Best of: Go Share Good News!

This is Sam from the Masking Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. I'm glad you're here right now on Truth Talk Live. I'm Stu Everson, your host, and while we obsess with our challenges and our light scheme and our brand and all that stuff, there's two billion people in the world that have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Two billion people who are bound toward hell, a Christless eternity.

Just do a little study on hell and realize this is serious business. How can we reach them? Well, there's a friend of mine. This guy's radical. He's ticked off just about everybody we know, you know, because he's just so radical. He's been at lunch with our Truth Warrior interns quite a bit, Truth of Youth guys.

He is Jeff Chetwood, and he is with a ministry called International Commission. Now, Jeff, put that mic right on your chin, okay, or we're not going to be able to hear you. You can move that mic boom.

It'll move around a little bit. Jeff, tell us a little bit about your testimony, and the Warrior interns each are going to ask you one question about missions. Tell us a little bit about what got you. You were living the good life, four kids, living on Country Club Road, having a nice home, making good money, and suddenly something radically changed your life. Can you take us to that point real quick, sir?

Yes. God called me to tell the world about Jesus. That didn't make any sense to me. I didn't have four children. I had three children, one in college and two about to go to college, and one needing braces and a house payment and a wife and two dogs, and nothing made sense. But God called me to tell the world about Jesus, and nobody understood what that was.

But flash forward a number of years, quit my job, went to seminary for three years to get a Master of Divinity at Southeastern, planted a church with Calvary under marked course four and a half years, and then God called me to the other side of the world, to 20 countries in Asia. Seven of them had 2% or less Christian. Twelve of them had 10% or less Christian. Four are Muslim with Sharia law. Four are Communist.

One is just Waco, Myanmar, where we're leaving to go there tomorrow, and another one is in Mindanao with the El Cada in the Philippines. So we go and we share the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. We leave the results to God. We take people with us from churches here to partner with churches there, and God raises up thousands on the other side of the world to go out and share the Gospel, to use an Operation Andrew. Billy Graham technique that the International Commission has used for 44 years, and millions upon millions have come to a saving relationship worldwide. So I think you and Jody went to India, but before you went, all the pastors, a while back, all the pastors got together and prayed for nine months, right, ahead of time and fasted?

That's correct. You get there, and what happens? Well, what happens is in 2002, we went on our first mission trip. We went to India and we had 7,710 pray to receive Jesus within two weeks. That had grown to 17,000. It will triple in three months and go to a multiple of five eventually, except in India, where they continue to pass out Operation Andrew cards, and people who accept Jesus continue to pray for 10. And what that does is it's like a tsunami wave that never stops, and so the waves keep going, and it's an incredible thing.

And you can be a part of it. We get so comfortable, and I hate to use this word, but we get kind of apathetic in America. We've got all our little problems, man. We've got probably more shrinks and counselors than we do have people. Because we're so obsessed with our problems, we do have a lot of challenges, and it's not to undermine the need of—we all need counseling, but we all need discipleship. But we have what I guess we could call it first world problems, where we have these issues that are non-essential to eternity, and here you have countries like India where there's people that have never heard about the saving grace of Jesus. And that's what you're called to with International Commission, which is—so you guys are an aggressive evangelism church-planning ministry.

You don't go over and do a lot of the social work. You go over there, and you pound the gospel to people, get them saved, and get them reproducing right away. That's correct. This is intentional evangelism. This is not sharing. This is not social gospel. This is sharing the gospel. Okay, I've got to get my Truth Warrior Senior Warrior intern, Noah Williams. Noah, I've got a question for Mr. Chetwood. We've met with this guy a couple of times. He always fires you guys up, doesn't he?

Yes. So as a young person today, what can we be doing that is radical in today's society as, like I said, as a young person? Well, would you believe that tomorrow morning at 5.45 I get on a plane for Myanmar, and then I go to the Philippines. We will go into high schools in Manila. There are 12 million in Manila proper and 5 million transients, 17 million. And we are working with 35 churches, and we'll have 105 elementary schools, high schools, and universities that we will go into, average size 5,000.

We have two teenagers who are, actually we have three teenagers who are 15 years old. They are going with us. They will be standing in front of a high school of 15,000 to share the gospel. That's radical.

Yes, sir. Yeah, that is radical. And they're going to share the gospel, and they're going to give an invitation for them to pray to receive Jesus. And you're going to have thousands come to saving relationship, and then they're carrying materials home. And so the families are going to be reading this material, and, you know, you may have 10 in a family.

So the multiplier is taking place, and that's by the Holy Spirit of God. Wow. Okay, so let's get Davis here, our other Truthoriented. Davis has a quick question for you.

Go ahead, sir. Somewhat as a follow-up question, what would you say people can do in their daily lives? Because for some of us, especially when we talk about third-world countries and thousands being saved, it sounds quite intimidating. So what for someone, especially if they have obligations to stay here in the States and maybe stay where they are, what can people do in their daily lives to continue to share and minister the gospel in the place that God currently has put them in? Well, the answer to that was given by Jesus in Acts 1-8, that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses first in Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. Your Jerusalem is your hometown.

Your Jerusalem are the people within your family, your mom and dad, your family, your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, the people you go to school with, the people you go to work with, the people that you meet at the grocery store, the people across the street, at the mailbox across the street. You have an opportunity to share the only message that will change an eternity, and that is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. You do it because you've got a relationship with Him, but it's out of your relationship with Christ that you share this gospel, and it's in His power, and He does it all.

Yeah, what a great answer, and what a great question. And I think, Jeff, some people can't go over there, but when people do go over there and they see that, it's pretty jolting. It's a wake-up call, and that's why we encourage people to go on missions trips.

We encourage people to go see for themselves what God's doing, because when you go into a country where it's illegal to own a Bible, you go to a country where you meet with people whose pastor was executed the week before, it sobers you up a little bit, but it also challenges these people. They're not running because of that. They're running into the fire. They're not running away from it. They're running to it to reach more people for Christ.

That's right. When you ponder the fact that what I am seeing over there, I have never seen in America. When the God of the universe shows up, and He shows out, and thousands come to the Lord.

Guess what? This is the same one who saved me here. He is the same one who calls me to be here in my Jerusalem. We do travel with those who are willing to die for the gospel. And in going in the places we go, my life is on the line.

My wife's life is on the line. The people's lives are on the line. One of our contacts in Myanmar, he said, you have risked your life to come here to share the gospel. But those pastors behind you are going to take you out, and they're willing to die to protect you. And so we are going, and these are the brothers and sisters in Christ who are following the directions of Jesus, not of the government they live under, which is so oppressive. Yeah, amen. Well, thank you for what you're doing.

International Commission, just Google that. Out of Dallas, Texas, you go to the— Lewisville, Texas. Every time this guy is on with me, we talk. He always tells me this is quite a wake-up call. He says, I got a 50-50 chance of not coming home, right?

50-50 chance of not being alive at Christmas every year for the last 15 years. So pray for Jeff Jody. I taught his son Eric in ninth grade science school years ago. Now he's on fire for God in the workplace in the Durham Chapel Hill area. He loves Jesus and listens to us on our wonderful Truth Network affiliates there in the Triangle area.

105.5, 105.7, AM 1030. We're just grateful for you. We're going to pray for you while you're gone, and we love to support what you're doing. If you would like to go with International Commission, we're going to every continent of the world. We are attempting to go into every country every year by 2020, and that means 50 international projects with Americans and internationals going into these continents.

You want to go to any continent, we have projects in any continent, and most likely in the country you want to go. Amen. All right, that's a challenge to go. You can't go pray. You can all pray.

Actually, I get the wrong order. You can't go give, and you can't give pray, but try to do all three and watch what God does. I've known people that have gone with this guy on trips and come back, just life changed, really, by what they've seen and what they've seen God do. It's like taking a trip back in the Book of Acts. Everyone says, Oh, let's study Acts and find out what was really going on in that church, what was a fire.

Well, go to Myanmar, go to the Philippines. You'll walk right into the Book of Acts. These Christians in China, if someone comes to faith in Christ, they are instantly going to another village to plant a church to lead other people to Christ.

They're reproducing like crazy. In America, someone comes to faith in Christ, and sometimes we're like, Hey, slow down. Hey, quit talking to that person about the Lord. Hey, quit passing those gospel tracts. What are you thinking? Separation of church and state. Hey, come on, you can't be doing that, but this is a great fire, Jeff. Thanks for your encouragement. Learn more at International Commission's website, and also we're at TruthNetwork.com.