Have No Fear

Welcome back to Ignite here with my buddy Steve Amerson and Bill Weiss and the three of us hang out a little bit We've just gotten to know each other the last few weeks for you. We go back way back and and always have more fun than we should Laughing and almost always it's about our latest faith sharing stories. We keep saying most people don't know. It's fun Yes, it's it's it's not nervous time. It's just go time. It's just fun time But we ended that last segment on hell, which is not fun But it should be a igniting for us. We don't want to go there. Nobody has to go there God saying you don't want to go there and he's doing everything he had to keep us from going there And yet strange today enough the world is choosing Against God to go there. I mean, it's crazy You know one of my tennis buddies I play tennis several times a week and one of my tennis buddies Doesn't believe in God and he's made it clear that he doesn't believe in God and I've said to him He said Jim you have a lot more faith than I do But but he said I did a couple weeks ago. We're talking about this again Comes up and he goes, you know, I decided when I was seven years old that there was no God And I'm thinking he's going to allow a decision made by a seven-year-old To determine His life the the the arc of his life and and eternity But very there there are a lot of people that are just they're afraid to share their faith By the way, and we all I'm sure we know this the the first evangelists were both women Yes, they they saw that the tomb was empty. Yeah, and they were they were the very first and they ran and they ran and they didn't have any Training or any knowledge they just said he's alive So so very I mean if someone is afraid or they're I mean what if what if I don't know the answer? Oh, what are they supposed to do Barry? I thought that's the most exciting part That's the most exciting. That's not that that's not the reason for not that's the most exciting part because no one Expect you to be a Bible scholar Nobody expects you to be the the answer to everything fact that probably hurts a little bit if we were the audience that had all the answers I think it's no boring, you know way better to say that's a great question I never thought of that question before would you allow me the next few days to pray for you And search for his god has the answer is it's in the book. I just got it. I got to find the answer Would you pray for me as I pray for you and I'll search the scriptures Let's get back together on Thursday. Could you do that? They always say yes. Of course they're gonna say yes They want to know What answer to now in Thursday does anybody have to tell you to be in the word? Does anybody have to tell you to pray? No every moment at the job you have a break your dick Really and you it's like treasure the work that's the scripture I say you search like treasure and then you find it and then you find another one You find another one what I do I print them out and I put the whole scripture out I do the whole thing for them. I do that every time. I've been doing that for 50 years And so when you go back say here's the answer I'm so excited I'm praising God again I give it to them. There's bots in front of me and I give them a copy and I read through the scriptures they in their demolisher They're just they're just it answers every question they had It's the word of God. It's not me. It's the word of God and he always has the answers That's the fun part when you don't have the answer That's what got me going to begin with we keep really excited about it He has the answer he always has the answer and sharing his answer with them to answer their questions What a what a privilege. I mean that's that's that's real fun You know very you said like you don't have to have a lot of knowledge just the zeal It's all about you. I led a friend to the Lord and that next day this friend went out and witnessed the three of his friends Oh, yeah, and he brand new Christian didn't know even a new key to new Christian. That's what new Christians do And he led two of the three to the Lord, but maybe he did it the wrong way Wait a second. He got point three four point four. He can't do that. Who does he think he is wait a minute We gotta talk to you and then we get new Christians in our churches and what do we say to them? Oh, you have children Oh, we should get you involved in the children's department. Oh, you can sing we have a great music department Oh my goodness We never once say the first thing we need to do is get you an advanced class because you have all your friends Are not saved and will help you understand how easy it is to share your faith with your friends We never say that to them. We never talk about it and they're the they're the best candidates We have for growing the church growing the gospel very I used to work on a church staff and oftentimes we with higher musicians And sometimes those musicians We're not people of faith. Yeah, too often how great What a great opportunity to bring people you know, so you're gonna pay them to play for your Christmas program or something How wonderful is is to be able to bring them into with God's people Yeah, they're gonna get paid and they're also gonna hear the word about how often we pay them We thank him tell them how tell them they are and send them on their way Yep, and never think about their souls One time I was singing with an orchestra in in Florida and One of the songs that I sang was it was a concert all of Broadway songs and one of the songs was the song bring him home from Les Miserables. Oh, yeah, and as I said that song up I never said anything about Jesus. I never said anything about God, but I just said you know what This is a story about grace. I'm musical about grace and all of us are looking for grace in one way or the other That's all I said Following the concert I got an email from a lady who said what you said really struck me That we're all looking for grace and just by that helped her initiate her faith wall. Yeah, just trying to understand Exactly, we took you away from point three Well actually lack of knowledge, you know, that people think they don't have enough knowledge They don't understand the severity of hell and they really fear man rather than fearing God. Yeah, boy God help us for that. Right, but that's so true. Passers are doing. I know. We're all doing I mean And bowing down to the government and being careful. We don't defend Uh Edicts from from governmental Right, they think they're being tolerant. They don't want to offend anyone. Oh, yeah tolerance That's the best to do really religion, but tolerance is not compassion. No, you know, it's a different thing and consensus If you really have compassion for people, you'll share the truth with them rather than tiptoe round if you don't share the truth You're you're enforcing you're you're affirming their wrong behavior exactly exactly so that's actually sharing your faith I mean explain this it might cost me something What does it cost to share your faith? What is a cost to pray for someone? There must be something Cost time, but he God gives it back to you. Yes You know how that works You don't have time, but you know you got to see you do and then all of a sudden whatever you're going to works out Just fine or the meeting was canceled or whatever you say I was all worked up over that and it was meaningless And who what can be more important what I'm doing here anyway when God puts somebody in your path, right? Yeah, it's just it's God's timing You know bear you pointed out in your book about you know people in life today are Depressed they don't have joy in their life. Oh, yeah, the key to joy is sharing the gospel As you pointed out, you know Paul pointed out the last thing you wonder the one thing they don't want to do is share their faith I don't want to do that It's the one thing that opens the doors to the blessings of heaven almost every promise comes back to having whole-hearted faith You get whole-hearted faith by sharing your faith because Romans 8 28 says When you live for his purpose to those who love me Many defines what that means to those who live for my purpose That's his purpose is to seek and say the lost When we live to seek and say the lost we live in his promise in Romans 8 20 He'll make everything work together in our lives for good even the bad stuff Even when I was losing my business even when I lost my daughter even when I was in the hospital dying Those are and I got a bunch more those of mine talked about the most but even in those times God's working good. We don't see it, but we know he's working out for good and Wouldn't you agree that those bad times or when you had your spiritual growth spurts? Every every major growth spur to my life has come through bad times scriptures very clear You want to know me, you know, you want to know Jesus? It happens to the suffering. Yeah, yeah, you want to know Christ. Yeah, it happens through this if we just were skating by every day It's everything happy day. What is happy day for us? In spite of the bad stuff, but if you just look at the world around you there's a lot of bad stuff going on That's why everybody's fretting You are a focus on that. I mean you could fret and fret or you could say Yep, sometimes it works against the closer he is to coming exactly and sometimes when I share my faith with someone and I pray for them And I'll when I'm when I'm done praying though, they're looking at me and I'll say You know what that cost me? Well, that's the point. It's come back to that way. It cost me nothing. Yeah, it cost me a little bit And so that's what we want people to understand. It costs them nothing just sharing the Often times it's the same amount of time It's just what did you do with your time with that person exactly most Christians do good things for people But they never think you're bringing God into the equation And so they walk away and the person really loves them In society loves me and I'm being applauded. I'm a really good person But being good doesn't get us or anybody else to have it. It just doesn't work that way All right But showing kindness to people and love you know if you meet somebody at the grocery store or whatever that you go too daily And you show kindness to them after a time now you're they're open to receive the gospel And it's always attached the good that we do yeah to the Lord in some way if all if all if all in the simple as we talk about this Then God bless you you do something so they know that love is from goodness is that just from you being a good person right But it comes for God we give him the glory. We could take the glory right or he gets the glory In most cases Christians are taking the glory and feeling really good About it and thinking they're on their way to heaven because they're such a good person and that's false doctrine So there is a car guy a car has reflectors on it. Yeah Yeah, what are we reflecting weird weird to be our encouragement to you? Oh my goodness is to be a reflector. Oh my goodness. A reflector of God's glory. Can we do one more of these? I'm sorry, but could we do one more of these I and sensing that the best is yet to come and I hate to lose you guys So let's do let's do one more, okay Come back and see us for one more second of this great conversation. I love you guys really special come back