Hey, everybody. You're listening to A New Beginning, which is a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners. If this program has impacted you, I'd love to hear from you. So just send an email to me at gregg.harvest.org. Again, it's gregg.harvest.org.
You can learn more about becoming a Harvest Partner by going to harvest.org. Now, let's just say you found the cure to cancer. All a person has to do is take this pill. What would you do? Well, I hope you would shout it from the rooftops. What would you say?
Well, I'm not really comfortable talking to strangers. Listen, folks, we have something that's even better than the cure for cancer. We have the cure for death. We have the only hope through Jesus Christ.
We must tell others. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Again, you hear all the angels are singing. This is the day, the day when life begins. A well-known comedian, who's, by the way, an atheist, said this, how much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?
How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? Even an atheist recognizes the good news is so good, it's cruel not to share it. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie helps us do just that. We're in a series called Tell Someone, where we're learning the practical side of pointing people to the love of God.
It's the day, the day when life begins. You can bring others to Jesus. And we are told in Scripture, of course, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Who should we share the gospel with? Everyone. Everyone needs to hear the gospel. There are no exceptions. I don't care if the person is affluent or impoverished or if they're handsome or not as attractive or young or if they're old, if they're a man, if they're a woman.
It really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what race they are, what socioeconomic background they are. Everybody needs Jesus.
Are we agreed on that? So I am called to bring the gospel to those people. Go into all the world and preach the gospel. That's what Christ said.
Let's personalize it. Go into all of your world and preach the gospel. Go into your family and preach the gospel. Go into your workplace and preach the gospel. Go into your neighborhood and preach the gospel.
Go to your campus and preach the gospel. Go into all of your world. Think of it this way. We call it frangelism. Frangelism.
It is a simple way to remember. Frangelism. F-R-A-N. F is for go to your friends. R, go to your relatives. A, go to your associates. N, go to your neighbors. Frangelism.
You know someone named Fran out there, right? We are called to go preach the gospel. And I know you choke on the word preach because you think the word preach means yell, right? When you think of preach, preach!
Guess what? You can preach quietly. Preaching just means proclaim the gospel. You know when you talk to somebody, you don't have to yell at them.
It is not like you are a preacher in a stadium. Hello. How are you today? Good to see you.
God bless. What are you doing? Just talk to them.
Hey how is it going? Engage them in conversation. In our next message we are going to look at the master communicator and see how he led a burned out immoral woman from darkness to light. I am talking about Jesus and the woman at the well. He showed us how to do it. But here is the key. Once we have earned the right to share our faith we have to verbalize our faith. Romans 10 asks the question, how will they hear unless someone tells them? That is why this series is called Tell Someone.
How will they hear unless someone tells them? Then in 1 Corinthians 1.21 it says, since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was pleased, listen, to the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. Not through foolish preaching but the foolishness of the message preached. I do not know why God chooses to use someone as flawed as me. I don't know why God chooses to primarily reach this world through verbal communication. It seems like the Lord could just roll the clouds back and poke His face through and say, hi earth I am God and you aren't.
Why don't you believe in me right now? That would be pretty persuasive. Or the Lord could raise up an army of mighty angels appearing before people and telling them to come to Jesus but He hasn't chosen to do that as His primary way of reaching lost people. Maybe He could have done it through, hey could He use animals? Remember Balaam's donkey talked?
That would be cool. Talking to animals sharing the gospel. You know you're feeling down, your dog walks up to you, you're petting them and your dog just says, have you ever considered Jesus Christ?
What? A cat would never do that. Even if a cat could talk it wouldn't share the gospel. Say what it really thinks, I hate you and I love fur balls. You know, I don't know.
What would a cat say? God didn't choose animals. God didn't choose angels. God didn't choose to open the heavens up and poke His face through. God chose to reach people through people. Listen, the primary way God chooses to reach other people is through people like you and specifically through the verbalization of the gospel.
He wants us to tell someone. Let's say you were a brilliant scientist who somehow got cancer. So you dedicated your time and your efforts and your considerable intellect of finding a cure. And after years of study and work and experiments and so forth you found a cure. A single pill that could be taken at one time and cancer would go away almost immediately. Oh, I wish someone would find that cure.
But how awesome would that be? Now let's just say you were that person. You found the cure to cancer.
All a person has to do is take this pill. What would you do? Well, I hope you would shout it from the rooftops. What would you say? Whoa, I'm not really comfortable talking to strangers.
Yeah, that may be but this is kind of a big deal. So can you kind of get over yourself and your discomfort and actually share this good news with other people? Listen, folks, we have something that is even better than the cure for cancer. We have the cure for death. We have the only hope through Jesus Christ. We must tell others.
The great British preacher C.H. Virgin said, quote, listen to this, if sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped around their knees imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions and let not one go unwarned or unprayed for. I love that.
It's like, you're not getting away. I'm going to hang on to you. I'm going to do everything I can to reach you. You see, the word gospel, gospel, preach the gospel.
Does anybody know what the word gospel means? Good news, very good. It's good news.
Well, guess what? News has to be delivered. Well, it seems strange if you turn on the six o'clock news and there's the anchorman sitting there. He doesn't say anything.
He just sits at his desk, kind of nods, looks around. What's he doing? Well, he's just being a good example of an anchorman.
It's stupid. Deliver the news. That's why I turned on the TV. I want to hear what the news is. Well, we're not just to be that good example.
We need to articulate the news and that requires verbal communication. When I was a kid, I used to have a paper route and I got pretty good at throwing papers. I mean, I learned how to throw them over hedges a certain way you throw it. I learned the sideways throw, you know, I learned the underhand toss because I didn't want to get off my bike and take it to the porch.
I was lazy even then as a kid, you see. But I had a super cool bike. It was a Schwinn Stingray, had a banana seat, had a little roll bar, had what they call ape hanger handlebars, had a little wheel on the front and a big wide slick on the back and best of all, I had a stick shift on my bicycle. See, it was sort of the forerunner of my Harley. He said you had to use your legs, you know, but still.
And I would have my bags on there and all my papers in there. My job was to deliver the news. My job was not to write the news. My job was not to make the news. My job was to deliver the news. And my job is still the same right now.
And your job is the same. It's to deliver the good news. Have you ever stopped to think that the coincidences in your life are not really coincidences? They may be God ordering the circumstances. In a moment, Pastor Greg explains how the random people we meet may not be that random.
They may be appointments arranged by God. Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here. You know, my uncle, Fred Jordan, had one of the first Christian TV programs out there. It was called Church in the Home.
I remember watching it as a little boy when I was living with my grandparents. Well, we have Church in the Home for you every weekend. It's called Harvest at Home and you can find it at Harvest.org. We have worship and a message from God's Word. So join us this weekend for Harvest at Home at Harvest.org. Well, Pastor Greg continues now with his message about our privilege of sharing the good news, called The Gospel is Only Good News If It Gets There on Time. When should we share the gospel? When should we share the gospel?
Short answer, whenever, whenever. I wish I could tell you that God wakes me up every morning and speaks to me audibly. Good morning, Greg. Your mission, should you decide to accept it. Cue the Mission Impossible theme. You're going to go today to a gas station at 1102 and there you will find a man named Josh Smith pumping gas. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to engage Josh with the gospel. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
That's not how God speaks to me. Usually I get in my car and I'm driving and all of a sudden a little light goes on. They call it an idiot light. It means I'm low on fuel. Oh, I need to go get gas. So I drive over to the gas station. No audible voices. I'm just pumping gas waiting.
There's some guy pumping gas in his car. I say, how's it going? How's it going? Good.
How's it going with you? Oh, by the way, his name is Josh. See, a lot of times I find I just walk into these things. We call them coincidences, but I call them providence. I believe that the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord.
That's what the Bible says. So when you get up in the morning and you say, Lord, guide my steps and lead me, I want to be ready to share the gospel. And I've had those situations come. I had no plan to go to that place.
It was out of my normal path even. But I ended up there and I realized this was a divine appointment. And then you engage that person as the Lord leads.
Here's what the Bible says. 2 Timothy 4.2. Be instant in season and out of season. Or as another translation puts it, and I prefer this, be on duty at all times.
Be on duty at all times. Even the bathroom. Let me explain. A number of years ago I was in a mall and I had to go to the restroom. So I went. I won't go into great detail, but let's just say I took my seat. So I'm sitting there and I hear noise in the stall and I think, God goes, okay, guy's next to me.
Guy says, how's it going? I said, let me tell you something about guys in restrooms. First of all, girls, don't ever go in a guy's restroom ever.
You will be horrified. Guys are pigs, okay? But girls will be, you want to go to the restroom?
Yeah, let's go. They'll go and they talk, put on your makeup. Guys, we don't do that. We don't even want to talk to each other when we're in there. It's almost like we're embarrassed. You get it, your business is done, you get out.
That's a guy going to a restroom. So this guy's like, I'm kind of stuck there a little bit. How's it going? I didn't even want to talk to him. I said, fine. Kind of one of those finds like, I don't want to talk, fine. A couple of moments go by and he says, were you supposed to meet me here?
I'm like, oh, what is this? No, I said, wanting to terminate the conversation. Then a thought came to my mind, could God use me in a restroom? My immediate response was, no. It's somehow inappropriate.
You don't talk about God in restrooms. And I thought, why not? And then so I waited and he says, do you have something for me? I said, what is it you're looking for? He says, I was going to buy some drugs.
Okay, this is a divine setup in the men's room. So I said, I don't have any drugs for you, but I have something better. I said, oh, what?
I said, a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Then I thought, Greg, what are you doing? You cannot evangelize in a restroom, in a stall.
Just stop it now. And this guy says to me, oh, I already tried that. You already tried that?
We're talking through a wall, by the way. You already tried that? Yeah, I tried it. Did you go to a church? Yeah, I went to church. What church did you go to?
Harvard Christian Fellowship? I had to laugh. I said, do you know who I am? He said, no. I said, I'm Greg Laurie, the pastor of Harvard's Christian Fellowship. And he said, oh, my God.
Totally true. I said, buddy, God must love you a lot to send your pastor to you when you're trying to make a drug buy. So I was done with this restroom evangelism. I said, I'll tell you what, I'll wait for you outside. And so I went out and I waited. Out he comes. He's easy.
This body was the guilty looking guy. I said, I was just talking to you. Yeah, well, listen, you need to make a recommitment of Christ. And we prayed right there. And he recommitted his life to the Lord.
Wherever God can open the door for you. You see? We don't think about that. We think it has to be big and dramatic and lights or something.
Hey, it could just be the most common occurrence. And there's one of those moments and you just take a shot at it and see what happens. So we'll talk more about this later. In our next message we'll learn the how of sharing our faith as we see how Christ shared the gospel with the woman at the well. And in our final message we'll deal with the what of the gospel. This is probably the most important message in this series. What is the gospel?
You might be surprised to realize that you may not have it exactly right. We want to make sure we have this part right because if we don't have the message right, everything else is really irrelevant. So we'll deal with the what of the gospel and specifically how to sort of close the deal to use business vernacular or pull in the net to use fishing vernacular. How to lead a person to Christ. But listen, maybe you've come to this meeting here just to learn more about evangelism, but maybe you don't know Jesus Christ yet. You know, it's an amazing thing. Here you are at a meeting where we're talking about telling people about Jesus and you don't know Jesus.
And it would be pretty silly of me to talk about always giving people an opportunity and not give you an opportunity right now. And here's my question for you. Do you know God in a personal way? Has Christ come to live inside of you? You say, well, I think I'm a Christian.
I think so. Listen, if you're a Christian, you'll know it. And if you don't know that you are a Christian, if you don't know that Jesus lives inside of you, let's get that resolved right now.
See, here's your problem. You're separated from God by your sin. Even if you try to be the best person possible, you still fall short of God's glory. The Bible says that.
And you know what? One sin is enough to keep you out of heaven. The Bible says if you offend at one point of the law, you're guilty of all of it.
You say, well, I'm not as bad as some people. That may be true, but God doesn't grade on the curve. God grades on the cross. One sin is enough to keep you out. That's the bad news.
Here's the good news. 2,000 years ago, God sent his son Jesus Christ on a rescue operation for you. God came down from heaven. He was born among us as a little baby in a manger in Bethlehem. He grew to be a man and he went to the cross that died for your sin and for mine. It wasn't nails that held him to that cross 2,000 years ago.
It was love for us. But then Jesus, who died on the cross and absorbed God's wrath in our place, he took the judgment of God on himself so we wouldn't have to. He rose again from the dead. And he's alive. And he's here with us right now. In fact, Jesus says, I stand at the door and I knock and if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in. So here's my question. Have you ever opened the door and asked Jesus to come in?
Because he will. Jesus says, he or she that would come to me, I would in no way cast out. This could be your moment to get right with God. Maybe you have a divine appointment with God right now and I want to make sure you keep that appointment. In a moment, we're gonna pray. And I'm gonna extend an invitation to you if you're not sure if Christ is living in you.
If you're not certain you will go to heaven when you die but you want to be, I'm gonna ask you to respond to this invitation I'll give as we close now in prayer, okay? Let's all bow our heads, everyone praying. Father, thank you for your word to us. Lord Jesus, thank you for coming to this earth and dying on the cross in our place and rising again from the dead. Now we pray that your Holy Spirit will convict and convince those that don't know you of their need for you and bring them to yourself.
Amen. Pastor Greg Laurie with an important prayer. And if you'd like to make a change today in your relationship with the Lord, Pastor Greg will help you do that in just a moment before today's edition of A New Beginning concludes. Now our current studies are a part of Pastor Greg's series called Tell Someone. And because of the importance of this information, Pastor Greg has developed an online training course that corresponds with this series. It's a six-week course that comes to you a lesson per week via email, and it's absolutely free. At the end of six weeks, you can be fully equipped and ready to share your faith just as Jesus has commanded us all to do. Learn more about the free Tell Someone training course at harvest.org. And our thanks to our Harvest partners for helping us make resources like this available.
Well, it's such a privilege to have a good friend here in the studio with us today. He's retired cold case detective J. Warner Wallace, Jim Wallace. And he's just finished his latest book called Person of Interest, Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible. He investigates the person of Christ using his training and skill as a detective. It's a unique look at the faith.
And, you know, Jim, your book is so full of facts, cold, hard facts. But when people come to the Lord, they come by faith. So how does a factual case support a faith decision?
Well, that's what we do. In jury trials, we're constantly saying, we're gonna give you enough good evidence to make the proper inference about what happened, even though you are still going to have unanswered questions. If you're the kind of person who has, can't make a decision on a jury with unanswered questions, we're not going to impanel you.
We're gonna leave you off the jury. Because we know we're not going to be able to answer every question. We'll be able to answer enough, though, to leave you with a smaller step of trust for your inference. What we do in Christianity is the same way. Jesus did the same thing. He said, you know, if you don't believe what I told you, at least believe on the evidence of these miracles. He says this in the Gospel of John. He provides evidence at every turn. He heals, then he heralds.
Why is it in that order? Why do I need to do this first to demonstrate the authority I have with the words I'm about to say, I've already laid the foundation for them evidentially? When John the Baptist is starting to struggle, right, he sends his disciples to Jesus, Jesus could easily tell those disciples of John the Baptist, go back and tell John, he should know better. He's my cousin, for crying out loud. He left in the womb when our parents met. You know, he baptized me.
He saw the descending of the, really? John should know better. No, what he does is he reminds the disciples of John the Baptist of the miracles he has worked in front of them. Go back and tell John.
Go back and remind John. That's evidence. That's called indirect evidence, right? The evidence of miracles.
Jesus constantly does this, even though we know that that evidence, and I know this too, I don't expect to argue somebody into the kingdom. What I want to do is help people to kind of remove the barriers they've constructed for themselves so that when they hear the gospel, it's available to them. And so I think the kind of work we do is just to kind of till the soil.
We are preparing the ground. And I know that for me personally, you could have done this all day long. It would have been useless. But at some point, God first acted to change the nature of my heart so I would pay attention to the case at all. I didn't do that. I was prayed into that position by people who loved me enough to pray for me, and God's Spirit moved in me, and it was all God, top down. But at the same time, when we take time to make a case, we're kind of like basically preaching the gospel. I needed to hear the case that way. I needed to hear that evidential case before I would listen to the gospel. And so that's how I became a Christian. I became a Christian by examining the gospels as if they were eyewitness accounts to see if they were reliable. And that helped me to tear down the walls that I had constructed so that when I read what the New Testament said about Jim Wallace, about my need for a savior, I was able to actually respond. Wow, those are just some of the insights that you'll find reading this brand new book from J. Warner Wallace, a former cold case detective, and the title of the book is Person of Interest, subtitled Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible.
Yeah, this is the kind of insight that helps strengthen our own faith, and it offers such practical help in sharing our faith with others on their level. And we'd like to send you Person of Interest to thank you for your investment so a new beginning can continue coming your way each day. So send your donation today to A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300. That's 1-800-821-3300.
Or go online to harvest.org. And then, Pastor Greg, just before we go, would you mind praying with that person listening who wants to make a change today in their relationship with the Lord? I'd be happy to, Dave. You know, as you've been listening to this today, maybe you've heard another voice. By that I mean, yeah, you heard me say a few things, but you heard God's voice speak to you. Deep in the recesses of your heart, and it suddenly dawned on you, this is what I need. Or to state it more accurately, this is who I need. I need Jesus, and I want Jesus.
But maybe you don't know how to make that connection. Let me help you. Pray this after me right now if you want Jesus Christ to come into your life. Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I am sorry for my sin, and I need your forgiveness right now. Would you come into my heart and my life as Savior, as God, as friend?
I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Thank you for calling me and accepting me and forgiving me. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. I know that was a relatively short prayer. Maybe you felt something as you prayed it.
Maybe you felt nothing. That doesn't really matter. Because God's word says, these things we write to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. It doesn't say, so you may think you have it, or you may hope you have it if God's in a good mood.
No, that you can know it. And I want you to know, if you pray that prayer in a minute, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come into your life. So congratulations. You're now a Christian. Now continue to follow the Lord. And to help you as you follow the Lord, we'd like to send you some resource materials we call our New Believers' Growth Packet.
It'll answer many of the questions you might have and get you started off right in your new relationship with the Lord. So get in touch and ask for it. We'll send it free of charge. Write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300.
That's 1-800-821-3300. Or go online to harvest.org and click Know God. Well, we're presenting messages from Pastor Greg's Tell Someone series. And next time, we focus on our manner in sharing the gospel, our manner and our manners. Tune in next time for more practical insight right here on A New Beginning. In the day, the day when life begins Thanks for listening to A New Beginning with Greg Laurie, a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners. Helping people everywhere know God. Sign up for daily devotions and learn how to become a Harvest Partner at harvest.org.
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