The Joy of Sharing Your Faith | Sunday Message

Hey there. Thanks for listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast, a ministry supported by Harvest Partners. I'm Greg Laurie, encouraging you.

If you want to find out more about Harvest Ministries and learn more about how to become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org. Alright, today we're in our Timeless Series, and the title of my message is The Joy of Sharing Your Faith, and I want you to turn to Romans Chapter 10. Romans Chapter 10, The Joy of Sharing Your Faith. Let's pray. Father, this is Your message. It's not mine.

I'm just a delivery boy. I'm just relating what You have related to all of us. It's called the Great Commission. We're all called to engage in it. We're all called to share Your gospel. But Lord, if we're honest, a lot of us aren't doing it as much as we should, and we pray that You will help us to have a greater passion for it than we've ever had before. Speak to us from Your word we ask now in Jesus' name. Amen.

Alright, let me start with a question. What are you afraid of? According to a study that was done of the top fears of most people, among the top ones were claustrophobia. That's a fear of small spaces. Then there's the fear of bugs.

I think it's called anachrophobia, and then there's the fear of snakes and other critters like that. Then there's the fear of heights, but the number one fear of most people is public speaking. Public speaking. How many of you have the fear of public speaking? Raise your hand.

Okay, I want you to come up now. It's true, we have that fear. In fact, it was Mark Twain who said, and I quote, there are two types of speakers, those who get nervous and those who are liars, end quote. So, you know, we all have the nerves, and we get up to speak, and I have to say that's why I was so surprised when God called me at around 18 years old to be an evangelist. That was the last thing I ever aspired to be. I never was a public speaker. I was more of a behind the scenes kind of a person.

It was not something I really wanted to do, but it's a calling God put on my life. The biblical definition of evangelist is a bringer of good news. Now, there's other synonyms for evangelists that you find if you go to a dictionary, which are a preacher, a crusader, and my favorite, a propagandist.

Now, those are not popular ideas. Hi, I'm a propagandist. Even worse, a preacher.

You know, when I'm traveling, maybe I'll be seated next to someone on a plane, and we're striking up a conversation, and everything's fine. Then they'll say, what do you do for a living? And I'll say, I'm a preacher. I might as well say, I'm an axe murderer. Or worse, a telemarketer.

I don't know. But, you know, people recoil when you tell them that sort of thing. But listen, Jesus has called every Christian, young and old, men and women, no matter what, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. But stats tell us that only 95 percent, excuse me, 95 percent of Christians have never led a person to Christ. 95 percent have not led another person to Christ. Let me ask you, taking a quick poll, how many of you have been able to lead someone to Christ? Raise your hand.

I'm so proud of you. See, you're not like the rest of those stats out there, so well done on that. But also, only two percent of churchgoers have invited an unchurched person to church in the last year. And 59 percent of all Christians say they seldom or never share their faith with others. Now, why is that? One of the top reasons is the fear of rejection. Another would be anxiety. Maybe they'll ask a question you can't answer. Or maybe feeling you're not the best example. I would say it this way. There's one thing that believers and nonbelievers have in common. We're both uptight about evangelism. Nonbelievers are uptight about being evangelized, and believers are uptight about evangelizing.

And I want to help you to change that way of thinking. I want you to discover not the mere duty of sharing your faith, but the joy of sharing your faith. Hence the title, The Joy of Sharing Your Faith. So in this next three messages leading up to the crusade as part of our timeless series, we're going to talk about that, why we should share the gospel, how to share the gospel, and what is the gospel. Let me just start with that. What is the gospel?

Of course, the word gospel simply means good news. And so let's use an example. Let's say that you found a cure for cancer. You decided you wanted to share that with others. I hope you would want to do that, of course. You would, in effect, be evangelizing for your cause.

That's all it is. Take the gospel out of it. If you're passionate about something, you will find yourself evangelizing for it. And I suggest to you that there are people that are called to be an evangelist that have never stood behind a pulpit. Some of the most effective evangelists I've met are not preachers. They're just committed Christians that have that gifting. You say, how do you know if you're gifted to do that? It's an ability, well, it starts with a passion and a concern for non-believers, but it's an ability to articulate the gospel.

It's a kind of a person that will engage somebody and want to share this message. You may have this gift in your life, but let's take the word evangelism out of the picture here and just use another word, recommendation. Now, we do that all the time, recommendation, advocating for something, endorsing something.

So let's put it a new way. Go into all the world and endorse the gospel. Go into all the world and recommend the gospel. We all recommend things all the time.

I mean, you ask me a question, I have an opinion on almost everything. So you say, Greg, what is the best burger? Okay, let me ask you a question. What kind of a burger? Take-up burger or restaurant burger?

No, take-up burger. Well, it's In-N-Out Burger for sure. And then here's the way you need to order the In-N-Out Burger.

And I have my own order, and I think my order is better than anyone else's order. And I order it in animal style with chopped chilis on it. Okay, so that's what I do, but here's what I've discovered about In-N-Out for me personally. I only like it as a guilty pleasure. When I have In-N-Out for lunch, I don't like it. I have to eat it 10 o'clock at night when I'm not supposed to after I've already had dinner. That's when I like In-N-Out.

Am I alone in this? That's the way it works for me. And I would say, okay, now Taco Bell, I love Taco Bell, and I'll tell you exactly what to order there. I have all kinds of opinions. What about this movie or what about this product?

I'll tell you what I think. So we all do this all the time. I mean, we're in a place we've never been to before, and we want to get something to eat. So we go to Yelp, and we believe in the opinions of complete strangers. Oh, look, a bunch of random people that I've never met before like this place.

Let's go there, because those people took the time to make a recommendation. Okay, so we'll get passionate about a great burger, yet we're not passionate about the most important message of all time, the message of the gospel. Go into all the world and recommend the gospel. Go into all the world and advocate for the gospel. Bringing me to point number one, effective sharing starts with caring.

I could talk to you all day long about how to share the gospel, how to start a conversation, how to answer a difficult question, and so forth, but really, none of that matters if you don't care. It starts with a concern for people, and here's something that is an established fact of the universe. We don't like to share. We don't. Go back to your childhood when you were a little kid.

Did you like to share your toys with others? Probably not, and we're that way in life. We want it for ourself. We don't want to necessarily share it with someone else, and I think if we're honest, and we may not like to admit this, but the reason many of us don't tell others about Jesus is we just don't care about them. Hey, we'll say, I've got my eternal life.

I know where I'm going when I die, and I'm happy in this relationship with God, but I don't want to inconvenience myself, and I really don't care that much about that person. Even worse, we can start seeing nonbelievers as the enemy. In these morally and politically charged times, people are more divided than any time I can remember in my lifetime.

People are extremely angry at each other, and now with social media, that's all amplified. We can attack one another, and as Christians, we can get caught up into this, and we can start seeing that nonbeliever that maybe has made a lifestyle choice that is contrary to Scripture or a political choice we don't agree with or some other choice, and suddenly they have become, in our minds, the mortal enemy. They're not the enemy, and if they've made bad decisions, they need to meet Christ, who can change their life. They're not the enemy. They're under the control of the enemy, and here's what the Bible says we're supposed to do as believers. First of all, be patient with them, and then it tells us that we should pray that they come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap, for they're being held captive by him to do whatever he wants.

So it starts with a concern and a burden. In Acts chapter 17, the apostle Paul went to the city of Athens. Athens at that time was the intellectual capital of the world, and he went to a place called the Areopagus on Mars Hill.

This is where all the philosophers hung out to discuss the latest things that were popular at the time, and so Paul stood up before them and began to share the gospel. What's interesting, though, is before he stood up and spoke to them, we read that as he walked through Athens, he was deeply troubled by all of the idols. You see, in Athens, they erected images to so many gods. There were thousands and thousands of idols in Athens. In fact, it was said in that day, it's easier to find a god with a small g in Athens than a person. So Paul's walking around, and his heart is getting stirred, and the word that is used there for stirred means that he was irritated and aroused to anger.

Another translation would be hot and mad. So when I look at culture, I get angry. Ah, this isn't right. Why is this happening? Why is that happening? Okay, but this is what's important.

What are we supposed to do after that? I mean, think about what's happening with so many people today, especially young people. I just read that the US Surgeon General says we're facing an urgent public health crisis. According to his statement, and I quote, there's a devastating decline in the mental health of kids across the country. The rates of suicide, self-harm, anxiety, and depression are up among adolescents. And by the way, this is a trend that began before the pandemic. According to the CDC, hospital admissions data show the number of teen girls who have been suicidal has increased 50% since 2019.

2019, that's not that long ago, is it? So young people are depressed, filled with anxiety, concerned about their future, and in many cases, even suicidal. This should concern us. This should move us.

And what should we do? We need to share Jesus with them. We need to share Jesus with them. We need to tell them there's a God in heaven who loves them. And whatever they're going through, they can get through it. And God has a plan and a purpose for their life.

We have to care. We have to see them as Jesus sees them, as sheep without a shepherd, as people that need a savior. Instead of cursing the darkness, we need to turn on the light.

And how do we do it? By proclaiming, advocating for, and recommending the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's read now the words of Paul in Romans 10.

I'm gonna read verses 14 to 15. Paul says, how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? How can they believe in Him if they've never heard about Him? How can they hear about Him unless someone tells them?

And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? This is why this scripture says, how beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news. Look at your feet for a moment.

Look at them. You have beautiful feet. Now, when we admire a feature in someone, we don't generally notice their feet. We might say, oh, I love their eyes, or I love their hair. I never have people say that to me.

But, or oh, you know, you're beautiful in this way or that way. We don't generally say, man, you have amazing feet. I've just been looking at those feet of yours.

You know, it's an amazing thing. Did you know that there are feet models in addition to your standard model where if they're showing footwear, they're people that actually will, their feet will be used, and there's hand models. I don't know if you know this, but I was asked to be a hand model once. I was surprised, because I don't think I have very attractive hands. But they said, yes, we want your hands on the cover of our magazine, and I agreed. I was very excited, until they found out the title of the magazine is Old and Decomposing, and I thought, what?

But they did it anyway, because they pay me 10 bucks. Okay, so. But really, what this is saying, beautiful feet means, it would better be translated full bloom. So think of a blossoming flower. So the idea being communicated here is you bloom to life when you share the gospel. When you share the gospel, you're doing as a Christian what you should be doing. The gospel, by its very design, is not meant to be hoarded. It's meant to be shared.

Bringing me to point number two. Listen to this, and this is the most important point of this message. Sharing the gospel is life-giving to us, as well as the person we are sharing with.

Let me say that again. Sharing the gospel is life-giving to us, as Christians, as well as the person we are sharing with. Far too often, we think of sharing our faith as something that's hard, undesirable, something we really don't want to do.

But it's life-giving to the one who's hearing it, and it's life-giving to you too. Another translation of the word beautiful, as in how beautiful are the feet of those that share the gospel, is lively. How lively are the feet of those that preach the gospel of peace. So if you want happy feet, if you want to spring in your step, tell others about Jesus. I honestly believe this is the key to personal revival, to share your faith, and I find that new believers make the most effective evangelists. Have you noticed that? Those that have known the Lord for the longest usually share the gospel less, and those that have known the Lord only for a short time often share the gospel more.

Why do you think that is? I think it's because when you first come to Christ, you're just so amazed by what God has done for you. You're so thrilled that God has forgiven you of your sin. You're so close to it, and you can't wait to tell other people about it. But when you've known the Lord for a while, you start to take these things for granted. My son Jonathan and his family have two pet rats, and that's all I have to say about that.

So my next point, no. So, and they have a snake too, or had a snake. Christopher, my grandson, had this little pet snake and little king snake, and as you may know, they eat live prey. Mice or rats are depending on the size of the snake.

Maybe a rabbit, occasionally a human, hopefully not. So you go down to the pet store and you buy little mice or feeder rats, and they don't cost much or a couple of bucks, and you feed it to the snake. So Jonathan and Christopher went down to the pet store and they got this little feeder rat, cost them a couple bucks, put it in the cage with the snake, and the snake looked at it and struck and started to coil around the rat, and the rat somehow freed himself. The next thing you know, the rat is sort of sniffing the face of the snake, and they realize this snake is probably not gonna eat this rat. So Jonathan takes the rat out of the cage, puts it in another cage, and says, we'll take it back and get a smaller rat or a mouse for the snake, but his daughter, Allie, fell in love with the rat. And a little bit later, he found that she had set the cage up and she had given him a name and had little places for food, and so now she's adopted this rat, and I think she named the rat Tilly. And so he realized, okay, we now have a pet rat. But as it turns out, it was a great little pet.

I don't know if you know this. Rats make great pets. They're very friendly, and so they're enjoying this rat, so they decide maybe we should get another rat. So they start doing some research on rats, and they find this sort of rat that has a pedigree. It's a little fancier, this rat.

He came with his own adoption papers. In fact, when he arrived, they said, you are the owners of this rat, okay? But the problem with the second rat is he was a little, I don't know, snooty. I didn't know rats could be snooty.

It's almost like he knows, yeah, I have a pedigree. And they did some research and found out I didn't know there's rats like walnuts. So the first rat, Tilly, which they found out was a boy, so they changed his name to Louie. Anyway, so Louie, didn't need a lot of research to figure that one out, so Louie would eat a walnut, loves the walnut, so excited. They bring the walnut to the second rat. Was it Remy, would you name Remy? And Remy was like, I don't want the walnut.

And then they went into the fridge and got some really nice cheese, really good cheese. Remy didn't want that either. This is aloof, arrogant rat. I said to Jonathan, you should take that rat back and feed him to the snake. That's how heartless I am. See, so what's the point of all of this? Well, the first rat reminds me of a new convert and the second rat reminds me of a somewhat jaded believer.

Jesus says to whom much is forgiven, that one loves more. So the first rat has been, this is awesome. I was gonna be snake food, now I'm eating walnuts.

I'm happy. I've been saved. Second rat, he wasn't saved. He has a pedigree. He has personal papers. And he doesn't appreciate all that's happened.

That's why he should be fed to the snake immediately. In the same way, we should never lose that gratefulness for what Christ has done for us, right? When we hold in what God has done for us and we don't share, and when I say share, I don't just mean sharing the gospel. I mean serving God, discovering your gifts that God has given you.

God gives spiritual gifts to believers. When we don't think of others, when we don't start serving and helping others and it's all about us and the world revolves around us, we're gonna become a very unhappy person spiritually. In Isaiah chapter 58, God speaks to Israel. They had been drying up spiritually and thinking only of themselves. They were very dutiful with their prayers and external things, but they lost sight of the needs of others. So God says this to them in Isaiah 58.

Let the oppressed go free. Remove the chains that bind people. Then God makes a beautiful promise. Then your light will shine out from the darkness and I will guide you continually, says the Lord, and give you water when you're dry and restore your strength and you'll be like a well-watered garden with an ever-flowing spring.

I'm telling you, evangelism is important for you, not just for the person you're sharing with. You need to do this. This will spiritually replenish you. This is part of your spiritual growth. There is a joy in doing this and I want you to discover the joy of doing it. So I have a test for you today. Put what I'm saying to the test. Intentionally try to start a conversation today with someone about Jesus Christ.

Take one of these invitations. Take the card. Do whatever you want to do and just say, have you heard about this Harvest Crusader? Has anyone ever told you about Jesus or that God loves you?

However you want to start it, start the conversation and see what God will do. Jesus says give and it shall be given to you, pressed down, shaken together, running over. And with the same measure you give to others, it will be given back to you. Proverbs 11 says those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed. And then Jesus said in Acts 20, it's more blessed to give than to receive and the word blessed can be translated happy.

It's more happy making to give than it is to receive. So we need to all engage in this and sow that seed of the gospel. Look at verse 14 of Romans chapter 10. How will they hear without a preacher?

Now that's the last thing most of us want to do. Preacher, I don't want to be a preacher. If you're saying something to someone, they'll say, don't preach to me. I don't need a sermon, man.

So this is something people avoid. But remove the word preach. Let's just say talk. Go into all the world and talk the gospel. Conversationally. You don't have to elevate your voice unless you're speaking to a large group of people.

But this is the idea of verbal communication. Listen, the primary way that God has chosen to reach non-believers is through the verbal communication of the gospel. Now in effect you earn the right to do that by living a godly life and being a good example. Now some people will say, well I don't like to preach.

I'm uncomfortable with that. I'll just be a good example and that will bring people to Christ. Well it may open their hearts a little bit, but you need to engage them in a conversation. And the greatest compliment that a non-believer can pay to a believer is when they come to you and say, what is it that makes you so different? Ah, now the door is open for you to share your faith.

But you gotta speak up. Jesus said, if salt has lost its saltiness, it's no longer good for anything. What good is salt that isn't salty? What good is a Coke that's gone flat? What good is a decaf soy latte?

I mean really, why? And now you get it with almond milk. I love almond milk. I want oat milk.

You know, and we have all these variations on it as well. I want a kale latte. And my cat, no, I'm not giving one to your, the cat wants a tuna latte. I read about weird things that people actually order at Starbucks. These are real orders. An iced venti caramel macchiato with 15 pumps of vanilla syrup.

Also heavy whipping cream, no ice, and caramel drizzle. People just go to 31 Flavors. Does that even exist anymore?

I used to have one near my house and they shut it down and I was not happy. Because I liked 31 Flavors. But you know, coffee should have caffeine.

That's the whole point it seems to me. Salt should be salty. That's what Jesus is saying. Now we need to understand the role of salt. Jesus is saying, now we need to understand the role of salt in the ancient world. It was extremely valuable. It had both preservative and medicinal value. Number one, it kept meat from rotting. So you would rub salt into your meat and it would last for a long time.

There was no refrigeration. And in the same way, in many ways, the Christian keeps culture from rotting. We're there to speak up for what is right and speak out against what is wrong. But that's not all salt did. Salt also helped to heal wounds and stop infection. People love to go to the Dead Sea that has a very high salt content to heal their wounds. And for salt to do its work, it must come into contact with the person who needs to be healed or to the product that needs to be preserved.

And in the same way, if we're gonna be salt in the culture, we have to come into contact with people. And the last thing is salt stimulates thirst. If you have something that's really salty, it makes you thirsty, like when you go to the movie and you order popcorn. And maybe they over-salt it, so you go and ask for, can I have a little cup of water? We can't give cups for water. But we'll sell you this water for $35.

More water than you would drink in a month. But that's the whole point. So when you have salt, it means that you're stirring and stimulating thirst in others, and they wanna hear what you have to say. There's no question that nothing drives a person away from the faith more than hypocrisy in the church, right? Mahatma Gandhi certainly made his mark on history, especially in the nation of India. Many people don't know that Gandhi admired Jesus and actually quoted this Sermon on the Mount. So a missionary met with Gandhi and asked him why he was not a Christian. And Mahatma Gandhi said this in response, quote, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ, end quote.

Wow. And unfortunately, that can be true. So we wanna live this, and it will earn us the right to preach this. One of the best illustrations of this is found in Acts 16. Paul and Silas are imprisoned for preaching the gospel. They're put into a dungeon.

Their feet are fastened into stalks where they would pull them apart, and this is a hellhole, the worst environment you can even imagine. And they were treated with such cruelty by this jailer. But we read at midnight, Paul and Silas began to sing praises to God, and the other prisoners were listening.

That's interesting. In the original language, it can be translated, they were listening with pleasure. They'd never heard anything like this in that prison before. Paul and Silas singing, kind of harmonizing like the Everly Brothers.

I don't know. But it was beautiful music to their ears. And then a great earthquake comes and shakes the walls and the foundation of the prison, and suddenly, every prisoner is free to go, and the chains even come off of their arms and legs, and the jailer pulls out his sword and is ready to kill himself.

Why? Because he would be executed for losing his prisoners, and Paul says, stop, don't hurt yourself. We're all here. And that jailer goes over to Paul and Silas and drops on his knees and says, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Paul says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved, and that goes for your household too. And that man believed right there on the spot. What happened?

They earned the right to be heard. Paul knew what it was to be a hard man. Paul was the hardest of men. He was a Christian killer. He hunted down believers.

He presided over the martyrdom of young Stephen, the first martyr of the church. But he was transformed by Christ on the Damascus road, and now he was a man following the Lord, so he understood this jailer. He understood what it was like to be a guy like that, but God had changed his heart, and of course, they shared the gospel.

But I love that question. What must I do to be saved? That phrase has sort of fallen out of popularity, saved. You'd have people come up to you and say, are you saved? Or if you're a preacher, you would say, are you saved?

Right? But it's really a good question, and it's really a perfect term, saved. It shows the drama of it all. We're like a drowning person that needs to be saved by the lifeguard. We're like a person trapped in a burning building that need to be saved by a firefighter, or we're a person in trouble, and we need to be saved by the police officer, or whatever it might be. It's saved, and we're either saved or we're not saved, or we're going to heaven, or literally, we're going to hell. There is an afterlife. Now apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not sold on the idea of an afterlife, because he was just interviewed, and he was asked the question, what happens when we die? Arnold's response, nothing.

You're six feet under. Anyone that tells you something else is a blanking, I can't use the word he used. Anyone that tells you something else is a blanking liar.

Wow. That would make Jesus Christ a liar, because Jesus says there is an afterlife. He says in John 14, in my father's house are many mansions that were not so I would have told you. If I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, you may be also.

But Arnold had more to say. He said in this interview, some people are comfortable with death, I'm not, because I will blank miss the blank out of everything to sit here with you. This is going to be gone one day, to have fun, to go to the gym and pump? To see interesting things all around the world?

What, the blank? That's what hopelessness sounds like. But there's hope for Arnold Schwarzenegger and there's hope for everyone that believes in Jesus. You know, Arnold's sort of seeing life as it's all in the here and now, and I'm just gonna go and die. Well, yes, your body will go into the ground, but if you're a believer, you live on in the presence of God where the Bible says there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

But I have to believe in Jesus and I need to be saved before that is going to happen. People just need someone to show them the way. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of a man from Ethiopia that came to Jerusalem searching for God. He was a foreign dignitary, probably on an entourage.

I don't know if his chariot had little flags on it and Secret Service guys running next to it, but he was an impressive person. So when he showed up into town, they gave him a scroll of Isaiah. They didn't have printed Bibles back then, so to be given a scroll of Isaiah hand done by the scribes was pretty impressive. So this man from Ethiopia, this dignitary is leaving Jerusalem. He had not found God and he's reading from the scroll of Isaiah out loud and he happens to be in the 53rd chapter. Meanwhile, God speaks to Philip, who's actually identified as Philip the evangelist, and says to Philip, go to the desert. And he doesn't give him any more information, just go to the desert. So Philip's standing out there in the desert wondering what he's doing there and what's supposed to happen next. And now along comes this entourage and he sees the man reading from Isaiah 53 and Philip says, God, Lord, I think I see what's going on here.

I can take it from here. He asks that man, do you understand what you're reading? And the man says, how can I unless someone shows me the way? And at that point, Philip climbed in the chariot, explained that Isaiah 53 was talking about the suffering savior Jesus Christ who died for the sin of the world and he led that man to the Lord. In the same way, people are just waiting for someone to show them the way.

Would you be that person? We all know the story of the Titanic. Many of us only know the movie version with Jack and Rose. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and we wonder, why couldn't Jack fit on that door with Rose? Why did he have to drown?

None of that happened. But there is a story that actually did happen when the real Titanic sank. And there's a real hero of that story and his name was John Harper.

John Harper was a well-known evangelist in Scotland and he was asked to speak at Moody Bible Church so he was making his journey from the UK over to America, Chicago specifically. And everybody was watching this maiden voyage of the Titanic because it was famously said that the boat was unsinkable. One person was even stupid enough to say even God himself could not sink this ship and we know that it hit an iceberg and it was filled with very influential and very wealthy people.

So Harper was on board with his daughter. His wife had died a few years earlier and when the Titanic struck the iceberg, he put his daughter in a lifeboat and he gave his life jacket to a passenger knowing he would not survive it. And then he began to fulfill his God-given purpose as an evangelist and went up and down the decks asking this question of the people who were literally on a sinking ship. Are you saved?

Do you know Jesus Christ? Well, the boat did sink, of course. And he found a piece of floating wreckage to hold onto. And this man swam from survivor to survivor, one piece of wreckage to another, asking the question, are you saved? Do you know Christ? Finally, he found one man and asked him, are you saved?

The man said, I'm not. And he says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. Just like Paul said to that jailer and the man believed. After that, John Harper drowned.

That same man that heard this message was in a meeting four years later and he remembered that fateful night and he said to the people that were assembled, they're alone in the night with two miles of water under me. I believed I was John Harper's last convert. Well, you have a last convert. When's the last time you asked someone, are you saved? Well, I'm not comfortable saying that.

Well, say it any way you want. Do you know Jesus Christ? Have you asked him to come into your life? Can I tell you about what Jesus has done for me? This is the message we need to give. We need to care and there's joy in sharing it. I promise you, there's joy in sharing it. Make a decision to share it today.

Make a decision to share it tomorrow. Make a commitment to evangelism. Be a part of your everyday life and you will be spiritually replenished in a way you have never known before. I'm not a preacher. Don't need to be a preacher. Just make your recommendation. Just give your endorsement. You talk about burgers and movies and everything else.

Oh, the series I binge watch, okay. Talk about Jesus with as much if not more passion. So let me close with this and ask this question of everyone here. Are you saved?

Say, well, what do you even mean by that? You're either saved or you're not saved. You either have a relationship with God or you don't.

There's no in between. Jesus said you're for me or you're against me and it's a decision we all have to make. God wants everyone to be saved. The Bible even says this is the will of God, that everyone is saved, but God will not force you to believe. He gives you a choice. Jesus died on that cross for you 2,000 years ago and shed his blood so you could be forgiven of all of your sin and then you could have a relationship with God and go to heaven one day. But you must believe. You must accept him into your life. You must ask Jesus to forgive you. Have you done that yet?

If not, do you want to? You can do it right here, right now. You don't have to wait for 20 days for the Harvest Crusade. It can happen for you now, right at this moment. I want you to pray this prayer out loud after me. Again, as I pray, pray this out loud after me.

Pray this now. Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner, but I know that you're the savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. Come into my life, Jesus. I repent of my sin. I want to be saved. I want to be forgiven.

I want this relationship with you. Thank you for hearing this prayer and answering this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Amen, and God bless every one of you. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries, follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to Harvest.org. And to find out how to know God personally, go to Harvest.org and click on Know God.