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How Does God Want You To Reach The Lost · Bible Tract Echoes Podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey friend, welcome back to Bible Tract Echoes.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for joining me once again today.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about 21st century evangelism.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the program this week, we've meandered through this conversation just a little bit.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I spoke about a fishing expedition that did not go very well, possibly because I had the wrong lure on the end of my line.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where I want to kind of,
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: spend some time today, the lure.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are we trying to lure people to Jesus?
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are we trying to cause them to be so sucked in by charisma, by personality, by bright lights and by glitter?
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or are we trying to give them stake?
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe the sizzle doesn't matter quite as much.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to be very clear.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: My fishing illustration from a few days ago, when I got zero fish in my compatriot caught 50 something fish or more, it does break down after a little while.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The illustration is not a perfect representation of how 21st century evangelism should go, but I do want to point this out.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do want to talk about the fact that you and I have an opportunity to demonstrate,
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: See, we're not looking to give people a lure so we can hook them.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to show the true love of Christ to a lost and dying world, but if we're doing it in such a way that the message is not received, then what was the point of giving the message in the first place?
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It would be just like me speaking to an empty room.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: If there is no microphone in the room,
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: If there is no way for the signals for my voice right now to get to you, there would be no point in me talking with there, while I could talk to myself, but that might be just a little bit odd.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about reaching people in the 21st century.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about reaching them where they are.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talked yesterday about being personal.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talked about how we have a powerful opportunity to influence multitudes of people.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: We didn't quite get to this yesterday, but I want to speak about the fact for just a moment that we have a chance to be pointed.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can, much like being personal, we can reach the few instead of being so disturbed by the fact that we aren't seeing the thousands.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think sometimes we get so uptight by the fact that we personally are not filling up baseball stadiums.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have events necessarily that the good-year blimp is hovering over that we forget the fact that Jesus Christ was rejected by many.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Realize that, yes, there were crowds, but one of the last crowds that ever gave him adulation when he was coming in on what we call Palm Sunday, as they laid down coats and as they laid down the palms and all those types of things, you realize that some of those very same people were screaming crucify him.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Crucify it.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be very careful about judging your impact by the size of your audience.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'd like to talk to you and to myself about the opportunity to be pointed.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why there will be times on this program that I'll deal with.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very specific things, things that maybe they're an impact on you, there's something that speaks to you, but maybe that's the next person, so you and I as Christians, we have an opportunity as well to be pointed in our daily interactions.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: one way that I enjoy in one way that I would encourage you to consider being pointed is with the use of specific gospel tracks.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite illustrations of this is a gospel track we have titled Peace in Terminal illness.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've said this many a time, but that track written by our founder in the last year of his life when he was dealing with terminal cancer, the title.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Peace in terminal illness.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not a gospel tract.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd recommend you give to eachinary person you meet.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not one maybe that you'd even carry to give to the cashier at Walmart or the teller at the bank.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unless you know something that I don't, I would recommend you don't use that gospel tract for eachinary person.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there are opportunities when we can use that gospel tract.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We had someone contact us not long ago.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Man in a nursing home actually a hospice home, and he, along with the vast majority of the people, the residents of that hospice home, they were there for a specific reason, because they had days, weeks, months to live.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: The man was dealing with lung cancer, never smoked a cigarette a day in his life.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he was dealing with lung cancer, and the doctors told him he had about six months.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he ordered some gospel tracks, and we were able to send him peace, internal illness, and his desire was to reach as many people there in that hospice home as possible.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before he took his last breath, can I tell you that gospel track was probably very pointed.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: very personal and very powerful to the people that he was living there with.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd ask you, how do you use gospel tracks?
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd encourage you, maybe carry some general gospel tracks, but maybe carry some to reach law enforcement, to reach veterans, to reach folks that serve you.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: People in the service industry, maybe someone that you leave a tip for.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have gospel tracks for all of those things in many more.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have gospel tracks for coming up on Mother's Day.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, our past Easter Resurrection Sunday, but we have gospel tracks for Christmas.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of these different types of events, I encourage you, and oh, by the way, our tracks are free.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can go to bibletracksink.org.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's BibleTracksink.org to order some today.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can get them for free.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you've never received a sample book from us before, you can get one of those as well at BibleTracksink.org.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love to tell you about how you can use so many of these different tracks.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that sample book that will help you with that.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking this week about 21st century evangelism.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: reaching people where they are.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: For just a few moments I'll have to speak about the importance of a few different things when it comes to evangelism.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today or in yesterday or in the years to come we've got to be careful to have a schedule.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got to understand if things don't make it on the counter they will never happen.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you saying okay, so we have to set aside a day or a couple hours or something to go and be a vanslistic that that'd be a wonderful thing.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it'd be awesome and speaking to pastors and members of churches, many churches gave up or gave in or stopped there weekly outreach time, soul winning time when COVID happened in them.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Many did and very few of them have gone back to having that.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now this is not my point with talking about scheduling, but let's talk about that.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Would you guess that less people are being reached now than there were before?
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd say that's probably a high likelihood because there's less people going out at a scheduled time.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yes, having a scheduled time is great, but I'd like to talk to you about your schedule.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: When in your week do you ever think about the lost?
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: When do you ponder the opportunities God has given you to reach people?
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: They say this is I'm not going to quote this statistic well and so I won't even try.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll just give you the paraphrase of it.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Something on the lines of five minutes of preparation for a meeting.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can raise your apparent IQ by someone like 20 points?
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Point being, if you just spend a few moments preparing for something to come, you can seem your IQ, your intelligent quotient, or what have you just actually go up, but your apparent IQ goes up because you
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: prepared.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, that's why we've prepared for tests.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we prepare for really anything.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It'd be kind of difficult to bake a cake without any preparations being made.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have cake mix, if you don't have eggs, if you don't have sugar, it would be difficult to wouldn't that the cake wouldn't taste very good.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you just use what you have in your pantry, if you don't have anything to make a cake.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But why do we think that people are going to just stumble and heaven?
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why do we think that God would tell us, give us a great commission, and we're gonna talk about that tomorrow?
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think God would give us a great commission if he didn't think, if he didn't think it was gonna take some work on our behalf?
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need to have a schedule.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need to have a system in place, whereby maybe for you, it's simplest carrying gospel tracks from me, carrying gospel tracks alone, making me make me so much more soul conscious.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I realize I have the amines to read someone even in the light way the tracks can reach.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have a means too.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think tracks are the only way to reach people on the direct for track ministry, but tracks are not the only way to reach people.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we have our fingers in so many different pies that Bible tracks incorporate it.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why we are so involved in so many different things.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whether it be summer camps, vacation, Bible schools, you name it.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have so many different things going on because there are so many different ways to reach people,
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Door to door, confrontational, soul, winning, wherever it may be, but understand, if you don't have the beginning's system, you'll never improve any improvement you do make would simply be by accident.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I ask, are you going to lead more people to the Lord this year than you did last year?
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Easiest way to do that would be to have a system in place.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Friend, in this day.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: People are lost.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're on the way to hell, you know, as well as I.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost easy sometimes to tell.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was at a church, another long ago in Michigan.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: and spoke on Sunday morning, gave the gospel very clearly.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Preach the Christians, but gave the gospel.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was, please understand, this is not like Erie, some creepy, some extra, extra sensory ability, but the ability to figure out while I was preaching, as I was looking at the audience, but on your folks there.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was not difficult, however, to pick out the two young men that weren't saved.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they were honest enough to raise their hands.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And say, yeah, I know, I'm not on my way to heaven.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now I did not control them, I did not pressure them, I did not twist their arm to get them down the aisle.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't embarrass them, I called them their name or make them stand.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: They did not come for that day, and I'm praying for those two men they would look to be about.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Late teens early 20s raised their hands were honest enough to know that they weren't on the way to heaven Did not come forward.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do not accept Christ that day at least, but it wasn't difficult to die him out the fact that they were lost
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you go about your daily life, honestly, as a general rule, if you assume everyone you meet is lost, you're gonna be right 90 plus percent of the time, but it's not difficult.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: People so wait down by the cares of the world, so lost.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: They may be career driven, they may have lots of money, but lost.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have an opportunity to fulfill that great commission that we're gonna speak more about tomorrow.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have an opportunity as Christians to do so, but I've got to ask, are you?
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you?
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before we go another day, could you pause for just a brief moment and talk to God?
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: How might he want you to reach the lost around you?
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: my prayer.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: As always, is that you have a great day for his glory.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will plan on talking you tomorrow as we conclude this thought.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna finish up by diving into and just talking about giving him brief outline about and of the great commission that I hope will be to help to you, but I hope it's not just in one year and out the other.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you put
• 12:58
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning in to Bible Tract Echoes, the radio ministry of Bible Tracts Incorporated.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Want to see our gospel tracks and other resources?
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Visit us online at BibleTracksInk.org that's BibleTracksInk.org or follow us on social media to learn how you can partner with this ministry.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again for listening.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: May the Lord richly bless you as you live for Him.