Evangelism Is Not a Program

Hi everybody, welcome back to Ignite. I want to talk to you for just a couple of minutes here on the subject of evangelism is not a program. I mean, there are so many evangelism programs and I've gone through the major ones. I started going through them back in the 70s and you want to know how do I do it? How do I do it? I need to know. I get these words down. I've had so many programs in these points and I had one that gave me a Bible and it was numbered. Where should you go in the Bible to read the description? I've had all these programs that let me say I appreciate all the programs and millions of people have been won by programs. So thank God for all the programs. I'm not trying to cast a spiritual, I really not. But the fact of the matter is there's only one percent of us that are sure of faith. That's it. About 30 or 35 percent of our population says they share their faith but when you get into it, you find out that they think being a good person is sharing their faith and being a good person doesn't get you or anybody else doesn't have it. It just doesn't. It's not about being good. I walked my, walked out of a restroom a little a few months ago and it just hit me. It's one of my best friends. He walked out and he said, you see that gentleman in there that was cleaning the sink. I said, yeah, he says why I gave him 20 bucks, 20 to do a good job. I said, well that's really wonderful. That's good for you. What did that accomplish? His wife, I made him feel better, feel good. I said, yeah, it kind of made you feel good too, right? Because you did that. You made him feel good and you're telling me about it so much to make you feel good. Yeah. What did that do for God? He said, excuse me? I said, well, what did you accomplish besides making him feel good? Did you do anything for God? Moving him closer to Jesus? He said, I don't understand. I said, you know, if you had gone to him and said, God just prompted me to give you $20 just as a token and an excuse to tell you that he loves you. He knows who you are and he loves you. Oh, I never thought of that. Well, if you've done that, all of a sudden, now you're not getting the glory. God's getting the glory. You've impacted this man of all the people who've treated him rude all day long. There's this one guy who was a Christian that actually had God speak to him to me and tell me that he knows who I am. Wow. It's so simple. Well, Christians are always telling me stories of how they're being good. Being good doesn't get anybody to heaven. That's not what it's about. It's just not. Most people are not sharing their faith because they haven't been trained. I hear the excuse all the time. I've never taken a class. I haven't been trained. I don't have enough bivonality to give you all the, and that's all they are. It's excuses, you know. Here's the bottom line. And why I believe only one percent of your faith and just get over it. It's not about having a program. You don't have to have a program to love people. You didn't have to go with you a program to learn how to love your girlfriend or learn how to love your wife or you don't need a program to learn how to love your friends. I don't know if those kind of programs even exist. You don't need a program to love your neighbor as yourself. You don't need it. You just love. That's it. No training required. You just love on people. And when you do that, it sets you free. See, if you're doing a program and you have to be successful with the program, you can be, but there's us. I hear people say, you know, I nailed it. I got that point and I told that point and I put them over the edge with this point. It's like, whoa, there's a little bit of pride coming on here. I mean, you may have done good, but you've been getting feeling pretty good about yourself or having made that a college, but the moment starts bringing credit to you, I get uneasy. It's all about God and the way you'll have to be all about God and I got to do it. And so I tell you, you can just relax. There's no training. You can start doing it right this moment. From this moment forward, I would encourage you to move everybody every day, close your Jesus. And you do that by just letting people say, well, I know I should share my faith. I don't know how to share my faith. God will give you the words. Just love on people. Jesus said, they'll know you're my disciple by your love. That's it. That's not a program. That's just loving, loving people. And let me tell you something in addition to loving people, what that really means in my words, okay? When God loves me, he's salvationing me. When he loves you, he's salvation you. Look, through every scripture, probe every scripture there is, all his love, his love is all about getting us into heaven. That's what he does. His love is salvationing us, okay? And so when we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, when we're loving our neighbors, we're not just being nice to them. We're loving on them. We're not just loving on them, but we're actually salvationing them. Do you get it? This takes us to a whole another level at all the niceties of life being nice. We're salvationing. Everybody we're doing better, more importantly and more accurately, God is salvationing all those people through us, through you. And it changes everything really. This is the most important thing in life. The pastors are not sending us. How are they going unless they're being sent? The pastors aren't sending us. And pastors, if you're listening to me right now, please start sending your people. You want church growth? You want your church to be alive? They give them the great commission and challenge of your roles to equip the saints for ministry, the Ephesians 4-11. That's your role. That's what you're called to do and send your people. Who else is going to send them? I don't know. We're trying to do our part. I'm just a laver who's been doing it for a lot of years and having so much fun doing it, having the freedom of doing it. Oh, God's going before me and directing my steps and protecting me from all evil's. I'm living in the in the sweet spot with God all because I move everybody every day closer to Jesus than I watch you. God watch you to do the very same thing. See you next time.