You're listening to A New Beginning with Greg Laurie, a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners helping people everywhere know God.
Visit our website and learn more about Harvest Partners at harvest.org. truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes people will say I've given him so much to follow God, I've made such sacrifices. Hey you gave up hell buddy. Don't boast about what you gave up for God, boast of what he gave up for you. 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 Southern California for an exciting one-night event October 3rd.
Mark your calendar and be in prayer. Today Pastor Greg explains that our story of what Christ has done for us can show people what Christ can do for them. So today, good insight on relaying our story, our testimony most effectively.
It's part of Pastor Greg's series, Tell Someone. Now let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever shared your faith with someone? Raise your hand if you shared your faith. Okay good. How many of you have ever led a person to Christ? You've led them in prayer personally. Okay good. Now very impressive by the way.
How many of you have never led someone to Christ? Don't be embarrassed. I will not mock you I promise. It's okay. It's okay. Right. Good. Hey what's the problem man?
No I am kidding. I want to help you with that. Because I believe that opportunities are everywhere and we just need to kind of tune in. Kind of like on the radio. You get tuned to that frequency. You need to tune in to the frequency of the leading of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, lift up your eyes.
The fields are white to harvest. Now sometimes we will ask someone if they want to believe in Jesus Christ and they say no. Okay. Sometimes we ask someone if they want to believe in Jesus Christ and they say yes. And sometimes someone who isn't a believer asks us how to come to Christ. Has that ever happened to you? It happened to me a number of years ago. Interestingly with my father. Now I told you my mom was married and divorced seven times. I had a full-time ministry sharing the gospel with my mother's former husband.
I am not kidding. I tried to reach everyone. And I told you a story about one that I was able to reach toward the end of his life. But you know in the midst of all these guys my mom married and divorced. She picked one guy that I thought was fantastic.
He was an attorney from New Jersey and his name was Oscar Laurie. He was different from all the other guys my mom married. My mom was sort of attracted to what you might call a bar fly. These are the guys you know that hung at the bar and their shirts are unbuttoned.
A few too many buttons you know. These are the guys she was drawn to. They were drinkers. They were smokers. They were party guys as with my mom. But somehow she finds this guy named Oscar. He doesn't drink.
He doesn't smoke. What did my mother see in him? And he was a very good man. And so we lived there in New Jersey with him. And he adopted me. And he gave me my name of course. And he treated me as a father should treat a son. He gave me an allowance. I had to do chores. I had to be responsible. And I found myself calling him dad. And though he was not my biological father I felt and still feel he was my father.
And so I loved him. And that is why it was so hard when I came out of school one autumn day in New Jersey and the black Cadillac is packed to the gills with suitcases. And I say, what is going on? She says, we are leaving New Jersey and we are going to Hawaii.
Of course I was excited because at that point I had never been to Hawaii before. And I said, where is dad? And my mom said, he is not coming. Well I didn't see him for years.
So now fast forward many years. I have become a Christian. I am married.
We have one son at this point. Christopher. And I was invited to speak in New York City. So I thought I wonder if my dad is even still alive. So because he was an attorney I had a girl in our church that worked for the Bar Association. I tracked him down.
She found him immediately. He was living in a place called Red Bank in New Jersey. So I called his office. And I remember I haven't talked to him for years. And I called and I said, hi is Mr. Lorien.
The secretary said, I am sorry he is out to lunch. I said, well will you tell him I called. She said, what is your name? I said, Greg Lorien. She said, how do you spell your last name? I said, the same way he does. L-a-u-r-i-e. And I am his son. So please tell him to call me.
I got a call quickly afterwards. Greg he says, come and visit us. Come to our home for the weekend. Oh no. I really couldn't. You know I knew he had remarried. Had a new family. I didn't want to mess things up. I didn't want to intrude. He kept pressing me, come to our home. We want you to come to our home after you are done speaking.
So I did my speaking engagement there in New York. We got on the train. Pulled him to the station. I get off and there is my dad. He looks just like he looked before.
A little older of course. But it was just such a great time. And we reconnected. And before I knew it I am calling him dad again. And we went over a lot of history and what had happened to me and how he tried to get custody of me but my mom fought him. And I am thinking, why did my mom fight him? I mean good night.
I was effectively left to myself but she didn't want him to have me. Well anyway so I sit down that night at dinner. I met his nice wife Barbara. Nice Italian Catholic lady and amazing cook.
She whipped us up an Italian feast. Fantastic. And after we are done eating Barbara says, Greg tell me all about your faith and how you became a Christian and how you became a minister. I said, ok Barbara. And I am sharing my testimony, my story. And as I am speaking she is like responding to everything I am saying, that is great.
That is great. And on the other side of the table there sits my father. He has his hands kind of up to his face. Kind of like this. And I feel like I am in a court of law and he is the judge. And I am giving my testimony literally. And I feel like I am not doing very well because he is not reacting.
No visible reaction. So I thought ok. So I shared the whole story and she said, thanks for sharing that story. And I was getting ready to go to bed and my dad asked me if I would walk with him in the morning.
One very important detail I left out. He had just had a heart attack about two months before blacked out at the steering wheel of his car and ran into a pole and almost killed himself. So now he is on medication. He has to change his diet. And he has to walk every morning. So he says, will you walk with me in the morning Greg? Yes dad.
I will. So I get a knock on the door you know 6 o'clock in the morning New Jersey time 3 o'clock in the morning California time. So I am like so tired.
So we are walking along and the brisk New Jersey air is hitting us in the face. I am still kind of waking up and my dad says to me, Greg I listened very carefully to what you said last night. I said, right. And he said, I want to become a Christian right now. It is like wake up Carl. Boom.
I mean what? He says, I want to become a Christian right now. I thought he didn't understand what I was saying.
It couldn't happen this quickly. So I went over it again. And he says, yes I understand. I want to become a Christian right now Greg. I said, well fantastic. He says, what do I need to do?
I wasn't expecting this. So I said, well you need to pray and ask Christ to come into your life. We are in a park at this point. He drops to his knees. Oh and so I get down to my knees.
I wasn't going to kneel in the park but since he was there I thought I would get down there with him. So I lead him in this prayer and he prays it so sincerely. And after we are done praying he says, Greg I feel like Jesus just came on my life. Pray for my heart now Greg. Pray for my heart. I believe God wants to heal me.
Ok. Really. Let's pray. And I prayed for his heart. So then we are done praying. He gets him. He says, I want to go over to my doctor's office.
It is right near here. And I want to tell him I just asked Jesus on my heart and my heart is healed. Now dad we don't know if your heart is healed.
No. I want to talk to him. So we walk over into the doctor's office. A nice Jewish gentleman.
And my dad walks in with me. He says, this is my son Greg Laurie. He is a preacher from California.
Already that doesn't sound good to an East Coast person. Preacher from California. And I just accepted Jesus on my heart doc. I believe he healed my heart. Doctor says, now Oscar calm down.
We don't know. He ran a bunch of tests on him. Guess what. His heart was better. And God gave him 15 more years.
Amazing. Now why do I tell you that story? Because you never know when it is going to happen. Sometimes you think you are making so much progress and you are ready to close the deal and they don't want to pray.
And then there are times when you think you have made no progress and actually you have made more than you thought. That is why Paul says, one sows another waters. God gives the increase. We all play a role in the salvation of others. Some of us sow the seed through our godly living. Others water the seed through maybe something we said or did for a person and mentioned our faith. And others reap where others have sowed in water.
But I think there comes a moment when you have got to just grab it. Each of us who have come to the Lord has a personal story to tell. A testimony.
Why is that story important? Pastor Greg will answer that question in just a moment. So many listeners have commented on the help they receive from Pastor Greg's teachings, his books, and God's Word.
Hi Pastor Greg. I want to thank you for writing about your personal loss and hope for hurting hearts. I have read your book many times in the past two years after my dear son went to heaven three days before his 25th birthday. I continually refer to your book for encouragement and hope as you know firsthand what it is like to lose your own precious son. I also appreciate your podcasts and glean wisdom from them.
Please pray for me as I still cry. God bless you, your ministry, and your dear family. Thank you for being God's messenger. For information on Pastor Greg's book, Hope for Hurting Hearts, search for that title at harvest.org. And if you have some words to share of how Pastor Greg studies and God's Word have touched your life, drop them an email at greg.harvest.org.
In fact, do it today, would you? That's greg.harvest.org. Well, today Pastor Greg is offering some practical help for our evangelism efforts in his message called How to Lead Others to Jesus, available at harvest.org. Know this. Jesus never dealt with any two people in exactly the same way. Let me repeat that. Jesus never dealt with any two people in exactly the same way. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to evangelism. And I bring this up because some people are rather robotic in their sharing. They say the same things over and over again.
And I think you need to adapt to a situation. And Jesus of course is our model in this in the story of the woman at the well that we looked at last time together. He is engaging her. He asks her for a drink of water. Initially she is sarcastic. She is flippant.
Even cynical. But he is beginning to get closer now. And the woman makes this amazing statement in John 4 verse 25. She said, "'Well I know Messiah is coming who is called Christ and when He comes He will tell us all things.'" Jesus says, "'I who speak to you am He.'" In other words girl you are talking to Him right now. Because remember He told her you are living with a guy right now. She didn't think anyone knew that. Jesus knew it. He says, yeah you have had five husbands.
You are shacking up with some dude. Right. So I know. She is like, oh well we know when Messiah comes to you and all things.
Yeah. I am the Messiah. And she believes it right there on the spot. John 4 28.
The woman left her water pot, went her way into the city and said to the men, "'Come see a man who told me all the things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?'" So this brings me to my first point.
If you are taking notes. Point number one. Telling your story also known as your testimony is a powerful bridge for the gospel message. Again telling your story, your testimony is a powerful bridge for the gospel message. It is one of the most effective tools you have in your evangelistic toolbox.
This woman only minutes old in the faith immediately goes out and tells others. Now here is why your story is important. Because people can argue with the facts but they can't argue with your story. See you might say something about God and say, well I disagree with that. And you can have a debate or however you want to approach it. But when you tell them your story of what happened to you they can't debate you.
It is what happened to you. So it is a great way to start a conversation and listen. It is also a great way to share with someone without preaching at them. In other words if I say you need to accept Jesus Christ right now. You need to turn from your sin. And by the way there is a place for that. But if I say that a person might be put off saying, hey man don't preach to me.
So if instead I say let me tell you my story. You know I wasn't raised in the church. This is where I came from.
This is what I used to do. And now I am finding common ground with them. And then I say but one day I went to a crusader. I went to a church service. Or a Christian came up to me and said this. And you know when they said this statement I realized I needed God. So you are telling your story but at the same time you are sharing the gospel with them.
And this is a great way to begin. John 4.39 says, the Samaritans of the city believed in Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified. He told me all that I ever did. You know the apostle Paul was a great orator.
A brilliant intellect. Yet in almost every occasion when he stood before nonbelievers he began with his testimony. And I think one of the best ways to start your presentation of the gospel is tell what God has done for you. Here is just a few takeaway tips on sharing your story.
Number one. Don't glorify or exaggerate your past. Don't glorify or exaggerate your past.
Accuracy is important. So is truthfulness. I bring this up because I have heard people give their testimony and then maybe I don't see them for a while and I maybe hear them ten years later and I am thinking, wow the testimony is a little more dramatic than it was ten years ago.
Now either they went back and did a whole bunch of new stuff or they are exaggerating. And so be truthful in telling your story. And this is another thing. Don't boast about what you gave up for God. Boast of what He gave up for you. Don't boast about what you gave up for God. Boast about what He gave up for you.
Let me illustrate. Sometimes people will say, you know I was living the best life partying and women and money and drugs and so many. Then I came to Jesus. And all of a sudden you have this weird accent. Jesus. And now I carry the old rugged cross. And then you might say, I have given up so much to follow God. I have made such sacrifices. Hey.
Shut up. You want to know what you gave up? You gave up guilt. You gave up a big hole in your heart.
News flash. You gave up hell buddy. Hell. What did God give you? Fulfillment.
Purpose. The removal of guilt. And the absolute certainty that you will go to heaven when you die. Don't tell me what you gave up for God. Tell me what God gave up for you when He sent His Son to die on the cross in your place. That is a good testimony. You know Paul the apostle, formerly Saul of Tarsus, actually did give up quite a bit to follow Jesus. But I love the way he phrased it when he says, you know all the things that I thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my master firsthand.
Everything I used to think was significant is no longer significant. It is dog dung. I have dumped it in the trash so I could embrace Christ and be embraced by Him.
I love that. Hey that stuff. That is junk.
That is dog dung. It meant nothing to me. Now point number two. As we bring the gospel we need to speak in a language people understand. I mentioned earlier you can't use Christianese.
People don't know what you are saying. You know when you walk up to a person and say, hey you heathen. Philistine. Come here for a second. Have you repented?
Are you justified? Are you sanctified? Are you washed in the blood?
Are you part of the body? You know you might as well just landed from another planet. They don't know what you are saying so speak their language.
Listen to this. The days of cultural Christianity are over. What do I mean by that? Well there was a time in America, especially closer to our birth when we had a strong Judeo-Christian ethic in our culture. It was in everything that we did. But as time has passed and we have progressed, if you want to use that word, others might say regress.
I would certainly choose that term. And as we have gotten away from this we don't see cultural Christianity like we used to see it. And there was a time when you would go up to someone and tell them about Jesus and not say, I am already a Christian.
But you know a lot of people don't say that anymore. Cultural Christianity is over with. There are just a lot of people now that don't profess faith in Christ at all. And in a way it is good because the problem with cultural Christianity is a lot of people thought they were Christians who weren't. Now people just say, I am not a Christian. And that is where I am at.
You know so this is a new thing. In fact if we were to compare our culture to another culture I think it would be very much like the first century culture that the church was born in. In fact when Paul spoke on Mars Hill, which was in Athens, Greece, that was the cultural and intellectual center of the world. And today our culture is just like Mars Hill. All Mars Hill was about was according to Acts 17 finding out about or hearing the newest thing. They just loved new thought.
New ideas. And there were two dominant philosophical ideas that were prominent in the day of Paul. They were the beliefs of Epicurus and the beliefs of the Stoics who followed Zeno. So Epicurus led the Epicureans.
Zeno with the Stoics. Ok. So the Epicureans their basic philosophy was there is no order to the universe. There is no God. No absolutes. No judgment.
So you might as well just live for the moment. Have fun. They were the party animals of the first century. Then there were the Stoics. They were different.
They were more disciplined. Their belief was almost similar to a Buddhist like world view or what we might call New Age mysticism. They thought God was in all things. God was in nature. God was in the earth.
Ok. Does that sound familiar to the culture we are facing today? You know some people say, hey God is in you and God is in me. And all beliefs are right in their own way. Or another person is saying, hey man just eat, drink, and be merry.
Let's just have fun and forget about it. And I read an interesting article in USA Today that talked about the fastest growing religious group in America. You want to know who they are? They are called the Nones. Not N-U-N-S.
But N-O-N-E-S. The Nones. According to this article this religious group doesn't have any faith affiliation but they are the nation's second largest category. Second only to Catholics. They outnumber the top Protestant denomination of the Southern Baptists. What do the Nones believe?
This article says nothing in particular. They are just open to spirituality. You ever engage a person about Jesus and they will say, well I am into spirituality. That is who the Nones are. One person said, who identifies with them, they just let go of their belief. There is not much I can prove. So instead of saying I believe I say, well maybe or who knows. They believe in reincarnation and astrology. And 58 percent of them feel a deep connection with nature and the earth.
Guess what? There is nothing new under the sun. This goes back thousands of years. So how do you reach a culture like this? The same way the first century church reached them. Nothing has changed. The culture hasn't really changed and the answer hasn't really changed.
The answer is simply this. With a powerful message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is what our culture needs to hear. Paul says in Romans 1.16, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God and a salvation to everyone who believes. Listen.
The gospel is filled with power. I don't need to edit it. I don't need to add to it. I don't need to subtract from it. I don't need to apologize for it. I need to just proclaim it and stand back and watch God work.
That is true. Our job is to let the lion out of the cage. Pastor Greg Laurie with great insight today and all this week on A New Beginning in a series called Tell Someone You Can Bring Others to Jesus. Because of the importance of this information, Pastor Greg has developed a helpful online training course that corresponds with this series. It's also called Tell Someone. 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 engaging free Tell Someone training course at harvest.org. Well, it's a real treat to have Jay Warner Wallace with us today. He's a former atheist and a retired cold case detective and he's just released a brand new book called Person of Interest. He puts his investigative skills to work examining the deity and uniqueness of Christ without depending on the New Testament as our proof. He points out there are other ways to make a compelling case beyond a shadow of a doubt. Witnesses from that time, the historical record, and so on. And Pastor Greg is speaking with Jim Wallace.
Are there telltale signs when someone is not telling the truth? Oh, yeah. So what we do a lot of times when we're looking at it, this is how I first investigated Scripture. I was somebody who was the interviewer on our team. I was working on an investigative team. I was working undercover. I had super long hair.
I had this longer goatee than I'm wearing today. And so I thought, well, you know, I love doing interviews. And I loved looking for deception indicators when people will say things. And there's a process called forensic statement analysis. What you're doing is you would have somebody, let's say that crime occurred yesterday, a murder. And you would say, okay, you know what? Why don't you do me a favor?
On this piece of paper, which happens to have 24 lines, I just want you to write down everything you did yesterday from the moment you got up to the moment you went to bed. And I give them a pen. So any changes they make, they have to cross out. And then I've got, you can't use the backside.
You can only use the front side. So what that allows me to do is to see what their pace is, right? How many lines do they use to describe each hour? Because people will compress time or expand time and they're either trying to hide something or minimize something, or maybe they're just impressed by what happened in that moment.
But it'll tell me something about that day in terms of how they expand and compress. I'm looking for things like pronoun use. This is my good friend, Greg. I used a first name. This is my good friend, the pastor. Now I'm calling him the pastor.
So I'm looking for the context of how the pronouns change over the course of the description, right? I love my wife, Susie and I, we went on a vacation. It was beautiful. My lovely wife, Susie. That's one way to describe her. Oh, I took a Susie on a vacation. Well, I didn't even describe her as my wife. I took the wife on a vacation. Now it's not even a possessive pronoun. Now it's like the wife.
What's going on with that? Now it may be that's what you do all the time, or it might be that you've changed here because at that point in the day you were upset about something. So I'm looking at all those deception indicators. And when I read through the Gospel of Mark for the first time, I didn't think much of it. But then someone told me that an early bishop in the church named Papias said that Mark's gospel was written at the feet of Peter.
And I thought, hmm, can I test that? Because who's Mark? Mark's not, we don't know if Mark was at the scene. Peter was. Is there any evidence in Mark's gospel that points to Peter specifically? And I'm looking at deception indicators, places where, you know, how the story is different, comparing the other gospels. I think there's actually a lot of forensic evidence in Mark that demonstrates that Peter is his source. Well, that's interesting. And so this is how I approached it, right?
Because this is the discipline I had in my pocket. I knew there were a certain number of skills that if you, let's put it this way. If there's a murder from 20 years ago, the witnesses sometimes are dead by the time I get to the case. And not only that, the guys who did the interviews, or the gals, the detectives who wrote the supplemental reports, sometimes they're dead too. So now I've got an account, a supplemental report, I've got no access to the witness, and I've got no access to the report writer.
That's the gospels. I've got no access to the witness, no access to the report writers. How do I determine what happened 30 years ago? I use the same process to determine what happened.
It doesn't make any difference how long that that time has gone by. In the end, there are linguistic, there are little things that people say or don't say that tell you a lot about what, you know, this is why my daughters would hate it growing up with me because I would, one would come in and I would say, before you say anything, just know that every word that comes out of your mouth, I'm going to analyze and I'm going to test. And then she would go, oh my gosh, and say, oh, and before you say anything, also know that everything you could have said but chose not to say, I'm also going to hold against you. Well, then she's like, well, what's the point? She just confessed to it.
So that made it easier, right, for me. But the point is that process you could actually apply to the gospels. All this explosive information is contained in this book that we are offering to you.
It's called Person of Interest by J. Warner Wallace, Why Jesus Still Matters in a World That Rejects the Bible. And we'll send you this book for your gift of any size because we want to put quality resources into your hands and we also want to give you an opportunity to support us as we teach the Word of God and proclaim the gospel all around this planet. So if you'd like your own copy, Dave's going to give you the contact information and we'll send you Person of Interest. Yeah, that's right.
It's brand new. And we so much appreciate your investment so this daily study can continue. And when you send a donation today, let us thank you with a copy of Person of Interest. You can write A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514. Or call us at 1-800-821-3300. We can take your call anytime 24-7. Again, dial 1-800-821-3300 We know the importance of sharing the gospel, but what is the gospel? And how do we make sure we're presenting it properly? Pastor Greg has important insights on that next time as his Tell Someone series continues here on A New Beginning. This is the day, the day when life begins Hey everybody, thanks for listening to A New Beginning. This is a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners. So for more content that can help you know God and equip you to make Him known to others or to learn more about how you can become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org.
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