Today's episode of A New Beginning is brought to you by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God.
Learn more at harvest.org. And while you're there, browse our library of free e-books designed to help you grow in your faith. There are people out there waiting for someone to show them the way. Are you ready to be used by God? There may be someone God wants you to talk to. Pastor Greg Laurie says we need to be available. Sometimes you're saying, well, I want to do something great for God. I'm going to cross the sea and be a missionary. Hey, why don't you start by crossing the street? The harvest is everywhere.
You don't have to cross the ocean. Jesus says, lift up your eyes and look. The fields are ripe to harvest. And we're glad you're joining us today here on A New Beginning with Pastor Greg Laurie, featured speaker of the Harvest Crusades, coming to Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, for an exciting one-night event in October.
If you like practical nuts and bolts instruction, you've come to the right place. Pastor Greg brings some of his most effective insight on sharing the gospel with those around us by way of his message, Evangelism Jesus Style, from his popular series, Tell Someone. Who is called to go into all the world and preach the gospel?
We are. I don't know why God has chosen it. But the fact of the matter is the primary way God has chosen to reach lots of people is through the verbal communication of the gospel message. It's for people to speak to people.
So that's what I want to talk about today. How to share the gospel. There's a right and there's a wrong way to do it for sure.
Here's where the rubber really meets the road. And there was no better example of how to do it than Jesus Christ Himself. And here in John 4 we see Jesus doing exactly that with a woman. Now we call her the woman at the well. We don't know her name. I'm sure she had one. But this woman really messed up her life. She made a lot of bad decisions. And most of them were involving men. In fact this girl was married and divorced five times. Now that's pretty radical for back then.
Nowadays not so radical. And that day scandalous. And that's why she came to the well at 12 in the afternoon when the sun was at its hottest. Because no one wanted to hang out with this woman who went to the well. So she encounters Jesus here.
And I love the way He engaged her. Frankly this woman at the well reminds me of my own mother. Except my mom beat her.
My mom was married and divorced seven times. But she was searching just like the woman at the well. I want you to see how Jesus reached out to her so we can learn how to be a bridge instead of a barrier to people coming to Christ. How to be a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block. And here's Jesus engaging this woman.
Let's read about it. John 4 starting in verse 3. He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. But He needed to go through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there and Jesus therefore being wearied from His journey sat by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
That's 12 noon. And a woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink for His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, how is it that you being a Jew would ask a drink for me a Samaritan woman for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans? Jesus answered and said, if you knew the gift of God who it is that says to you give me a drink you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. This brings us to point number one. Evangelism Jesus style. Doing it the way Christ did it starts with a burden.
We have already alluded to this. Verse 4 says He needed to go through Samaria. A little background. Jews and Samaritans they didn't like each other. In fact they actually hated each other. That's why the Samaritan woman said, why would you a Jew ask for a drink of water from me a Samaritan?
Don't you know we don't deal with each other. There was a strong hatred and a cultural prejudice between these peoples. But Jesus needed to go. By the way this was not the shortest route to His destination. He effectively went out of His way to meet this woman.
Why? Because in the councils of eternity it was decided that a burned out immoral woman was going to meet Jesus on that day. She had an appointment with God. And you know there are times when you will be out and about your business and you're going to walk smack dab into the middle of God's will. And you're going to come across a person that has an appointment with God and God wants to reach that person through you.
Number two. If we want to evangelize Jesus style we need to use tact. T-A-C-T. Tact. Jesus the master evangelist used something that many Christians seriously lack and that is tact. Other words for tact are diplomacy, sensitivity. One person defined tact as skill and grace in dealing with others. Isaac Newton said quote, tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
I like that. Making a point without making an enemy. I can state truth in a loving way even if the truth is rather harsh at times. You can do it in a friendly way. But a lot of times we will come up to a person and say crazy stuff to them like, hey did you know you are going to hell? Wow.
What a great conversation starter. Way to build a wall instead of a bridge. Well I have seen it. That was not Jesus style.
And that should not be ours either. I was walking down the street in Hawaii years ago. We were doing a crusade there at the Aloha Stadium.
And I am on the main drag called Kalakaua Boulevard. And there is a guy standing there with a sign. And on the sign written in big bold letters, the wages of sin are death.
And he even had flames drawn on it. And he is yelling at people, you are going to hell. You are going to hell. You are going to hell.
I am thinking yi yi yi you know. So I walk up to this guy and I say excuse me. You are going to hell. Excuse me.
You are going to hell. Excuse me. What?
Yeah. And he is kind of up on his steps. I am looking up and I am kind of thinking maybe on the back of your sign you could put the rest of the verse, the wages of sin are death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And he could flip it back and forth periodically. Tell people the good news. And he said, I was going to hell. He didn't want to listen to anybody. So I killed him. Now let me explain. I wasn't happy with him.
I didn't do anything. That is the wrong way to do it. I want you to notice how Jesus tactfully and gracefully engages this woman by asking her for a drink of water. Verse 13. Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But if you drink of the water I give you will never thirst again. You see He is entering her world and He is establishing contact.
But notice something else. He starts by saying, could I have a drink of water? Now who is Jesus again?
Oh right. God in human form. So if He wanted a drink of water could He have had one all on His own? Water. That is the sound effect of water.
Or He could have said waterfall. No. Excuse me.
Could I have a drink of water? What was He doing? He was showing a vulnerability. Appealing to her curiosity. Not coming off as a know-it-all. See this is one of our problems. We come off as a know-it-all. A person is explaining their view. What do you think about this?
Well I think oh that is so stupid. Listen. Let me tell you. And then we begin. You you know go on.
And we just lost the person. They don't even care what we are saying. They want to terminate the conversation and get away from you. Listen. You are not better than anybody else. And nor am I. I am just one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.
Now I may be better off than people but I am not better than them. So you come in humility and you bring the message to them. Steve Woolburn who you all know will often start a conversation with a stranger with these words. Did you know there is a God in heaven who loves you? I have watched him do this many times. Sometimes in some awkward situations like in line at a coffee place with 12 people behind you go did you know there is a God in heaven who loves you to the barista.
And I am thinking Steve come on let's move this thing here do you know. And it is amazing though they will be like no I didn't know that. No one has ever said that. Thank you. Or they will be like oh I had forgotten that. Thanks for sharing that. Sometimes they will say yeah whatever.
But most of the time they are pretty responsive. And I have seen Steve lead people to the Lord. I went out one afternoon.
We were out riding Harley's a few pastors and I. And so we went to this Mexican restaurant. So we order and Steve says to the waiter, has anyone ever told you working here in this Mexican restaurant taking an order that there is a God in heaven who loves you.
The guy is like no. No one has ever told me that. So we are all kind of watching. So we order our food. And then the server comes back and the pastors are having a theological not a debate but we are talking about all kinds of minutia you know. Steve keeps talking to this guy. The guys didn't even notice.
The pastors were unaware of what was happening with Steve and the server. So by the time we finished our meal and the pastors are still talking Steve is literally praying with this guy to come to Christ right there on the spot. And I interrupted the conversation. I said guys did you see what just happened there.
He just led that guy to the Lord. Oh yeah really. Ok back to our conversation again. See to me now this is a picture of the church.
We are so busy having our in-house debates and discussions. We are missing. There are people out there waiting for someone to show them the way. Sometimes they are saying well you know I want to do something great for God. I am going to cross the sea and be a missionary. Hey why don't you start by crossing the street. News flash. The harvest is everywhere.
You don't have to cross the ocean. It is everywhere. Jesus says lift up your eyes and look.
The fields are ripe to harvest. Sometimes when we share the gospel people will get us off the main point. Intentionally or unintentionally. They sidetrack us. Change the subject.
What do we do then? Well Pastor Greg has the answer in just a moment. We love to hear stories of how lives have been changed through the teaching of God's word.
Like this one. Dear Pastor Greg. Back in the summer of 1986 and after graduating from college I was certain that I'd made the wrong choice for a major and a career. Though I was a believer I felt as if God had abandoned me. My first job out of school included an hour-long commute and a difficult work environment.
It was so disappointing that I cried on my first day home. While driving each morning I was drawn to your biblical teaching on the radio. There was something fresh and new to me in the way you shared the scriptures. Your broadcasts gave me biblical truth and hope to get through each challenging day ahead.
I was grateful then and I'm grateful for your broadcasts today. Thank you Pastor Greg. We appreciate hearing how Pastor Greg's teachings are reaching people and if you have a story to tell of how these studies have touched your life I hope you'll contact us today.
Send an email to Greg at harvest dot org. That's Greg at harvest dot o-r-g. Well Pastor Greg continues now with his message evangelism Jesus style. Very practical principles on sharing our faith most effectively. Evangelism Jesus style means we stay focused.
We stay focused. Now this woman tried to get Jesus off of the subject. She says in John 4 20 our fathers worshipped on this mountain and you Jews say in Jerusalem is the place of worship where one ought to worship.
Now that's interesting because there's almost a little bit of inflammatory rhetoric here. The Samaritan saying and you Jews. Jesus could say what would you say? What are you talking about Willis?
You know what? He wouldn't go there with her. She's getting into some debate.
A debate that's been going on for years. Where should God be worshipped? In Samaria in their temple or in Jerusalem in the temple God established.
Well to the point the correct answer was Jerusalem. Jesus could have debated that with her. But it is interesting how he sidesteps the issue and he says to her, listen God is His Spirit and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
You know interesting topic. I don't want to get into that. And he gets back to the core issue. I bring this up because sometimes you are sharing your faith and a person will interrupt you and say, yeah but wait a second. How could a God of love send someone to hell? Wait. What about the person who has never heard the gospel? Will God send them to hell? Wait. Wait. There are so many contradictions in the Bible. Ok. What do you do?
To the best of your ability answer the question. One thing I like to say to a person who says there are contradictions in the Bible is if I have a Bible say, well I have a Bible right here. Why don't you show me one?
They don't know a contradiction in the Bible. Those are just defense mechanisms. They have learned to make you go away. But maybe they will bring up something. Answer it.
If you can. If you don't tell them you get back to them. But then get it back to the main subject again. And that is what Jesus does.
He brings it back to the main subject so she will not get off track. Now sometimes you are going to have people that you are sharing with and it is going to look as though they are ready to believe and they don't believe. And then there is going to be times when you are sharing with a person and you don't even think they are going to believe and they will believe. And that is when you want to close the deal. And I am going to talk about that in my next message.
But let me just conclude by saying this. This woman did believe this day. This woman had her life transformed by Jesus Christ. Because He entered her world. He built a bridge to her.
He lovingly and clearly gave her the answers she had been searching for. I mentioned a few moments ago that she reminded me a lot of my own mother. My mom Charlene was married and divorced seven times as I pointed out. Now she was raised in a Christian home by my grandparents Charles and Stella McDaniel. And they went to church three times a week.
So my mom kind of had a drug problem. Her parents drug her to church. Sunday morning. Sunday night.
And Wednesday night. And then they would invite people from the church over for Sunday dinner. So my mom was around this her whole time. And she was a beautiful young girl. And she wanted to get out of that house.
She was a rebel in her heart. And so she couldn't wait. And one day she found some young man who was willing to marry her. And my aunt Willie her sister helped her pack her suitcase.
And my mom ran up with this young guy and eloped. And she never looked back. And that marriage quickly ended. And then she moved on to her next marriage and to her next one. And so she was already on the trajectory. She was a major alcoholic.
But because of her major beauty she was never at a shortage for men. Well somewhere in her escapade she had a fling with some sailor in Long Beach. And Greg Laurie was conceived. I wasn't planned. I am so glad she didn't go down to planned parenthood and listen to them.
That is another subject for another day. But she brought me to term. Obviously I was born. But she didn't really want to raise me. She was too busy living her crazy life. And so I lived for a time with my grandparents. I went to military school.
I would live with an aunt over here and back with my mom for a while. So now fast forward and her story is reaching a predictable end. All that drinking is taking its toll. One night she got in her 65 Mustang and was cruising down Jamboree Boulevard in Newport Beach and jumped over the divider and had a head-on collision with another car. It almost killed her. Her beautiful face was now somewhat disfigured. You would have thought that would have been the wakeup call and she would have stopped drinking.
No. She continued to drink and carry on. Now fast forward and my mom is 70 years old.
And she looks like she is 90. She is having kidney failure. She is having to get dialysis three times a week and she was miserable. So the Lord spoke to my heart one day and to go share with her. Now trust me I had shared with my mom so many times. And whenever we would talk about the gospel here is what she would say, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. She would just terminate the conversation.
I don't want to talk about it. So one day the Lord placed it on my heart to go have the conversation with her again. I told my wife Kathy I have got to go see my mom now. She agreed. We prayed. I went over.
I sat down at the table. I said, Mom I want to talk to you now about your soul. She says, I don't want to talk about it. I said, today we are going to talk about it.
We are going to finish this conversation. I just laid it out and again told her what it meant to follow Christ. And much to my shock she responded and ultimately made a recommitment to Jesus Christ. That is the good news.
We are thankful for that. How was I to know that one month later she would die? I had such hope I thought my mom was finally come to the Lord. It is going to be so great having her in the church and watching her grow spiritually.
No. The Lord spoke to my heart because she was right at the edge of eternity. Sometimes God will speak to you. Go have that conversation. Oh I don't want to do it so awkward and so hard. Especially with family members. Am I right? They are the hardest to reach.
But you need to do it. Well now fast forward a number of years and my mom has been in heaven. And her last husband she was married to was named Bill. And so someone called me up and said, Bill is very sick. He may die.
He may die in the next day. Could you go see him? And I was on my way to trip. I was going to get on a plane and fly and speak somewhere. And I was actually late. And I had to go. And I said, maybe I will come by tomorrow and see him. And I will come tomorrow for sure.
And then I am driving and all of a sudden God spoke to my heart. You go there now. Went over there. I walked in the room. There is Bill laying there.
I mean he was at death storm. My goodness. And I just said, Bill I want to just once again share with you what it means to believe in Jesus. And I shared the gospel with him one more time which he had always been resistant to. And he prayed with me and committed his life to Jesus. I said, oh I am so glad I went. I got on the plane.
I arrived at my destination where I was preaching. I got a text on my phone. Bill just died. See what I am saying. You don't know when you are going to die. And you don't know when the person that God is leading you to speak to is going to die. So these are things that need to be done. And we need to listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit. So let's make sure that we are saying, Father I am available and I am listening and I will go where You want me to go and I will say what You want me to say to who You want me to say it to. Lead me I pray in Jesus' name.
Let's pray. Father we have heard Your Word now. And we all know somebody we need to go to.
I am certain that at this moment as we are praying this prayer that person is jumping into our mind because Your Holy Spirit is placing them there. Maybe it is our mom. Or our dad. Or our son. Or our daughter. Or our brother.
Or a sister. A cousin. An uncle. An aunt. That neighbor. That co-worker. The person we just met for the first time.
That person we are going to meet before the day is over. And we are going to sense that nudging from the Spirit. You are not going to force us to go.
But You are going to lead us to go. And we are praying that we will be responsive. So Lord like Isaiah we would say, Here I am.
Send me. Use me today. Use us today to go into all this world and preach the gospel. We commit ourselves to You again. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Pastor Greg Laurie with important insight today on the privilege and responsibility of sharing the hope of Christ with those around us.
It is a charge we have all been given. Now if you would like an instant replay of today's insight here on A New Beginning, you can go online to harvest.org and look for the title of the study, Evangelism Jesus Style. Again that is online at harvest.org. And to help you take this current teaching even further, why not check out Pastor Greg's free online training course called Tell Someone. It is a six week course that comes to you a lesson per week via email. And it is designed to fully equip you to share the gospel at the completion of the course.
Again it is absolutely free. Get the details on the Tell Someone training course at harvest.org. Well it is such a privilege to have author J. Warner Wallace with us today. Jim Wallace is a good friend of the ministry.
And he has just finished a book called, Person of Interest. He makes a case for the uniqueness of Christ, much as a detective would make a case for a crime where there is no crime scene. It is a fascinating read and very convincing. Now Jim, you were an atheist for many years. What if you had read this book during that time?
Would it have changed your mind? That is a good question. And I kind of wonder sometimes, do we really hold intellectual objections or are most of our objections deeper than that?
They are emotional or volitional. Is that what is really behind my objection? But I will tell you this, and I often say it, I only met two kinds of Christians. I was in Southern California. To be honest, I did not have any Christian friends growing up. No one ever invited us to church. No one ever invited me to church. My parents were not Christians.
I just did not have a sense. I did not know anybody. And then I met some Christians at work. Now I am working as a police officer and then a detective. And the two groups of people I met the most often were, number one, police officers, a couple at our agency who were Christians. And when I would ask them questions, they did not have good answers. And I thought, wow, these are people who have a high value for evidence. Yet when I asked them questions that are really evidentially based, they are like, so really? So you would never build a case against this guy we just put in jail the way you just built that case for me for Christianity? I just thought, really?
This is a very unexamined worldview. Then the other group I met who said they were Christians were the people I was taking to jail. And those folks were telling me, yeah, I will be honest with you.
They would tell me I just got saved like last year. We are driving them to jail. And I am thinking to myself, really? So we have two kinds of groups here. We have people who are either unwilling to look or do not even know if this is supported by the evidence and people who do not behave as though it is supported by the evidence.
And I wanted no part of either one. I think it would have been discomforting to know that there is a way of living as a Christian that is very well informed, informed about history, informed about science, informed from an educational perspective. You do not have to turn off your brain to be a Christian. As a matter of fact, this is the, I think, the Great Dane of all the dogs in the yard, the dogs who are philosophies of the world and the history of philosophy.
I see this as the Great Dane. We do not need to act like Chihuahuas where we are constantly barking because we are the smallest dog in the yard. It turns out the Christian worldview is very well informed and is supported by the evidence. You can be comfortable. You do not have to react aggressively. All you have to do, though, is know what the evidence is, and you will have a sense of calm about defending the case for Christianity. Great statement. You do not have to turn off your brain to become a Christian. You know, the Lord says, come let us reason together, says the Lord. Reason.
There is a place for that, a place for answering the objections that people have and giving them biblical evidence. This is a resource that you will consult again and again. Footnoted, researched, well-written, but at the same time, illustrated and made understandable. So anyone, I think a young man or a young woman, be able to understand this as well as someone who is older and more of a reader.
This is something everyone's going to benefit from. It's a brand new book called Person of Interest, subtitled Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible, written by former cold case detective J. Warner Wallace. And we'll send you your copy for your gift of any size.
Yeah, it's brand new. In fact, the publisher graciously sent some advanced copies, only available through A New Beginning. And we want to send this resource to you to thank you for partnering with us so these daily studies can continue reaching out with the gospel.
And our prayer is that this book will help you reach out with the gospel in your own circle of influence. So ask for Person of Interest as you send your generous gift today to A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, CA 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300. We can speak with you anytime, again at 1-800-821-3300. Or go online to harvest.org.
Go to harvest.org and join us this weekend for Harvest at Home. Well, next time, Pastor Greg highlights the importance of our personal story in sharing the hope of Christ with others. We'll see our personal testimony is an important tool in our evangelism toolbox. Join us next time here on A New Beginning. This is the day, the day when life begins. The preceding podcast was made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. Learn how to become a Harvest Partner, sign up for daily devotions, and find resources to help you grow in your faith at harvest.org.
