Sharing Jesus…Across the Street, Around the World!

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast, our show.

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Spinning balls and talking about Jesus all over the world, and now I have actually got a captive audience. He's here at a coffee shop, Buy Good Coffee, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It's beautiful. It's fall.

It's outside. Randy Shepherd, Crossfire. We like to take the show on the road, and when I get Randy Shepherd, he's moving so fast, leading so many folks to Christ, which is what excites me about your ministry. You're always casting the net. You're always talking about people getting saved. This is why he came, to send us out, and that's what God's doing.

And tell everyone just where does this come from? Because we just met a guy who's a baller. Buy Good Coffee, Darryl, left-hand guy. He can shoot the ball. He's tough, great ball player, but he didn't know about Crossfire.

For those just finding out about you, how do you describe it? You and Jamie, God did something there, didn't he, to bring you all together? Well, the Apostle Paul said to use all means necessary to win some, whether it's basketball, electrician, plumbing, sweeping the floor, Walmart, whatever God's called you to.

He wants to be a light to the world. We played against each other, middle school, high school, and college. Jamie played at Gardner Webb. I went to UNC Asheville. God got a hold of me there. My junior year, called me into sports ministry.

We've been blessed to be doing this now for almost 30 years in 68 countries, 47 states. But person here on the corner or the president is just as important as we know in God's eyes. So we have to be faithful by his grace to share the gospel. I had good mentors. A pastor that led me to the Lord, got to sit under Dr. Adrian Rogers for four years in Memphis. So you learn by your mentors and those that teach you. And I'm thankful I had good teachers and just trying to be faithful, brother.

And so many people listening will say things, Randy, like, well, that's Randy. I mean, he's got a gift of evangelism. And you know, you're very humble in that. And you know, God's gifted you, but it's a calling and it's a passion.

You've got energy in that way. But you're not letting the rest of us Christians off the hook about sharing our faith, are you? No, Dr. Rogers used to say, you may not have the gift of evangelism, but every Christian is called to be an evangelist. And I was blessed to spend about an hour with Dr. Billy Graham about a year before he died. He gave a statistic that always share, which I was in that category for way too long. He believed that 95% of us that name the name of Jesus will never lead one soul to Christ.

And the Bible doesn't say we're to lead him to Christ, but it says we're to go and share the gospel and the results are in the Lord's hands. Wow. So you do this through a whole lot of different things. We were honored to put your Crossfire basketball camp ads all over the network. We were tickled to death for that because we knew that parents could take their kids up to the beautiful mountains of North Carolina to an amazing camp.

And I know you got that coming up again, and people are very excited, especially with things opening up. But you also do missions trips. You'll go share Christ with a middle school team. But like tomorrow, you'll be in front of a big division one team with a legendary Hall of Fame level coach sharing the gospel too. So it's, I guess you're an equal opportunity evangelist, right brother?

Definitely. I learned a long time ago that obviously we know the word says God is not a respecter of persons. So we go where God opens the doors. And whether it's a middle school team or a D1 team or a pro team, God just wants us to be faithful. You talked about that this morning in your Bible study about being obedient with the right motives.

And you know, we have to check our motives every day. So I'm willing to share the gospel with anyone. The Lord opens up the door and just thankful for the grace to do it. Praise the Lord. We got a guy asking for directions.

Howdy, sir. Hey, make sure you tell about 97.7 Christian radio here in the area. Spiritual directions right there might point them to heaven. They might hear about you on there, you know. And we were, this is real, this is real time.

None of this is censored, edited out. Stu Epperson here on Truth Talk nationwide. We've got 200 affiliates that carry the program. Thankful to our friends at AFR, our friends at Wilkins Radio, the Truth Network, some Salem stations carry us. We're grateful for everyone that carries this program.

And as long as we have this program, we're going to invite people to come to know Jesus. He's the boss. Hey, we're in sales.

He's in management. Randy Shepherd, that's what you're doing. Tell everyone a little bit about how they can get involved in Crossfire. A lot of folks are fans, and that's good, and they pray for you, but you know, maybe now they can, is you depend on the support financially of some gracious folks, don't you? So they can donate as well, can't they?

Oh yeah, we have a little lady that gives us $10 a month, and we tried to get her to stop giving, and she said, you little whippersnappers, don't tell me what to do. God told me to do this. Then we have a businessman that writes a big check, but as you were talking about this morning, the widow's mite may be a bigger gift than the business, this businessman's large check, so we ask people to pray, but you can't get on a plane without finances, so if you would like to be a part, crossfireministry.com, or you can go to my Facebook page, Randy Shepherd, or Crossfire Ministry Facebook page, and pray. If God leads you to give, we believe that God will bless and give back for gospel ministries, and like truth, we're trying to share the gospel, and that's the Lord's heart, is come follow me, and I'll make you become fishers of men. Randy, tell me what it's like when you're standing up there, and you're inviting, whether it's a bunch of grown men that think they can play basketball like me, or a bunch of real ballers, whether it's NBA guys or Division 1 guys, what's it like when you see someone bow that knee and take and invite Christ in their life and repent of their sin? Tell me what that's like for you when you see that, you see the change in the eyes. You're not seeing someone just cop a prayer or just follow through and just kind of get through the Lord's prayer. You're seeing, you get real, you give a hard gospel. Tell us what it's like when you see that change, that Jesus Christ come alive in them.

Well, there's nothing better than that. I mean, we've all been competitors, we've all wanted to play sports at a high level, but when a person gives their life to Christ, you know that's affecting them for eternity, and I think it was Dwight L. Moody that once said he sees an S or L on someone's forehead, and I literally asked the Lord, help me to see an S or L. You know, we walk around and people, we talk about our children, our grandchildren, we talk about sports, we get excited about ball games, but it's my prayer that I would and that other Christians that are listening, that we would get excited about souls and it would pray and ask God to open up the hearts and prepare the hearts of those that we can plant the seed with. You may get rejected, but it's okay.

You know, I say it's the best offense of the world. If someone comes to Christ, you get a reward. If you get rejected, you get a reward, so you can't beat that, and we've been blessed in America. 300,000 people around the world will die for the cause of Christ, Stu, and we're pretty relaxed in America. We're not really being persecuted yet, but it could be coming, so I pray that we remain faithful and just, it's not our ability.

You don't have to be a great athlete, a beauty queen, or a millionaire. It's our availability. God called the fishermen. He called the common man and said, hey, come follow me, and I'll make you become fishers of men. We have the same power living inside of us that raised Jesus Christ from the grave, so I encourage you, let's overcome our fears. Let's ask the Lord to go before us and give us the words and give the gospel, and the results are in the Lord's hands. I want you to summon right now all of our Truth Warriors. If you're listening right now and you know the Lord, Randy is going to evangelize you into evangelizing others, so I want you, you don't know all their friends. You can't witness to all their friends. They can download this podcast and hear your story, and I hope you'll share this Truth Talk podcast, but Randy, mobilize everyone out there.

Maybe they're sitting there thinking, I don't know, what do I, where do I start? I got this friend, he's a super smart neighbor who's a big science guy, and I don't know how to talk that stuff. Give a little challenge in a practical way for just a baby step way for us to bring babies into Christ. Sure, I like to use our brother from Florida who is a good Presbyterian brother.

He's in heaven now, but he had EE, evangelism explosion, and he had a diagnostic question. I use this often. You can lovingly say to someone, hey friend, can I ask you a question? Most people won't turn you down. You say, hey, I pray this doesn't happen, but if you died today, it could happen to any of us, and you stood before God, and he said, why should I let you into my kingdom? What would you say?

And if we went to Walmart this afternoon, ask a hundred people, 70 would give this answer. Number one, I'm a good person. Well, we know the Word says there is none good, not even one. So we lovingly say, hey, if we could get good enough to get to heaven, Jesus died for nothing. Another answer we'll get is I'm Baptist Methodist Presbyterian Catholic Charismatic Church of God, Episcopalian Lutheran. Denomination is fine, but there are many denominational people that have never repented and put their faith in Christ. So I encourage you keep it on the death barrel in the resurrection.

People will get you off on rabbit trails. What about those people in the jungles of Africa or Tanzania or wherever that have never heard about the Lord? Well, I bring it back to them and say, hey, we've heard about the Lord.

This is a decision that we have to make. And I heard something from a Gideon the other day, very quickly. When you pray for the lost, number one, pray that the enemy would be bound in their life.

That's scriptural. Number two, that the Lord would pull down the strongholds and the lies that they've been believing. Number three, that he would give them the grace and the mercy to believe.

And number four, thank him ahead of time for the results. If we pray those scriptural things, I believe we'll see more fruit and people coming to know the Lord. And the key is prayer. And then just write your testimony down two or three minutes, memorize the Roman road, even get some gospel tracts. And we don't want to jam them in their face and say, hey, you're going to hell, which is the truth if they don't know Christ, but let's put a smile on our face. That says the Lord to give us the words, give us the joy of the Lord is our strength and share.

And let's leave the results in the Lord's hands. Well, he's on there like I'm on there with Facebook and Instagram and all these things. Go follow Randy Shepard, Crossfire Ministries, get to know him and Jamie Johnson and let them kind of model and mentor you. They've been mentoring me and sharing the faith. I'm around this guy. I want to go tell someone about Jesus.

It's contagious. And I mean, it'd be a terrible thing if they found the Lord and got saved and they might go start sharing Christ with people. And next thing you know, souls are getting saved and the Lord comes.

So give us the website. Folks can send a financial contribution, whatever they got is going to go toward helping you reach souls. Or maybe just they can pray for you and get to know you get on your newsletter chain.

Sure. It's www.crossfireministry.com or our office number is 828-255-9111 located in Asheville, North Carolina. Let me say a word about truth. Jamie and I were blessed to help truth as they helped us spread the word about the camp. They're giving the word of God. They're giving biblical preaching out. You can't support a better ministry than where the word of God is going out. God will bless back. And I encourage you to pray for truth and support truth. Praise the Lord. Thank you.

Randy Sheppard, Crossfire Ministries. And we got after all this carrot cake here, we're going to have to go for a finer run. We got to go find a game. Then we're going to share Jesus. Let's do it brother.

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