Removing the Barriers

Welcome back to Ignite, one of the most exciting opportunities I've had in doing podcast Bill Wies and Steve Amerson and my dear friends here are prolific face shares, we're entirely different, why is your living different parts, why are you, we kind of live close together most of the time when I'm not in Arizona, but you're way up north of UCLA, so far away, foreign country, but you spent half your time in Washington DC, but separately apart, God has brought us to the same place where we are soulmates, absolutely. Each of us are there, not because we influence each other, after, I mean, after we've come to this place of recognition of who God is and what He wants us to do is after that that we've come together and started sharing stories and when we're sitting around the table, I'm laughing and talking about so much fun and so we're going to do that a little bit today about it. I want to talk about the stories we've talked about the stories a lot, thank you both for being on previous podcasts, but nobody hears about it, how much fun it is, bless those who persecute you, I don't want to be persecuted, that's for somebody else, I don't want that. I have never felt persecuted, I haven't felt persecuted, I think there are people who are just afraid to share their faith, it's fear, 80% of Christians are living in fear for a whole lot of reason, now take your version as it relates to sharing your faith, expound on that. And maybe you can, maybe both of you have some tips on this, but I think people are afraid, what if I mess up? What if they ask a question, I don't know the answer to, and am I going to embarrass myself or God, and so I'm not qualified, I haven't, oh gosh, there's this wonderful, there's a pastor, Alistair Begg, he tells a story about the thief on the cross who gets to heaven, and the angel says, did you go to Bible study, do you know the doctrine of salvation, no, did you go to church, no, and the angel says to the thief on the cross, and he said, so under what authority are you here? And the thief said, the man on the middle cross said, I could come. And that's our story to share with people that once they find themselves in alignment with Jesus, the man on the middle cross says you can come, and that's the message that we get to share, and it doesn't matter whether we've gone to Bible study or have gone to Bible school, it doesn't matter. Well, I often talk about the most prolific of all faith shares, our new Christians. That's right, that's right. They have more fervor, they have zeal, they have zeal, you know, in Revelation chapter 2, God says, I know you go to church, so you get a Christian, I know you go to church, I know you know you go to church, I know you know you go to church, I know you give resursively and respectfully and sacrificial, I know all that, but I have this against you, you've left your first love, and you're no longer doing the first work. And that's where the church is today, left our first love, we put other things in place of God, often saying, God, we help you with my God, it could be a ministry, it could be good stuff, not bad stuff, but all of a sudden that becomes a preoccupation, and if it doesn't go well for trusting man, it doesn't go well, then where were you, God? God is our God, and when we love him, we'll share him, we talk about whatever we're excited about, if we don't, if you're not sharing your faith, folks, you got a check and see, is he really your first love, but that's what you're talking about. Did you have a pulse? Did you have a spiritual pulse? A spiritual pulse, yeah, I want to have that pulse beat, like hard, yeah, I want to have a strong pulse for God. You know, like Steve, like Steve said, you know, I think the first, now there's three reasons I've seen that why people don't witness. But number one is that they think they don't have enough knowledge, so they fear, but the bottom one is they're fearing man rather than fearing God, and because if we fear God, then we will obey him, but they don't need a lot of knowledge. Can I interrupt you? Can I interrupt you very quick? Yes, sir. That scripture on Luke 12, which is, I'll give you the words to say, it's so powerful, it's not on our recitation or stuff we know. You'll give us the words to say, so there's no pressure. No. If it's our words, it's just man talking. Our words don't change any of it, but when he gives us the words to say, that's a Holy Spirit speaking through us, until you have that experience, you have no idea what's like to have intimacy with God, where he's changing people in front of you, with his words flowing through us, not the words that we've managed to memorize or recite or whatever it's done. Like Romans 2, 16 says, the power is in the gospel. So if we just share the cross with people, they don't have to have a lot of head knowledge or a scriptural knowledge, just share that joy, that zeal they have. And when you talk about the Jesus died on the cross, that's the power of God, and that's what changes people's lives. So that's number one reason. So they need to really fear God, and number two, the second reason I believe is because they don't really understand the severity of hell. When you understand how severe hell is, you'll be more persuasive with people. And second Corinthians 5, 10, and 11, Paul said, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. No, even though the scriptures talk about the judgment seat, the rewards he per Christians, he was also referring to judgment and hell in general. So when you understand judgment, hell in general, you'll be more persuasive with men. See you will think, I didn't know hell was this severe. I didn't know it was that bad. I cannot let my family or my friends go there. I've got to take more passion, take more effort in praying. Maybe you'll get on your knees, you'll cry, and you're fast and pray for your family members. When you know I don't want them to go there, Lord, send labors across their path, give them dreams and vision, do whatever it takes to keep them back from hell. So learning about hell helps us have that passion that desire to want to witness. Hell, it's eternal. The scariest thing about hell is not that it's just bad, but it never ends. That's right. It never ends. We're used to bad stuff ending, even if we die, it ends. Hell never ends. A billion years ago, I was not going to end. When you're sitting there with your full knowledge, knowing that you couldn't have accepted Jesus Christ would have been able to talk to you or Steve came by. But you chose not to. And now you're in hell. If it was just being alone in darkness by yourself, it's way more than that. Boy, I mean, you read it on hell. What's up talking about hell? You don't only 10% of church's pulpits today or even mentioning hell or heaven or salvation. So we've forgot about hell. It's half a salvation. You have good news and bad news. We have rewards and punishments. That's in us. There's nothing more basic in our lives than to say rewards and punishments. We're just preaching rewards. And half of the message is the punishment of people. Most evangelicals don't even believe there is a hell anymore. There's no fear of hell. Right. There's even a Barnapolo that showed that 71% of Americans believe in hell, but less than one half of 1% believe they're going to go there. Well, yeah, Jesus said Matthew 7, man, you're going there and few are going to heaven. So when we get that grasp of that hell, severe hell is, you know, Jesus talked about hell in 46 different verses. So and it's a message of love because it's a message of warning. He's letting people know there is a hell. You don't have to go there. He got overachieved and everything. He's serious. I mean, it's maybe a bad way to look at it. He overachieved and heaven. The rewards in heaven are beyond anything we could possibly imagine. The glory of heaven and it's eternal. He also overachieved in hell. He made hell the ultimate resistor for going to hell. He made it so bad that who would go to hell? Nobody wants to go to hell. But we've lost our fear of hell. Mary, I don't think we, I've been pondering this the past couple of months. How evil is evil. It is ultimate evil. It's not just kind of evil. Evil is, and our nation, our world, I feel, I, personally, I feel like just evil is on the run. And sometimes, ever you look, ever you look, Satan, Satan's rule. And I think we sometimes, that's all Satan. We try to appease evil. We try to make a deal with evil and the bottom line is evil is evil. And it wants to kill and destroy and take us to hell. He's hell-bent on taking us to hell. And so believers need to understand that, and quite honestly, as you were talking about preaching and churches, I believe one of the reasons why our nation is in the condition that is in right now is because the pulpits have been silent for the most part. The world has lost their looking, and we sit silent, and it's our fault. The reason the world's in this place because it's our fault, that's what we ought to talk about. We're already out of time. Can we stay orphaned and do another one of these together and talk about it? The rejoicing comes from hell is evil. It's the epitome of evil. We can't even imagine how evil, but the good news is, we don't have to go there. We have a free ticket out of there. And let's talk about that in the next episode. Can we do that? Okay. I hope you enjoyed this, folks, as much as we are. This is real life. And we'll see you next time.