R944 Just 3 Strategies, PT 2

God has an encouraging word for you and me today through the Bible-based teaching of Dr. Don Wilton and a message on strategy. Today we continue with Dr. Don Wilton in Acts chapter 7 about three strategies that can change our life forever. As we open God's Word together, of course, that's what does it. God's Word changes our life forever.

That's what Dr. Don Wilton says. He has no desire to preach from a magazine or a reader's digester. He is all about the encouraging Word, the Bible itself. And as I mentioned that, I can't help but remind you that you can get a daily email from Dr. Wilton that'll help jumpstart your day with a bit of God's Word every day by signing up on our website at www.tewonline.org. Just click the devotional tab and you can sign up today and be receiving it tomorrow. That's online at www.tewonline.org.

Now, Dr. Don Wilton. Paul understood that in order to reach his city, that God had put in his heart that people had to gather in small groups because that's where they would prepare to go out and become engaged in the world in which they lived. A small group is just simply a gathering of people in conversation led by a leader.

It doesn't diminish the role of the leader. In fact, it elevates the role of a leader because God always places leaders in whatever group you find yourself in. Our church has many small groups beginning with our Sunday school life groups, Sunday night discipleship groups, Tuesday morning ladies Bible study groups, prayer groups, master life groups, experiencing God. That's why when we went through experiencing God, we gathered together and then we broke into small groups. You see, something spiritual happens in those groups and Paul understood the strategy. And it is absolutely abundantly clear that there are definitive benefits of spiritual conversation that takes place in the dialogue of reasoning according to that which Paul did in the synagogue.

No different then than what it is today. What are some of those benefits of spiritual conversation in small groups? Number one, it introduces people to one another. You want to be introduced to people? You need to be in one of those small groups. That's where you meet people.

Did you know that? By the way, did you know that our whole society rarely is broken up into small groups? Everything we do subsists on small groups.

It's the neighbourhood. Hear what Paul was doing as he was saying we need to put together a system based upon the neighbourhood. We need to bring the people in microcosm together to have a spiritual conversation. Number one, because it introduces people to one another. Number two, because it increases the likelihood of learning. Now folks, here's a fundamental pedagogical value which we value even in the local New Testament church, the small group. You can go to any educator in our region and say to them what is one of the most important considerations in the classroom today. They'll say to you the size of the group.

You want to increase the likelihood of learning? Make your group as small as possible. That's why Seth Buckley over the years, we have all our teenagers in groups on Sunday nights. Folks, that's why Seth and the leadership team keep our groups in groups of seven and eight and six young people.

Why? Because it increases the likelihood of learning. It's a basic fundamental educational value. That's why we encourage you to be in a small group. That's where you're going to grow. That's where you're going to be encouraged to become courageous as you live out your life in Christ.

That's why you are not going to survive if you don't do that. Well, it does some other things. It enhances fellowship. When Paul spoke about reasoning as a strategy, he talked about the enhancement of fellowship. Now that little word there, fellowship, is a very important word in the New Testament.

By the way, it has a Greek word, koinonia. And God's word speaks to us about the fellowship that we have with one another. It's very much like the coals of a fire.

You take a coal out of the fire, it's going to run out of juice. And what God is telling us, it is very important for us to come together and to fellowship with one another. What happens if you don't fellowship? You become stricken with loneliness. And loneliness breeds all kinds of offshoots. I think I might have mentioned just the other day, loneliness makes you a prime target for Satan. If there's anything Satan wants to do with you, he wants to isolate you, wants to get you out there by yourself. He wants to remove you from the fellowship.

He wants to close the door on you. And folks, we as human beings, we hunger after fellowship. That's why we've got to be proactive when it comes to this awful thing called clicks. Clicks are a curse upon any community, churches, school yards, university campuses.

I don't like it. It's one of the things that bothers me with sororities and fraternities, because they're just nothing more than big clicks. People get left out. There are kids who go to college campuses and they never have any fellowship with anybody. It's no different in the church. And so you've got to instigate.

You've got to put in place these strategies that are so very important. Well, it not only introduces people to one another and increases the likelihood of learning and enhances our fellowship, but it invites outside participation. You see, the synagogue in Thessalonica was literally a gathering place. It had two sections to it. The inner section was for the frozen chosen.

Only a certain select group could go in there, but the outer courts were places where the inner courts could invite the outer courts to come in. And that's what, for example, Sunday school is. These life groups that we have. That's what a ladies Bible study. I'm so thrilled at what's going on in our ladies ministries right now.

It thrills me no end, folks. Because it provides a forum for people to come together in a small group and grow to love one another and have a spiritual conversation and become participants together in what God is doing. That's what discipleship is all about.

That's why we need to be proactive in inviting people. Number five, it promotes personal compassion. I love that part. See, all of us need a compassionate arm to lean on, don't we? When Paul spoke about reasoning, he was talking about a dialogue in which people engage in their lives with one another. That's the forum that God has given to us. That's the platform upon which God bases his church.

That's the strategy that Paul was laying out to the Thessalonicans. He was saying to them, he was saying to them, let's engage together so that we can have a spiritual conversation. That means that we can not only listen to one another on the inside but we can minister to one another on the outside. I was just, my wife and I were with someone last night who was going through a difficult time in their family life and the comment was made, isn't it just too wonderful to have so many people minister to one another within the context of the church? Folks, nothing thrills your pastor more when I arrive at that hospital room or that home.

There's already 10 other people who've been there. Let me tell you, nine times out of 10, the people who are already there are partners together in this thing called reasoning, this strategy called dialogue, this entity which we have identified as a small group. You know that the bigger the church becomes, the more important it is for us to be in small groups.

That's why folks, watch this, everybody watch me. God is doing something in our congregation. You say to me, what do you expect of us?

There's one right there. We are asking all our people to be in at least one small group, one small group. And we're not saying don't be in two.

We're not saying don't be in three. We're asking all of our people because we believe that it's of God. That's why people who are homebound are so starved for fellowship because they don't have that.

That's why I'm so grateful for the television ministry of this church amongst many other reasons. All right, so there's strategy number one. He reasoned with them. Strategy number two, he explained to them. Now the word explain here that we see in verse three is an interesting word. It literally means to take the cover off. It means that when Paul went to the people at Thessalonica, knowing how desperately they needed to come to know Jesus Christ, who would fulfill every want and desire of their life, what he needed to do was he needed to explain to them. That literally means that he needed to make clear or intelligible the things that God was saying. To explain means to make known in detail. To explain something means to make clear the cause or the reason for doing something. To explain, Paul understood, was to give an account for. To explain means literally to give an explanation. Here Paul said, this Jesus I'm proclaiming to you is the Christ. He didn't just make the statement, what did he do folks? He reasoned with them in those small groups, but he explained to them the fundamental process involved in exegeting, expounding and exposing the word of God to God's people.

That's what I'm doing right now. I want to tell you why we're on one verse folks because this is a never ending trough of God's grace. You cannot get to the bottom of it. It's too much. The more you dig, the more you know you have to dig. The more you know about God, the more you don't know about God. It's got so much to say to us, doesn't it?

Please forgive the interruption. You're listening to Dr. Don Wilton, our teacher here on The Encouraging Word, and it's Dr. Don that insists I remind you we are not just here to present the messages of Dr. Wilton, but we are to have a conversation, and we do that every day in a number of ways, keyboard to keyboard on our website at www.tewonline.org. That's www.tewonline.org. We're also discovering a renewed desire to speak with one another, to reach out and talk and pray, and our phone number 866-899-WORD will always connect you with an individual happy to do so, ready to do so, ready to pray for you, ready to connect you with some of the resources we have on our website and more.

That's 866-899-9673. It's our prayer that you would allow us to do what we feel God has called us to do, to encourage you from all of us here at The Encouraging Word. And now back to our chief encourager in our teaching today, this is Dr. Don Wilton. Rarely believe that when you and I come to that time that we go to heaven to be with the Lord, all of us are going to stand before his throne and say, goodness me, Lord God Almighty, we didn't know anything about you, did we?

But we tried our best. Now how does that explanation take place? First and foremost, through worship. Not only, but first and foremost through worship. That's why we believe in worship. That's why God's Word teaches worship.

That's why the Bible says, forsake not the assembling of yourself together. Because that's where primary explanation takes place. And then it bleeds down into that life group Sunday school. It bleeds into that discipleship group. It bleeds into that Bible study.

It bleeds into that home. This is where it all begins. And we believe that there are three functional arms of explanation in a worship service. Not in any order of priority.

I can't even give them a number one, number two, and number three. So I'll just say first in the singing of hymns and choruses and psalms. Do you know that you can go to many people today and they'll say to you, they learned as much about God through the singing, the praise, the glory to God in worship as they did in anything they did. Praise to the Lord, the God of creation. Oh Lord my God.

Thank you God. All the hymns and the choruses this morning, I think we sang as the deer pants for water, so my soul longs after you. That's David singing in the presence of God, Jehovah.

Talking about the reality of the human condition and some of you have been panting for meaning in life. And the answer comes in singing. Praise, worship, choruses. Also comes in prayer. Worship is about prayer.

About talking to God. Prayer is a conversation with God. It's corporate prayer. It's private prayer.

It's coming together. When we come together like this, it's not Don praying or you praying. It's all of us coming together in the presence of God and praying from our hearts silently and verbally, outwardly and inwardly, petitioning, standing in His presence. But it also comes through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God.

Explanation. I ask the Lord every time I stand in this pulpit, Lord please let me never deliver a sermonette. That's the reason why in America today we've got so many Christianettes. Because so many churches all people are delivered with are these little ditty sermonettes that mean nothing. You cannot come to the Word of God and give an explanation of the Word of God by getting up and simply just telling a whole lot of stories.

I don't want to become known as a pastor who just tells stories. Stories are illustrations of the Word of God. They explain the Word of God. They illuminate, they open, they shed light on the Word of God. But our mandate and responsibility within the context of the absolute truth of the Word of God is to expound and expose and explain the unsearchable riches of God in Christ Jesus. That's what the church is.

And so what about this folks? What does worship do for us? It enhances our value, our unity, and it enhances our unity together. That's one of our values, intentional unity.

Why? Because we value the determined oneness of the people of God. We value that. We don't take that for lightly. That is a value of this congregation.

We value that. And coming together in worship is so important when it comes to the people of God because it enhances unity together. But number two, it provides a forum. You say a forum for what? What kind of forum does corporate worship like this provide? Well, provides a forum to learn together. It provides a forum to worship together. It provides a forum to fellowship together.

It provides a forum to be called and commissioned together. What we do in the church is not about any one of us. It's about us. And worship provides that forum so you have all these dynamics of learning and worship and fellowship and the commission. Who are we as a church and where we are going? God speaks to us most of all beginning right here in corporate worship. So should it be any surprise if you were to say today, well, what does First Baptist Church Spartanburg strongly suggest, require of her members?

Well, there's two I've given you today. We really urge you to be in one worship service a week. Not because of numbers or because of any other reason other than we know that that's a mandate from God. That's a strategy. Worship is a strategy. I urge you to be in at least one worship service a week. Number two, to be in at least one small group. Just one. I didn't say you can't be in more worship services or more than one small, but we ask you to be in one worship service in one small group.

You become a member of this church, that's what we're asking you to do. Well, what was his three point strategy? Well, he reasoned with them. Number two, he explained to them. Number three, he proved to them. Proof was his third strategy, providing proof. Evidence, look there in verse three, explaining and proving that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.

Now, here's the question folks, watch this. How do you prove God? Well, he tells us two ways. Number one, through the Scriptures. There's another of our values, absolute truth. We value the Word of God.

And we value the Bible, watch this, we value the Bible alone as the Word of God. Not the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Not the Bible and the Koran. Not the Bible and the Reader's Digest. Not the Bible and a public opinion poll. We value the Bible alone as the Word of the Living God.

Somebody say amen. Well, how did he prove Jesus Christ? Through the Word of God. Second way he proved God and the Lord Jesus Christ was through his own personal testimony. He lived it.

Watch this. Did you know that the single greatest proof and evidence of Jesus is you and me? The testimony of a changed life.

I love that, don't you? The testimony of a changed life. Do you know this Jesus? If you don't, isn't it time to say yes to him?

If you do, what does your life look like? Because you're the only Bible that some people will ever read. Paul was an amazing person. I'm looking forward to meeting him one day. As I'm telling you, this guy had a testimony through thick and through thin. Indeed, Paul's testimony was through thick and thin, and I don't know where you are right now, but it's one of those.

It's either in the thick of it or the thin of it, or as Dr. Don would say, we're either in the middle of a crisis, coming out of a crisis, or need to be ready because there are crises on the way. The good news is God's promised never to leave us or forsake us. But it all starts with a decision to be one of God's family. You've heard Dr. Wilton has been teaching through Acts chapter 17 today. Now, as he steps into the studio, would you open your heart to what he wants to share next? Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ?

I'm so happy to hear that. Why don't you pray this prayer with me today? Dear God, I know that you love me very, very much, and I know that the Lord Jesus Christ came and died on a cross so that I might be forgiven of my sin. Today, I repent of my sin. I confess my sin to you, and I invite you to come into my heart and into my life, I pray. In Jesus' name I pray. If you prayed that prayer, let me be the first one to welcome you to the family of God.

This is wonderful. I hope that you know how much I'm going to be praying for you and how very important this is for me. Call us so that we can talk to you and connect you in the right place so you can begin this wonderful journey, and in just a moment I'm going to come back with a final word.

Perhaps moments ago you were praying along with Dr. Wilton to give your life to Jesus Christ or rededicate your life to Christ, or perhaps even now you have questions about what it is to say yes to Jesus Christ. We are here to speak with you, to talk to you specifically about your situation at the other end of 866-899-WORD. Again, that's the phone number. Jot it down. As Dr. Don would say, we are happy to be your 2 a.m. friend.

Store it in your cell. You can call anytime. We'd love to pray with you and for you and connect you with great resources. As a matter of fact, right now, if you just gave your life to Jesus Christ, or today you are rededicating your life to Christ, Dr. Wilton has specific resources he wants you to have absolutely free if you'll call us. 866-899-WORD is the number. That's 866-899-9673. You can also connect with us on our website at www.tewonline.org. It's www.tewonline.org.

It's a place you'll discover great resources like this. It's easy to celebrate Valentine's Day by buying candy and flowers, but when was the last time you actually prayed for your spouse? Join Dr. Wilton as he unpacks a powerful message on the forgiving family. Plus, you will receive 31 days of prayer books for my husband and wife. This offer set will help you learn how to support each other through prayer and how important forgiveness plays in the family. Not only are marriages under attack, the family is also under attack. Support your spouse through prayer and see what God does in both of your lives. Commit to praying 31 days for your spouse. Let God change your spouse.

Let God change your family. Call us today at 866-899-WORD and request the February offer for your gift of $25 or more per set. Thank you for your support of the encouraging word. That's just one of the many resources available on our website at www.tewonline.org. Again, I believe it's now in its second printing. So many friends have been asking about the book that Dr. Wilton wrote called Saturdays with Billy. About his time being the pastor of Dr. Billy Graham. That resource and many more, again, are on our website at www.tewonline.org. Or if you're interested in getting a copy, just call us, 866-899-WORD is the number.

That's 866-899-9673. And before we get away, closing thoughts from our pastor, Dr. Don Wilton. Well, here I am again.

What a day this has been. You know, one of the things I want to say to you is let's stay connected. You know, we've got so many means to be able to do that.

You can write to us, email us. You've got all the details right there in front of us. We are, we're a family together. We stay connected in so many ways. And your life is very important to me. I see you there. And God shows me, and I want to be able to pray with you and connect with you and be a vital part of your relationship, your growth. Your needs are maintained. I'm walking in your shoes. And I want to pray for you.

Please don't stop. Call us, write us, keep praying, keep giving, keep connecting, keep rejoicing, keep celebrating, keep striving. God is on his throne. This is the encouraging word, and now you know why. It's been a great day of studying God's encouraging word together, and we'll do more of this at the same time tomorrow. As a matter of fact, headed to 1 Thessalonians with a unique title called The Christian ID. That's what's coming up tomorrow on the next edition of The Encouraging Word with Dr. Don Wilton. You'll find more details, and you can hear today's broadcast again on our website. That's T-E-W online dot O-R-G.