's a Satan lie. The only way you can mess it up is you try to convince them of heresy somewhere, which nobody in this room is gonna do, right? And so you can't mess it up. And even then, if somebody shares some Mormon thing with them or something, somebody else that knows Jesus, God can bring it in their life and fix it, right? So you cannot mess it up. All right? I mean, I'll just give I can give you all kinds of examples of that. Uh I don't know if I've told this story, tell me, um, and I'll move on. But I was on a mission trip in uh Nicaragua, and the last day, man, revival broke out, and all these people are getting saved. And so the pastor of the local church got excited because he hadn't seen anybody saved in years in that church. And so now, man, people are getting saved everywhere. And so anybody that he's ever witnessed to, he's putting teams out in front of them because God's moving and stuff's happening. So he grabs me and this little seminary student and he takes us off into town, and every business person he's ever witnessed to, he's taking us through there and we're witnessing to him. And then he takes us into this restaurant, which we would call a Mexican restaurant. I don't know what you call it in Nicaragua. It's blue plate special, I guess, in Nicaragua. I don't know, whatever it is. But we go in there and this and and the pastor runs off, and I'm going in, and this little seminary student, man, he stops dead at the door and he grabs me by the arm and he says, We can't go in there. I said, Why? It's a restaurant. We've been going to every other kind of business in town. Well, like, and he goes, No, you don't understand, we can't go in there. The Godfather holds court in the back room of this restaurant. I said, What do you mean, the Godfather? And he said, I'm assuming as an American you saw the Godfather. And I said, Yeah, go to the mattresses. I get it. Like, what are we doing? And he goes, No, he's back there. And I said, Well, Pastor's gone. We got to catch up with him. I said, Here we go. So we go in there and we go back in this room, and sure enough, Pastor's taking us back there to talk to the local mafia head. And so we go up to this room and there's this table, and because the pastor in that culture has respect and he gets a chance, he gets us in front of this guy. And I mean, I'm telling you, any spy or action movie that you ever saw in Central or South America, this was the bad guy that you saw in all those movies sitting at this table. And he's got his henchmen here, and he's got guards at the door, and sitting over here is a little row of things, and there's an Anglo dude sitting there, and he and I are the only Anglos in this room. And the pastor goes, and the guy says, And the guy goes, and he looks at me and goes, tell him. Like, okay, now this guy scared me to death. I got this 19, 20-year-old seminary student, he's panicked out of his mind. So I just looked at him and said, Look, I don't know, I don't know what to say here. You're gonna have to fix it when I say it. All right. So I'm you've heard me witness to a couple people. If I say something wrong, you don't have to say what I said. You just fix it and say what needs to be said. You hear me? You got it? Yes, Pastor. And so I start in, and I know he's shifting some of the things I said, right? And I mean, every one or two times I even said, Listen, I don't know how this flies with this guy, so I'm looking at him like I'm talking, and I said, I don't know how this flies with him, telling him he's gonna go to hell. So you need to find the right way to say that. I mean, that's literally what I'm doing. And he doesn't speak English, so he doesn't know that's what I said. We're blending our way through this. What the track we were using was a black heart, clean heart track, and it used pictures, so you could do that with a person who was didn't have the same language, right? And so the picture of sin, you know, the black heart is tainted by sin, and when Jesus saves us, got him on the cross and blood, and then the heart is cleansed and turned white. And so I kind of showed him the picture and I said, okay, you need to explain this to him. I mean, that's literally what I said in English. Like, I'm not sharing the gospel. You need to explain this to him. He explains it to him, shows it to him, and the guy pulls his shirt open, and he's got this nasty red scar running right down his sternum, and he tells us that he's just had open heart surgery, and the doctors could fix that heart, but they couldn't fix that heart. And he wants Jesus to clean his heart, and he gives it, he says, I want to be saved and I want to trust Jesus as my Savior. And so the guy tells me that, and I'm thinking, how in the world did that happen, right? And then this is what really blew my mind. I'm a tell him we're gonna pray, and I'm gonna walk through the prayer with him, whatever. And then the only other Anglo guy in the room speaks up in English who's heard everything I've said, and he says, I'd like to pray with you and give my life to Christ also. I'm thinking, really? You just heard everything I said. That was awful. How in the world did that happen? You cannot mess it up. You with me? You cannot mess it up. The only way to mess it up is not share it. Is not share it, right? Now, let me back that up with scripture for you. So if you have your Bibles, you may want to turn or I may just go through this too quickly, but I want to give you the spiritual, scriptural proof that it is Jesus who saves and not us, and he handles it and takes care of it, and we're just given the privilege to be there and be a part. Okay? So here's why it works. The first reason is it works because it is the power of God. Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, Paul says very clearly, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. He says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to everyone who believes. If you just got enough Jesus and sin and he loved you and did that for you, they can get saved. Because Jesus is the one that does it, and it's his power that does it. For it is the righteousness of God, for in it, in the gospel, it is the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. You don't have to be a theologian to understand the details of the gospel. That's why I'm saying, whatever question you don't know the answer to, who cares? It doesn't matter. What they need to know is this. And when they place their faith in this, in the gospel, they're saved because Jesus saves them. It is the power of God unto salvation. Got it? So we're not trusting on our ability to do this. It is the power of God who is doing this. So, number one, we know that this works, this personal management works because it is the power of God to save. It's not our power. The second thing is you are giving them scripture. You're giving them scripture. Scripture is the living, powerful word of God. Now, here's what the Bible says about itself. In 1 Corinthians 15, we just read that a minute ago, so you don't have to turn back to that. It says that he died for our sins, comma, according to the scriptures, comma. He was buried, comma, and rose again on the third day, comma, according to the scriptures. So we know and can be confident that the gospel is accurate as we are sharing it because scripture has said this is the gospel. And we are not trusting in our ability to illustrate it or whatever. We are trusting in the power of the living and powerful word of God. We know that the gospel is the gospel because we know that scripture is the inerrant, infallible, inspired word of God. It is his word and it saved. Romans 10, in that same place, it's that I quoted a minute ago about confess with your mouth, Jesus Lord, and believe in your heart God raised it from the dead. It says in there, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And he's talking about who sent out evangelism. It says, How will they know if there's not a preacher? And then he says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And so we are giving them a Bible verse. So you have to have a Bible verse that you put into your into your um uh two-minute testimony. You need John 3.16, or you need, you know, 1 John, not that we loved him, but he first loved us and gave his son to be the payment for our sins or whatever. John 3.16 works, everybody's heard of it, just go with it, right? And so it is scripture that does that. Then the Bible tells us this in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Now, these are verses that we should know, but we don't want to take them for granted. And there's a point for this. When you are sharing Jesus and you're using Scripture to share Jesus, again, it is his power that is saving. Here's what he says in first uh in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Uh 2 Timothy chapter 3. Um but as for you, he's teaching to Timothy, it's verse 14, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from who you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, in other words, scripture, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. It is in the scripture that the gospel is there, and it is the living, powerful word of God that speaks to our hearts, that births that understanding and births that faith and all of that. We are not placing our faith in something that somebody told you. They are placing their faith in the word of God. And then it goes on to say scripture that we all know all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And so what you see there is it is the word of God that does that. And let me give you another one just because I'm trying to layer these in here in a powerful way. First Peter chapter one. Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. For all flesh is grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of God remains forever. And this word is the good news or the gospel that was preached to you. And so again, it is scripture that the Holy Spirit uses to make those light bulbs go off, to speak into their lives. And it does it in an incredibly incredibly powerful way. Hebrews chapter 2 says this the verse we all know. The word of God is living and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, the bones and the marrow. It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Literally, Scripture is alive and God communicates through Scripture directly into their thoughts and questions and heart. You get that? And then, just in case that's not enough for us, the next verse says this All things are naked and open to the eyes of him who must give account. So now, if you layer these, when you go to share Jesus with somebody, you know that you are sharing the power of God unto salvation. It's not dependent on your strength, it is the power of God into salvation. And when you put a Bible verse in it, you have given the most important tool in that because repeatedly the scripture says over and over and over and over that we our faith is birthed through the living, powerful word of God. We are birthed not through perishable seed, but imperishable seed through the living word of God. And so when you go to share Jesus, you have multiple, eternally powerful tools. You cannot mess this up. And you are going in armed beyond all of the minions of hell, and you are armed with the power and the authority of Jesus Christ with the living, powerful, two-edged sword of the Word of God. You can't get any more powerful than that. Does that make sense? Why would we ever be afraid to share the gospel when that's what we're doing? And if that is not enough, then you go to Acts chapter 1, verse 8. And it is one of those times when he's appearing to the 500, as it says here, he's appearing to all these people, he's about to ascend into heaven. And they ask him, When are you coming back? And he says, It's not for you to know. Don't worry about it. God's got that covered. Here's what you're gonna do: you're gonna wait here in Jerusalem until you receive the Holy Spirit. And then Acts 1.8 says, but then when you receive the Holy Spirit, you're going to have power, spiritual power from the Holy Spirit. And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. So now, when you go to share the gospel, you are giving them the power of God through the living, powerful word of God. That birthed spiritually, that spiritual light bulb that we understand what God is telling us, and you have the power of the Holy Spirit covering and empowering all of that on top of that moment. Like, what are we afraid of? Does that make sense? I mean, what are we afraid of? I mean, it just takes a few minutes to live with that, and you figure out, well, I'm just gonna go tell anybody, anytime, anywhere. And the people that you know that are dynamic soul winners, that's what they do. They're just fearless, not because that's their personality or because they have a greater faith than we do. They have lived with these scriptures and tested them enough to know that this is what's happening when they share Jesus. Does that make sense? Now, questions about those. Let me stop. See. Hopefully that's helpful. Hopefully that's helpful. All right. Here's the next thing that we know that helps. And this is the final thing: prayer. Prayer. So, Matthew 9, verses 35 through 38. In Matthew 9, he's describing, he's out ministering these crowds, and they got all these people, and they got all these struggles and all that. And the Bible describes this, and I've preached on here before, so it should be familiar. But what he said, what it says is Jesus looks at the crowd and he sees them as sheep not having a shepherd. And he sees these needs and it breaks his heart. And then he turns to his disciples and he says, This the fields are white for harvest. All those needs mean that those are people who have questions that are answered in Jesus. And then he says, This pray for workers, because the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. And that's why we're doing this. We need more workers in the field, in our church. We need more people sharing Jesus, right? And Jesus said that's how it's worked, how it works. And so we're praying for that. And that's not a critical statement. That's Jesus describing, that's how it works. 10, if you got 10, praise the Lord, let's go get 20. If you've got 50, let's go get 150, right? I mean, let's go get with it and go get as many as we can. I mean, if the fields are wide for harvest, we keep putting harvesters out there until we've gotten everything. And it'll be a long time before we get everything in the river alley, right? Next thing. In Colossians chapter 4, verse 3, uh Paul tells the Colossian, the church at Colossae that you are to pray for me for two things: an effective open door for the gospel, and you're to pray that I would speak it as I'm supposed to speak it. And then you get an example of what he means by that. In 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verse 9, he's writing, explaining where he is, and he says, there is an effective door for the gospel open here. People are getting saved. I need you to pray, and there's also spiritual opposition because there is an effective door open for the gospel. So God opens doors. This prayer is taught in Scripture, and it is empowered by the Holy Spirit. And here's the other thing. If you ask Jesus, we need to see people saved. Will you give me an opportunity to share? Jesus stepped out of heaven and died on the cross and rose again to answer that prayer. Does that make sense? I mean, that's why he did what he did. And so he's just waiting on us to step into those moments. And so what we want to do is we want to make sure we've covered these things in prayer. And there's a lot of ways that happens. I've been in taxi cabs, I've been sitting at lunch restaurant, I've got a friend named Jerry. He's the most dynamic soul winner I've ever seen. I've pled with the Lord to let me do half of what Jerry can do, and it just doesn't happen. He's just got this gift. And I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting at a restaurant, and the waiter, waitress, whoever comes over, the server comes over, and he just launches into it. I mean, you know, hey, do you know Jesus? And he just starts talking and he's got this grandfatherly thing about him, and everybody loves him, and he's got this thing, and he just goes, and I know, well, okay, there goes lunch. Number one. Number two, pray, Greg. Get with it and start praying. And I just start praying right here through this thing. It's my job to sit there and pray for him. And I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've seen some server and they're doing whatever, and the next thing I know, he scoots over uh closer to his wife, Olive, and this person scoots over and sits down in the seat right there in the middle of their shift, and they sit there right there in the seat and they give their life to Jesus and they're crying and everything else. I mean, it's incredible. And so in that position, it's my role. I've been in taxi cabs with guys, and somebody you're talking, you know how they is, you're talking with taxi cabs or whatever, and one of the guys gets an open door and he launches into it. Okay, I'm praying. It's my job to sit here and pray. And so I'm praying through this. When you get your love list, you're praying for your love list, and then you're looking for God to answer those prayers because Jesus came and died on the cross to answer that prayer, right? And so you're praying for that. So we are praying for open doors, we're praying for our love lists, and we're praying for evangelism in our church. It's one of the things that the navigators in our prayer force ministry pray for every uh every week. And then when we call the gunners to duty, like right now when they're at camp, we are praying for open doors in the lives of our students, and we want some of them to be saved. And so God answers those prayers, he models that prayer, and he teaches that prayer. Now, let me walk you through your love list. One of the things we want to do in this class is we want to close every time. Y'all forgive me for my, I got my annual summer sinus thing I'm fighting through. So um, so here's our love list. Three things. Everybody has a love list. Three things. You have three people that you know need Jesus that God's put them in their life, right? Like, don't tell me you're praying for Taylor Swift or you know, somebody like that. Fine. I got friends that are praying for these people of influence. Oh, that's fine. That ain't your love list, right? You gotta have your love list. You gotta start here. Three people that in your life that God put them in their life in your life for you to share Jesus with them. And you're praying three things. One, you're praying for an opportunity to invite them to church. Number two, you're praying for an opportunity to share your testimony, which is why you go back and you have your two-minute and your five-minute version written out and you put a scripture verse in there so that you've got that scripture verse, right? Because imperishable, not perishable. Faith comes by hearing, hearing, by the word of God. And then the third thing is we're praying for them to be saved. We're praying for them to be saved. So when you do that, you are praying in line with Scripture. I'm praying for you and your love lists because Jesus said pray for workers. And y'all are praying for effective open doors in the place where you are that God's put you to share. Does that make sense? And so we're gonna finish every time with an opportunity for us to corporately pray for your praying for your love list. And we're gonna start really just kind of working our way through that. Now, here's what this is. In old school EE days, and I'll close with this, old school EE days, especially at a church like ours was at that time when it was good, but especially in a church like Bellevue, where we were, um, when I left, they were running 17,000 on a Sunday morning, they were running 10,000 in Sunday school. So we had 200 visitors a week, right? What EE would do is you'd go to your training, and then we would take all those 200 visitors a week and we would hand that to all those teams, and they would go visiting and knock on that door of the person that visited the church, and they had the EE way to be able to share the gospel with them. We don't have 200 visitors a week, right? So we don't have that kind of visitor flow to hand out to folks. And in some ways, I think that's a good thing. I actually think it's better. Because what should be happening is not just visitor follow-up, but what should be happening is people that we are interacting with on a daily basis that God has put in our sphere of influence, He put us there to be the example of Jesus in their life. And the reason the EE would hand you that visitor person and say, go visit that person was because it was a practice run so that you put in practice what you were learning so that you would then go into your love list, and that's who you would lead to Christ. Does that make sense? So what we've got to do is create that, how you go into it, how you move into those people. And so that's why we're majoring on the love list as the mechanism for you to go and share your faith and all that. I have done this and I'm telling you, this works. You can go to your friend that's on your love list, and you can do this. Hey, listen, I need a favor. I need a favor. My crazy pastor has made us do this, right? So I need to practice my testimony. Would you mind if I practice my testimony on you? Like just as a favor, you know, because like I need to be, he's gonna ask me when he sees me in the hall if I have shared it any this week. Would you mind so I can check that box? Nobody's gonna tell you no. Is that you with me? Nobody's gonna tell you no. And if we did that as a church twice a week, y'all would get 10-minute sermons because we're spending all our time baptizing folks. Isn't that right? Don't you believe that? And so that's a good way to do that. But we want to start with our love list, and so each week as you're going through this, I want you to spend time on your love list. Now, what we're gonna do as we go forward, we're gonna go into some more techniques on how you break that relationship open, how you answer some of those questions, that kind of stuff. We'll answer more questions as you go through the class. You we want to make sure this is open and free to do that. But really, we want to go through this, and my prayer and my goal is that sometime after this is over, sometime in the back half of the year, we start seeing some fruit on some love lists where people are getting saved. Why? Because the gospel is the power of God into salvation. Because repeatedly the Bible tells us faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God, and we're saved by the imperishable seed of the word of God. It's able to make you wise unto salvation. And we have prayed over it consistently and focused for Him to save, and we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to make that work. Does that make sense? All right, so let's let's take just a minute before we close, and I want you to just think through your love list. So I want you to just bow your heads and I want you to just talk to the Lord for a minute. Do you have a love list? Do you have a love list? If you do, run the names right now. If you don't, that's okay, it's nothing critical. Ask the Lord, just commit to him, he doesn't have to give you all three names now, just commit to him that you're gonna pay attention to his voice and you're gonna pray over that in the next several days, and you're gonna ask him to start populating your love list. It can be anybody, it could be your grandkids, your neighbor, your spouse, brother, sister, wife, husband, whoever, anybody. God put them there in your life. Alright, the next thing I want you to do is if you have a name, most of us have a name. Like even if you didn't have a love list, you probably had a name pop in your in your brain. I've been doing this a long time, and very seldom I ever had anybody didn't have one name. I just want you to pray those three things for that name. Just pray those three things for that name. Opportunity to invite them to church, opportunity to share your testimony, and you're praying for them to be saved. And then I want you to join with me and Matt and Dave, and we want to pray as we go through this summer, as we go through the month of July, that we'll have a really healthy number of our folks not just log on, but actually go through this. Because the more we focus on it, and the more we engage in it, the more somebody is in it, they get equipped, they are reminded over and over that you can't mess this up. It's the power of God at work. The more people are going to start stepping into those three those three things. So I want you to join us in praying for more workers as Jesus commanded us to pray. So I just want you to pray that in our church. Lord, we are here in prayer in faith because we believe you. We believe you answer prayer. We believe what your word says about itself. It is inspired and profitable. It is the imperishable seed of your word. It is living and powerful and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. All of those things in someone's heart that you actually see and understand in their life. And so, Lord, Jesus told us to pray for more workers. So we're here praying. I pray, Father, that this will be a watershed moment in the life of our church because we'll see this move, this growth of people getting into the process of being that harvester that Jesus gives in that illustration. That we'll invite people to church that will share our testimony and that we will faithfully be praying for people to be saved. And so we ask that as we birth this on Sunday, as we go through this on Wednesday nights, that Father, you will work in this time. It's not just a placeholder. We're not on vacation just doing something because it's July. We're moving forward as a church, and this is one of those forward things. And so I pray that you'll put your thumbprint on this time. Father, I just want to thank you for folks that are here. Thank you that they are interested, that they want to see, that they're a part of this. And I pray that you'll speak to their heart, encourage them. Be a blessing. The ones that have recently shared with somebody or invited them to church or printed over their love list. Tell them, well done, good and faithful servant, affirm that in their life and heart. And Father, those others who are trying to grow in this, I pray that you'll speak to them in the way your living and powerful word does and encourage them. Show them that they can do this in your power. Show them that there's a freedom for them to do this because you're the one doing it. Encourage them that they can't mess it up and to trust in you and the power of your word and the work of the Holy Spirit as He is the one empowering these conversations. And Lord, we do pray for effective open doors for people to be saved. Lord, I pray that we'll see more people saved as a church. I pray that you'll work in us to stir us for that desire to see more people saved and to engage in this process. Thank you for these folks that are here. Bless them and speak to them in their quiet time as they're processing these things this week. We thank you most of all for that for the gospel. Just as Paul said, Christ died for us. He was buried taking the full wrath and punishment for our sin. And he rose again to offer us new life. In his name we pray, and everybody said, Hey, thank you all for being here. You guys are awesome.