The Power of Your Testimony

00:00 - Speaker 1Share Jesus, just share the Gospel. Share your faith. The power is inherent in that. I believe, when the Holy Spirit of the living God dwells within us, which every true Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8 and 9,. If you have not the Spirit of Christ, you don't belong to Him. Now, if you turn that sentence around, if you have Jesus, you have His Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is resident within us. I believe that when the Holy Spirit of the only true living God is resident within the physical body, there's a spillover effect. 00:27 - Speaker 2Welcome to the Ignite with Barry Meguiar podcast, where Barry's book and passion for spreading God's love are guaranteed to ignite your life. Now listen in and prepare to have your life ignited. 00:42 - Speaker 3Welcome back to Ignite. Here's my buddy, dallas Holm. We have been buddies literally buddies since September of 1970. Dallas, of course, was the crusade singer for David Wilkerson We've covered all that, of course but then just his fame and demand for his own personal ministry led him into doing it. He's traveled the country ever since and I have been in so many of those services and been convicted. You've gotten me saved again several times. We're talking about sharing faith. That's what this is all about, folks, and how much fun it is. It is fun, and Dallas and I have been doing it all our lives and we have so many stories. We're going to get to some of those in a minute. 01:29But you said something off camera which struck a chord with me, because it's like how many did I miss? I try to take an inventory. At the end of the day, it is move everybody every day closer to Jesus. That's our goal. It's not find one person a day Out of all the people you're going to be with today that are on their way to hell. How do you pick one? 01:55Yeah, how do you pick the right one. 01:59 - Speaker 2And we don't have time for that anyway. 02:01 - Speaker 3I mean, we need to move everyone every day closer to Jesus. And here's something you may not realize Do you know that most non-Christians are non-Christians because of Christians? 02:17 - Speaker 1Well, tragically, yes, and I understand that. 02:19 - Speaker 3Because we're not sensitive that everything we do and say is moving people closer, further away from God. You're in full-time ministry, we all are Right. And for the moment you get up, the time you go to bed tonight, everything you say today, you can't get away from this. Once I tell you this, you're stuck. That's right. Everything you do and say today is moving everyone watching you closer, further away from God. Yeah, that changes your life. That's a life changer and a lot of times. 02:47 - Speaker 1You know I hate to say this, but a lot of times, and like you, I've run into so many people through the years and it just breaks my heart who have such a hardness and a resistance to the Lord or the things of the Lord because someone represented him so badly and often it was in a sharing the faith context because they got in their face. They had a method, they had a plan and it was so unloving. We got trophy hunters out there. That's what I call them. Folks, hear this. I've heard it all my life. 03:20 - Speaker 3Hear this, it's not an argument. You don't cast your pearls before swine. You can't force people into Christianity. You said it earlier it's the Holy Spirit drawing them, and you may be at the very beginning of the Holy Spirit drawing them or you may be down the line. We don't know it's not our business. 03:42The comment you made that makes me laugh and sad at the same time is this thing of how many people do we miss Some days? I feel like a pinball machine. There's poor face sharing I mean poignant, life-changing face sharing experiences in the span of two or three hours and I'm wondering, if I was more attentive, would that be happening every day of my life? Or was it that God's setting it up at that? I don't know, but I do suspect that God sets up. They are planned, our steps are ordered. He does plan these interruptions that are like divine interruptions, and I wonder how many times I miss it. I'm right there and I miss it and I'm picturing God going oy vey. 04:39 - Speaker 1I worked so hard. 04:41 - Speaker 3That very just blew me off. 04:44 - Speaker 1Yeah, hard, that very just blew me off. Yeah, no, in the ultimate sovereignty of God there are no accidents and there are no coincidences. He either is the God we claim him to be and, more importantly, who scripture claims him to be. We easily say God knows everything. Well, does he, or doesn't he? Well, absolutely, he's God. 05:02So these things are ordered of the Lord. He's got a plan that is so specific, so, minute, so, moment by moment, and you know, fortunately, he's merciful and gracious, and sometimes we miss it, and again, there's no condemnation, but the loss is ours when we miss the opportunity. You know, because we miss an opportunity, god's not going. Oh boy, well, can't help that person now. No, god loves that person, but we've missed the opportunity and the blessing and the I guess I would say the opportunity to store up another treasure in heaven, which isn't an egotistical thing, because what we store up in heaven, we're going to lay at the feet of Jesus. This is going to be our way of honoring him. 05:45You know, I wrote a praise letter and I thought this was—we send it out every other month and I just got it mailed to myself this morning. I'm on my mailing list so I can always check it, make sure the grammar's okay and all that. But I ran across this line just before we started these podcasts and I thought if people could get this in their head it might help them a little bit. It just says this. It's just a little paragraph out of it. We are all well aware of the many who perish daily all around the world due to war, famine, crime and disease. What if somehow there was a daily death toll posted that accounted for all who had perished without Christ? What if that list contained the locations of those who died? How many would have perished in astonishingly close proximity to where we live? What if there was a death toll, a list we could look up on our computer? This many people died today, not just in the world, but in our own community, in our own neighborhood. This many and we're aware of this. I mean Linda and I, you know. A couple years ago, as we got a little older, we started saying, every time the phone rings okay, who's got cancer, who died? Because as we get older, as we move along, more and more people are perishing. People are perishing all around us, all the time. If that doesn't incite us to do something, say something, be Jesus. I don't know what will. It's just it's astonishing how much and I'll be real careful here. We talked about this the other day. 07:14I'm a church person. I believe every Christian should be in a good Bible teaching community of believers. But I've traveled this country. I've been in 22 countries around the world. I've been in every denomination you can think of, literally from Catholic to Quaker and everything in between. So it's given me a pretty unique perspective on the church little c you know, and how it operates. We spend bazillions of dollars to get the most degreed intellectual pastor, the most talented worship leader, the most innovative programs, the greatest technology. We've got all this going on and we do so miserably poor in reaching the lost outside of the walls of our church. The church is not to be. As I study Scripture, look at the New Testament church model. That was not an evangelistic, soul-saving station. Now, certainly there were people who came in, were invited by family, whatever, and they heard the gospel and they came to faith in Christ. But the church's job is to equip us you and me believers, build us up in the knowledge of the Word so that we have a context and send us. 08:18And then get out of the church and go make a difference for the kingdom of God. That's not being done. 08:22 - Speaker 3It's almost non-existent today, and it's not only one of the most. It is the thing, it's the only thing God calls us to do, and we're not doing it. It's crazy. 08:34 - Speaker 1All the things we could discuss and debate again, theologically, doctrinally, a lot of issues in Scripture that are not real clear, things that Scripture is silent on, that we can only kind of guess at. There's one thing that Scripture is absolutely not silent on, and at the very end. It's like an exclamation point at the end of Christ's ministry on earth. Oh, this one last thing guys, disciples, I want you to go into all the world and preach the gospel and make disciples. One translation says, when you look at the original language it really reads a little better to say as you are going, in other words, it's not a command to geographically move from here to there. Now, it might entail that To go might mean across the ocean, might mean across the street, across the table, across the hallway, but I like the translation that, and as you are going, in other words, in the course of your day, as you're going, as you're moving about, as you're living your life, preach the gospel. 09:33Now, that's not a sermon, it's not a homiletical presentation, it's just share the truth of the good news. As someone said, the loudest sermon you'll ever preach is your life lived for Jesus and then make disciples. That's where we, especially in the church fail miserably. We're not replicating ourselves. We're not discipling men and women, showing them, teaching them, exampling to them. What does a Christian look like? What are Christian values? How do I respond to these areas? 10:01 - Speaker 3As you are going, folks, and that is as you're going in your regular life. It's not that you decide I'm going to go on a missions trip. I mean you may do that, you may You're talking about every day. 10:15As you're going, throughout your regular life breakfast this morning with your family, interacting with your boss and your employees and your workers, and meeting people at Starbucks. It goes on and on. As you're going, realize you're in full-time ministry. Nothing's secular for you, there's nothing secular, and even the Christians around you need ministering too, so it's full-time. I mean this is what it's, it's full, full time. I mean this is this is what it's about. And then it makes, like you say, every day is an adventure when you're watching for it and you receive more back than you're giving. Yes, because I mean, every time you walk away from that and and you've even had one experience, you know this you're probably talking about five years since you did it. After it was, I was so excited, I was so excited. Then why don't you do it every day? Right, you can do this every day and we're running out of time. We need to be doing this every day. 11:1380 of our population in america are lost, and I know they're doing crazy things, but they have an excuse. They're lost and they're not going to church and their only hope is you us. We're their only hope. They have no hope apart from Christians loving on them. They have no hope again. The albiz of love is is apathy. It's not hate, it's just that you just don't care, right, god? Help us to care and help us to move everybody every day closer to jesus. That's what this thing is. Get ignited and start having some fun. Be like an explosion in your life well, I love the point you made. 11:53 - Speaker 1in fact, just in the last few days, as I was thinking about praying, about you know, doing this podcast and what are we going to talk about, and what's important, what's not essential, that was one of the main things I thought about because I realized, especially after I quit touring and I still take a few dates, but as far as touring, I just don't do that anymore. I toured for 50 years and God just kind of closed that season. 12:16 - Speaker 3By the way, your podcast. How do we get to? 12:18 - Speaker 1your podcast. 12:19 - Speaker 3He's an incredible podcast. You've got to enjoy it. How do they find your podcast right quick? 12:26 - Speaker 1Oh, it's. Dallashomecom is our website and our podcast comes out every Wednesday. It's called here we Are your favorite song. Yes, and my daughter and I usually do it. We'll have everything. We've got some throwback videos back from the 70s old videos that we throw in. 12:39 - Speaker 3It's great, it's rich, it's a lot of fun, it's full of Holy Spirit, it's ministry, it'll bless you. Every podcast Dallas does will leave you in tears. I mean true, it's from the heart, it's Holy Spirit driven. 12:58 - Speaker 1What you said about sharing the faith is not just. I think we've done damage to the whole concept of the statement sharing the faith, because that has been often ill-defined as oh, that means you go on a witnessing campaign or you pass out this piece of information, or you do this and it's only to the lost people. What I find myself is I probably am sharing my faith more with Christians or wounded Christians than I am non-believers. It's not up to me to sort out which comes across my plate, but as I've stopped touring, it became real obvious, probably in the last year especially. I'll get a phone call, I'll get a letter, I'll get an email. 13:30I'll run into someone just a week ago, a gentleman, and I don't know if he's a Christian or not. We just met, we started to talk. He knew who I was and he said would you be willing to just meet with me for lunch? He said I've never been discipled, I've never had anybody. Just kind of walk me through the basics and I said, yeah, next time we get together which we've got a date set up let's go grab lunch Now. Where that'll lead I don't know, but I think he's a believer, but he's a wounded believer that's walking on. You know spiritual crutches. He just he's not real. He doesn't have a firm foundation and more and more. Another man called me not too long ago would you help me to understand how to teach Scripture, how to be, how do you say it, how to be the man of God in my house? How do I share the word of God with my family? I said, absolutely, let's just sit down. It's so easy, it's so practical. Don't think you've got to preach sermons Just again. It's just that sharing. 14:27 - Speaker 3Love on that. Of course, you have to have the foundation of the word. No, you're my disciple by your love, when God's love flows through you. And, I point out, the most prolific of all faith sharers are new Christians, yes, and they don't know scripture. They have the love of God. He's their first love and the love of God is flowing through them and they're changing lives all around, not because of their expertise in quoting scripture or knowledge, just God's love speaking through them, supernaturally speaking through them. 15:00Karen and I you know I mentioned our age and we don't feel old. I mean, we feel like we're in our 50s, but our lives are changing to the point that we have four funerals in 10 days right now. I mean our drop-off. What's happening? All of a sudden? All of our sons are dying. But the fact of the matter is that we need to make sure everybody's in the right place, going in the right direction, and I don't have one regret of saying I should have talked to them about the Lord. Everyone said oh, I knew I should have got back. I missed it. God nudged me and I didn't do it, and it breaks me. 15:41We have these opportunities every day and I love what Peter said to the Thessalonians. He says so, what do I get out of it? I'll put it in my words. So what do I get out of it? Right, well, what would be my rewards? We hear about crowns and rewards. So he sounded like the people that he led to the Lord and he says so what do I get out of it? It's you, it's you my crown. My rewards in heaven are those I led to heaven, to Jesus Christ. That's my reward. What will be your reward when you get to heaven? You want rewards. Then get off the bench and into the game and start having fun and the rewards will be innumerable. You can't stop it. It's now and later, because right now you're going to be having the time of your life. Listen to us and we've been through some stuff, both of us. 16:34 - Speaker 1Yeah, well, and you said something a moment ago that triggered a thought. When we were brand new Christians, I say it this way when we were brand new Christians, we did so many things. So right Now that we're educated, mature, been down the road, we do so many things go wrong. Initially we had an unbridled passion. We didn't care what people thought of us, we didn't care what it cost. We had just fallen in love with the king of the universe. What do we care about anything else? And we just shared our testimony. We shared our faith unapologetically. Now some people say well, but you know, that's just a testimony. The operative word there is just Well, that's just a testimony. In the book of Revelation inspired by the Holy Spirit, john writes this the enemy is overcome by two things. Number one the blood of the Lamb. Okay, what could possibly be on the same shelf, the same level as the? 17:28 - Speaker 2blood of the Lamb and he says the word of our testimony. 17:32 - Speaker 1Never, ever, ever underestimate the power of a testimony. 17:37 - Speaker 2It's not our ability to articulate. 17:39 - Speaker 1Now I try. I was good at grammar. When I speak, I try to speak intelligently, I try to articulate well, I try to use the English language, hopefully with some degree of mastery. But the packaging of the message. Paul said I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power not my presentation of it inherent in the message of the gospel and I don't mean message as in just words, but the gospel that we preach, that we show, that we demonstrate, yes, that we speak. The power that is inherent in the message itself Just share Jesus, just share the gospel, share your faith. The power is inherent in that. 18:18I believe, when the Holy Spirit of the living God dwells within us, which every true Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8, 9, if you have not the Spirit of Christ, you don't belong to him. Now, if you turn that sentence around, if you have Jesus, you have his Holy Spirit, so the Holy Spirit's resident within us. I believe that when the Holy Spirit of the only true living God is resident within a physical body, there's a spillover effect. You can't just contain it like, oh yeah, he's in there, but people know, even without your talking, people know there's something different going on here. 18:47I knew that when I was a sinner, when I was lost, there were people that were full of God's Spirit and love and kindness, and it kind of drove me nuts sometimes, but that was the power of God and we have that within us Then, when we can take and articulate that and please don't misunderstand what I'm saying I believe we must be built on the foundation of the Word of God because, yes, it's kindness, it's joy, it's exampling out, but as you do this, there's going to be conversations that ensue, there's going to be questions that will be asked specific questions. We need to be able to give an account, to be ready in season and out of season, as Paul said, always be prepared to respond. But when we just come up to people, hit them over the head with the Bible or we got some program or some method, it is, I would say, generally counterproductive. 19:33 - Speaker 2They just want to see Jesus, Everybody when they really know who Jesus is. 19:37 - Speaker 1Everybody loves Jesus. How could you not love someone who's the absolute embodiment of love, peace, joy, kindness. But as we said earlier, they've been impacted so often by representatives of Christ who didn't know how to show the love of Jesus. They had an agenda. They were trophy hunters. They wanted to rack up another notch on their pistol. It's just so, it's so wrong. 20:02 - Speaker 3So yeah, just it's about God, it is about God's love. And you know people say you know people are afraid to share their faith, they're going to get persecuted and all this stuff. I've been doing this since 1973. Folks it's over 50 years 've never been persecuted, not once. Now that's going on around the world. But I'm talking about american christians right now. You know people, they don't get mad at you when you tell them god loves them. Absolutely. I don't point out their sin. I go and I hug them and I and I let god know God loves them and I walk them. You do it in love. And a couple other quick thoughts. I'm more and more being with successful, younger, you know forties, young people, younger professional Christians that are moneyed, that are supporting great causes. Yes, that the thought of leading somebody to Jesus Christ has never entered their mind. They know what they're doing to support this ministry and that and that ministry is giving them a big room at the hotel or on that cruise ship and they're celebrating and, with their language and their lifestyles all wrapped up into one, they're feeling so good for doing something for God. And I'm reminded Jesus said to those that said haven't I done this in your name? I said isn't that a departure? I don't even know who you are. The church is being perverted at the highest levels by forgetting what it's all about and it's not about. And we need to support all those things, of course, but if we're doing all those things and not broken for souls, we've missed the whole point of our existence. Dallas, it's not always when you're at the mountaintop. In fact, I have a problem. You know what my biggest impediment is? Well, if I had Barry's company and beautiful wife and cars, and I'd be happy too. Why shouldn't he be happy? Right, that hurts me. You know when my most powerful testimony was when my daughter died. Yes, when I was in the hospital they gave me up for dead. They said I couldn't make it. Then my words had power yes, and you've walked this. I mean I lost Nicole. You love Nicole. We lost her at 49 years of age, a prolific faith share. Yeah, linda was just, she was talking about a saint man and you two had fun together. Yeah, you enjoyed life. You laughed, the fullness of life. But, boy, god walked you through the valley for a lot of years. Can you speak to that? And what the impact your lives naturally loving God to keep your joys had on other people. 22:52 - Speaker 1Yeah, my wife Linda. We were married for 54 years. We dated for five years before that, so we knew and loved each other for almost 60 years. She's the best Christian I've ever known. She was beautiful outwardly, but even more beautiful inwardly. She battled breast cancer for 37 years. There's no way she should have lived that long medically, but just by God's grace. And she really enjoyed relatively good health through all that journey. But she had surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, more chemo, more surgery, more radiation, more scans, more needle pricks, and we could even count. I mean she's been through all of that and always I mean right up till the end had a smile on her face, true joy, manifest from within. She's an amazing woman. 23:44You know, I could tell story after story. I could go through all that. But this is the reality of life. Because you're a Christian doesn't by any means mean that oh well, you're not going to have any of the problems that other people do. I've never told people give your life to Jesus and you won't have any more problems. I've told people give your life to Jesus, you'll have some brand new problems You'll have someone to go through the problems with you. 24:06God does his best work in our worst times. That I'm convinced of. 24:12 - Speaker 3Say that again. 24:12 - Speaker 1God does his best work in our worst times. He accomplishes his greatest purposes when we feel like we're just at the bottom of the mountain. We talked about mountaintop experiences before. Occasionally, god gives us what we might call a mountaintop experience. I've been to the top of some mountains. I'm an outdoors person. I've been 14,000 feet and higher. 24:36 - Speaker 2It's always exhilarating but the reality is there's nothing going on up there. 24:40 - Speaker 1There are no elk walking around the top of the mountain. There are no deer up there at 14,000 feet. Most of them are down in the valley. The tallest trees grow in the deepest valleys. The greater amount of wildlife is down low. 24:51Life is lived in the valley and, honestly, when we go through these times of loss and grief and struggle, the most intimate relationship we ever have with Christ is in the fellowship of His sufferings. It doesn't get any more real than that. And yeah, that could be persecution, that can be physical things, it can be any number of things. But when we suffer and God knows what he needs to do, sometimes we're a little wimpy, you know. We say, well, you know, maybe God allows some of these things, but a good God would really, you know, in his mercy and grace, would never really cause any of these things. But a good God would really, you know, in his mercy and grace, would never really cause any of these things to happen. 25:32I'd like to point you to Isaiah 45, 7, where it says this is the Lord speaking. I cause the light and I create the darkness. I make well-being and I cause calamity. I, the Lord, god, do all these things. Here again, we have this sovereign God. He will do whatever it takes to get our attention. And we know this from Job. You know, here's the most righteous man on the planet receives God's own endorsement. And what does God do? He takes away all his possessions. His 10 children, seven sons, three daughters, lose their lives. They're gone. He's physically afflicted. His wife shows up, says honey, just curse God and die. Don't you know that made his day. But Job says in faith, a faith perfected by the sufferings. He says I know my Redeemer lives and though you slay me, kill me if you want, yet I will trust you. And I think God got up off his throne and went yes, and that's what God's up to in our lives. 26:28 - Speaker 2He brings us through some of these valley experiences. 26:30 - Speaker 1It's all the testing of our faith. It's bringing us into the closest realm of relationship with Jesus through the fellowship of his sufferings. And this life, you know part of it's just the older you get, but part of it is the more you understand the grace and the goodness of God and you've walked with him further. This whole life is barely a blip on the radar screen. It's just here and it's gone. Make every moment count and I look back and I go. I could have done so much more, but I can't change that. 26:58 - Speaker 2But I can change what happens today when we shut this computer off. 27:03 - Speaker 1I've got a mission today as I go out when I go get the oil changed on my car which I'm going to do this afternoon? 27:09I'm going to look for the young lady that's going to check me in and she's going to tell me if my car is ready or not. Is there any way that I can be a blessing to her? Is there any way that I can move her just a little bit closer to Jesus? I've got to stop and get some groceries and things at the drugstore. I mean, it's just so fun. Apart from the responsibility and the call and all that, it's just fun Every day. Now you know what I'm by myself. My wife is in heaven. So, hey, part of my adventure now is, like I said, I've always been a hunter. I love to hunt, love the outdoors, love the fish, love the challenge. Now I'm hunting for souls. I'm tracking them down the aisles, I'm looking for opportunities. 27:49 - Speaker 3And it makes my day full and fun. Dallas, we're out of time. I love you, brother. We have to do some more of these. 27:57But I would bring us back to Romans 8.28. All things, the passing of Nicole, our daughter, the passing of Linda, the bad things in our lives, all things, all things work together for good for those who love God and live for his purpose, his purpose to seek and save the lost. You understand that, folks, but how does that work? How did it work that all things work together for good and Linda, 37 years, yeah, and died? 28:24 - Speaker 137 years. 28:25 - Speaker 3Yeah, and died. How is it? My daughter, who went through teen challenge, had abuse problems, used those for God's glory, led more people to the Lord than anybody I know, quite frankly, and we lost her. How? Where's the good? We have no idea. The good, do you know? Good to God is how many people are brought to him or entered into heaven because of those experiences. How many people have followed the ministry of Dallas and Linda Holm and have loved on them and prayed for them and with them, have witnessed their testimony and their joy to the very end testimony and their joy to the very end. Dallas, standing up at that funeral, we're weeping the love of the Thanksgiving coming out of Dallas at the funeral and I did it at Nicole's funeral 20,000 people watched Nicole's celebration of life. That's good. A few more moments on earth, that's good. We'll never know until we get to heaven how God has used the bad in our lives because of how we reacted to the bad and praised God right on through it and trusted through it. And that's what life's all about. That's the message that you're hearing from these two guys. 29:41He's a Texan. He loves to go hit and fish. I couldn't shoot an animal. I'm a businessman. But we are one mind because we serve one God and we have one purpose. It's God's purpose to seek and save the lost. That's your purpose. Don't forget that. See you next time. 30:00 - Speaker 2If you enjoyed today's episode, let us know, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review to help us reach more listeners. Remember sharing your faith ignites your faith. See you next time on the Ignite with Barry Meguiar podcast.