Welcome to the Liberty Baptist Sermon Archives.
The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist
Church in Easton, MA. You can find out more about us
or contact us at my libertybaptist.org or just look
us up on Facebook. And now we hope that this
message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.
If you would turn into your next page here this evening, which is
verses to help and encourage the soul winner.
We'll start here this evening with several verses from God's
Word just to be able to give you a little bit of an overview, a
little bit of help here tonight. This is not the Romans Rd.
We'll be looking at that more tomorrow night, but just some
verses in general to be able to help and encourage you.
As we talked about this issue of soul winning, remember last
night we talked about the stakes, setting the pace.
Remember, a firefighter is in a situation where there's property
on the line, but perhaps there are no people that are on the
line that they would react a certain way.
But if there are souls in that building that's burning that
need to be brought out, they're going to give their everything
because they're going to do what they can to save those lives.
And so in the same way, understanding that there is a
lake of fire, understanding there's a heaven to be gained in
the hell to be shunned, that it ought to be able to put a little
pep in our step. It ought to give us some urgency
when it comes to this issue of reaching the lost.
And so we spent a lot of time looking at that last night
because again, we can give you all kinds of tools tonight and
tomorrow we can talk about all these things, but if you're not
willing to be able to go out and use them, it really is not going
to be a lot of help at all. So we want to see why is it so
urgent that we do all that we can for the Lord.
And so we'll start here with some of these verses.
Proverbs 1130 is really where we get that term soul winning.
We talked about it last night. I made reference to it very
quickly, that the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and
he that winneth souls is wise. One of the wisest things that
you can do is being able to give the gospel to someone else.
He that winneth souls is wise. Again.
That's where we get the term sole winner.
Matthew 2819. We just looked at this on
Sunday. Go ye therefore and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and the Holy Ghost. It's a reminder that this is the
Great Commission. But a lot of times for churches,
it's more of the great suggestion.
It's the idea, hey, if you have some time, will you go out and
reach some people for Christ? And a lot of times that's why
churches are dying. It's because they're just
literally not going out and trying to find the people who
were out there. The lost are all around us.
You can find them wherever you go.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
They're literally right there. And again, not everyone is open
to being able to hear about the gospel.
Certainly not. But there's probably a whole lot
more that are ready to hear than.
The chances that we take to be able to go and give the gospel.
And so this is the Great Commission.
We have been commissioned. God has given the church the
opportunity and has given us the great privilege to be able to
reach the loss for Christ. This is what we do.
Daniel 12 verse three. I like this.
And they shall and they that be wise shall shine as the
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to
righteousness as the stars forever and ever.
And not to try to twist the scriptures here, but I do think
it is interesting that but we call a lot of people stars today
that are stars for doing, well, absolutely nothing.
Or sometimes they're stars for doing something infamous more
than anything by starring in a movie where they curse and they
drink and they corrals and do these types of things.
We call them a star because they can throw a pigskin a really
long way or because they could shoot a basketball.
All of a sudden they're a *. But what is the star in God's
eyes? Well, it's the person who is
willing to go and share their faith with someone else and
God's economy, if you will. These are the ones who are the
true stars. And I think of the people who
have really impacted my life over the years.
And the ones that have really impacted me are not those people
in Hollywood, not those people wearing uniforms or jerseys for
teams, but they are really just humble people that I've met in
the churches that I've been a part of, not been a part of many
over the years. I've had really opportunity to
be in three churches, Westgate Baptist Church twice before
college and after college, Southwest Baptist Church for
four years while I was in college.
And then the years that I've been here at Liberty.
And I'll tell you, some of the people have impacted me the most
have been humble soul winners, people who have taught me about
how to go and win other people to Christ.
I think of Sam Gore, I've mentioned many times here before
back at Westgate Baptist Church and that he had Parkinson's
disease. It was difficult for him to walk
and he would go from door to door as many as he could to be
able to tell people about Jesus Christ.
And when he stopped being able to do that, you could count on
Sam Gore praying when the church was out on visitation because he
wanted to hear names. He wanted to know about
different people that were going out because he wanted to go to
the Lord in prayer on behalf of those who were going out.
I'll tell you what, that's a real star more than Drake May.
That's a real star more than Jayson Tatum.
But why? Because these are people that
are doing things for eternity. And by the way, Sam Gore was
never a pastor. Sam Gore was never on a pastoral
staff. He's not one of those people
that have been held up on a pedestal.
But at the same time, he affected me as a 17 year old and
18 year old who just gotten saved not that long ago.
And if he can go and share the gospel, well then why can't I go
and share the gospel? And so these are the stars, if
you will, in God's economy. Romans 116 is ironic for me
because it was given to me upon my confirmation, the Lutheran
Church as my life first. So my Lutheran pastor, Doctor
James R Gilzo gave me Romans chapter one verse 16 and I
didn't really understand it until after got saved and I it's
amazing to me for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
For is the power of God unto salvation unto everyone that
believeth to the Jew 1st and also to the Greece.
What should we not be? We should not be ashamed of the
gospel that which saved us. We should not then turn around
and be ashamed to be able to share it with other people.
Second Timothy 17 has really become for me that the true soul
winners verse. It's the one that I really hold
on to that I'll remind myself of on visitation quite a bit.
I have it written down in various places.
For God had not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and
of love and of sound mind. And I'll tell you, if you're
trying to win people to Christ, what more could you ask for than
power and love and a sound mind? What do we need?
We need the power of God when we're trying to witness to
somebody because it's really not about ourselves.
And that's something that we really need to remind ourselves
in this whole thing. Well, Pastor, I can't do it
again. The power we talked about on
Sunday, the omnipotent power of Jesus Christ, His Spirit will
help us because he has commissioned us to go.
So he will empower us to do that which he's commissioned us to
do. Of love.
There are some people we talked about last night.
They're unlovable in a lot of ways, but yet Jesus Christ loved
them enough to die for them. Across and so we need to love
them as well even some of those who might be considered unsavory
even some of those who are trying to go out of their way to
maybe even offend us knowing that we're Christians we need to
have. Love.
For them, the love of Jesus Christ and then a sound mind.
You know, when I was a teenager, I've mentioned this.
Before I loved. Debates.
I was in a debate team and we went to nationals and we did
really well. Me and Pastor David Corley, at
least he's now he's a pastor. You know, my best friend, I
loved it. Now I realize I don't love them
nearly as much as I did back then.
And one of the reasons why is that when I'm talking to
somebody about Jesus Christ, it's not a debate.
It's not, hey, let me talk about you.
I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to score points here.
It's really not about that. We're talking about a life
that's on the line, a soul that's on the line.
This isn't about just winning some trophy at some competition.
This is about someone whose soul hangs in the balance.
You know what I need A sound mind.
Because while they're talking, my mind.
'S going Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing.
Thinking about what I'm going to say, the next thing thing
they're about to say, and I could be missing what they're
saying and what they're trying to communicate to me because I'm
so busy trying to think of the next thing I'm going to tell
them that I'm totally missing out on that which I'm supposed
to be doing in the 1st place. What do you need?
A sound mind Second Timothy 17 I'll tell you if you are one who
marks in your Bible, just circle that whole verse, underline it,
highlight it, whatever you need to do the Lord without giving us
the spirit of fear. But of power and love and a
sound mind. And the last thing I'll say
about this, because I said I wasn't preaching tonight, but
the last thing I'll say about this is this.
If the Lord is not the one who gives, is the spirit of fear who
is? See, pretty simple, doesn't it?
It's Satan. Satan doesn't want us to open
her mouth. Satan doesn't want us to hand
out that track. Satan doesn't want us to win
people to Christ. And so if the Lord has not given
us the spirit of fear, it's pretty simple to figure out
who's the one who gave it to us. Why?
Because he wants you to be quiet when it comes to the gospel.
First Corinthians 916, Paul Speaking of his calling here.
But I think there's application for all of us.
For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of.
For necessity is laid, Yay. Woe is unto me if I preach not
the gospel. Paul says, I have a calling upon
me, and don't thank me for what I'm doing.
I'm just doing that which I'm called to do.
Now do we have the calling of Paul?
No. Are we apostles?
No. Are we missionaries in the way
that Paul was? No, we are not.
But yet God has laid the calling upon us to be able to reach
people for Christ, and woe unto us if we preach not the gospel.
In that sense, we can take that. For ourselves as well.
Psalm 126, verse six. He that goeth forth and weepeth,
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with
rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
What I love about that verse is it talks about the burden that
we're to have to be able to have tears for the lost, to truly be
sorrowful for the sake of the lost.
But it also gives us the idea of a harvest.
Of course, Jesus said to lift your eyes because the fields are
white and a harvest. But what do you recognize and
realize about a harvest? It takes a long time between
planting and reaping. It takes a while.
I'm not saying that someone couldn't get saved the very
first time you presented the gospel to them.
I'm not saying that's not the case.
But I think all of us would say whether it was ourselves or our.
Experiences sharing the gospel with others.
It takes a while, it takes a time, but at the end, when the
time of reaping has come. There's great rejoicing.
And so you. Stick with it, you stay at it
and little bits of the time you were able to share the gospel
with those who are lost. Jeremiah 20 verse 9 but his word
was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I
was weary with forbearing and I could not stay.
Jeremiah said in the verses before I wanted to quit.
I wanted to be done. Lord, just be done with me.
I am done with the Israel. I am done with what they're
doing. And then the Lord in his rebuke.
Got to the. The place with Jeremiah says,
you know what, actually, I got to preach the Word.
I got to tell the people what they need.
In fact, I feel like my heart's going to pound out of my chest
if I don't do that, which I need to do.
And I could tell you, I recognize that there are times
in the study that it's a Thursday.
A lot of times I start my messages for Sunday on a
Thursday. And there are times that it's
just like, man, if I could just go right now, man, I'd be glad
to do it because I just want, I know what.
The Lord is. Working on me and with those
verses, and I know that the Lord can be impactful to you about it
as well, but certainly even more so when it comes to the issue of
salvation. So these are some verses.
Maybe you can write these down in the flyleaf of your Bible.
Maybe this is something that you can mark in your Bible.
And again, I'm a big marker of Bibles.
In fact, I have a a wide margin Bible so that I can write on
either side, one column on one page, one column on the other.
I love to be able to write notes and different things like that
so I can remember later the things the Lord has taught me.
But these are. Verses you could just go in and
mark every single one of them down as a reminder to you of how
important it is to win souls to Christ and how the Lord will
help us as we win souls to Christ as well.
All right, let's get to the nuts and bolts on the next page
because it says I'm on visitation.
What do I do now? Let me explain a few things to
you before we get here. And we're going to cover both of
these both tonight and tomorrow. There's really two different
ways that we commonly win people to Christ.
One would be corporately that would be on our church wide
visitation. We've done this several ways
over the years. There was a great while where we
had visitation on a weekly basis.
But I also recognize that people have different schedules and
work obligations and things like that.
And they got to the point for a long time that it was really
myself, the family and maybe one other person, I think a brother,
Vince, a lot of times that he and I would go on visits for a
couple years, just me and him by ourselves.
And so I recognize over time that maybe, perhaps it would be
better for us to go monthly, have a Big Breakfast.
Well, have a breakfast, have a continental breakfast.
Those Jimmy Dean sausage sandwiches are pretty good,
aren't the Dave. So the best microwave sandwiches
you can find, we got them around here.
Amen. But and then go out once a
month. Now, we've had some difficulty
with our scheduling the last couple months because the
holidays and the weather and different things like that.
But it's our desire to be able to go out at least once a month
and do this corporately, to give ourselves an excuse to be able
to go and tell people about the Lord.
We also have different special days during the year.
We'll have an open house or a friends and family Sunday.
I think of Easter that's coming up here, Resurrection Sunday in
a few weeks. These are all special
opportunities for us. We have special tracks for
Resurrection Sunday week to be able to hand out to people, to
let people know that we have a Tuesday service.
We have. Well, we don't tell them about
the Tuesday service. It's the Lord's Supper.
We have a Friday service. Now, I'm not of the belief that
Jesus died on a Friday, but at the same time, there's a lot of
people that think of Good Friday like the Catholic Church.
And so you know what? We have a Friday service.
I wouldn't argue with anybody over it, but we have a Friday
service because we found that some people from that tradition
will come over here and we get to talk to them about the
Gospel. And so that's been a wonderful
thing. We're doing that again here this
year, but we have these opportunities where we can
corporately go out. And so we want to learn how do
we do that. So for instance, we're going to
be going out on Saturday. I hope that you'll come on
Saturday. And if you don't come this
Saturday that you come the next time that we have opportunity.
But you come in, we have breakfast.
Everybody knows what to do about breakfast.
Amen. But when do you do after
breakfast? There's there's cards and cards
laying in a table out here. There's three different sections
that there are to be able to choose.
From there's one with just a bunch of cards from people have
visited over the last couple years.
There's one section usually with door hangers and maps where you
can go out and you can reach people just door to door.
And there's another section where people can just write
letters. Maybe they can't go out or not
able to go out for whatever reason.
They stay behind and write letters with tracks inside of
them to people who've come in the past and just remind them
the Liberty Baptist Church is here.
We called all in outreach for reason.
Everybody's got something to do. Everybody has an ability.
So even if you physically cannot go out for whatever reason, you
can still come here. If you're able, you can sit
down, you can have some fellowship.
It you can have a cup of coffee, you can write some letters.
And it's amazing to me that we'll get out maybe 1520 or so
cards, notes out every time we do it.
And you say, pastor, what is the fruit of all the things that
we're doing? And the answer is, I don't
always know. I don't always know, because you
would think if we go out on a Saturday, just a whole host of
people just breaking down the door to come in on Sunday,
That's the way it is, right? Well, if they're breaking down
the door, it's probably because the frost heave at the door more
than anything. But.
But no, honestly, there are times we'll make visits and
people will say, oh, yeah, I'm going to be there on Sunday,
Pastor, and nobody shows up. In fact, I love one of the
things I love about New England because in the South, everybody
tells you they're going to come on Sunday.
Oh, bless their heart. I'm going to be there on Sunday.
And then none of them show up. A lot of times up here, they
don't want to come. They'll just tell you, look, I
don't want to come. And it's like, well, OK, I can
appreciate your honesty and candor if nothing else.
But still, even then we get people that will say they'll
come and they don't come. So we'll get some of that.
But I've always found that the Lord blesses our efforts.
That's really what it comes down to, because we can't force
people to come to church. We can't force people to come to
Jesus Christ. But we can't control what we do.
Just like the fishermen can't control how many fish jump on
the line, the fishermen can't control how many times he goes
out and fishes in the 1st place. And what are we supposed to be
fishers of men, The Bible tells us?
And so we have to have the same mentality.
So you're going to have sometimes where we together as a
church are going to come together and have a visitation
program where we have all these different things.
So the question on this side is what do we do in this case?
But then on the other side, we have the issue of visitation.
And really soul winning is not something that happens once a
week or once a month for a couple hours a day.
The real issue of salt winning is that it is not something
that's put on the calendar. It's just something you do with
your life. And so we have to ask ourselves
this question, how do we win people to Christ when we have
brief interactions with them? How do we win people to Christ
when we see someone on a regular basis at a coffee shop, at the
library, at a doctor's office? And again, I understand you're
not going to win someone to Christ at a checkout line or
they're going to beep, beep, beep.
I mean, it's just not going to happen.
Why? Because they got a beep, beep,
beep. Keep getting that stuff across
the belt, right? You're not going to have the
time. But can you move them a little
bit closer to the understanding of who Jesus Christ is by the
way, that you handle yourself, maybe by handing them a track,
Those types of things. These are the things that we
want to talk about over the next few days.
Those times when we have made purposeful effort as a church to
be able to come together. What do we do?
How do we do it on this organized visitation program, if
you will? But then on the other side, and
we'll handle this more tomorrow night as well.
So what do we do on a day-to-day basis with those people?
Do we come in contact with, even if it's family or friends, it
doesn't have to be strangers. It's those people that we've
really been wanting to talk to about the Lord, but we just
don't know how to do it. So we'll be talking about both
of these things. But first we're going to talk
about visitation. What, what will we do on a
Saturday? Because a lot of people want to
be a part. They're just afraid to be a
part. And he said, well, are you
saying I'm afraid? Well, for a lot of us, yes.
That's really what it comes down to.
Let's just call it what it is. And interestingly enough, I've
been doing this for a very long time.
And I will tell you that there's still on a Saturday morning when
I'm getting ready to get in the car and I got that first card.
I'm thinking, I don't know how they're going to respond.
And I'm the pastor. And sometimes that means they
could respond really well, or sometimes that could be they
respond really not well because they don't want the pastor
showing up at their house. And so even for me, there's this
trepidation of what exactly is going to happen.
So I understand, don't think that I am above, I've reached a
spiritual plateau when it comes to talking about Jesus or
visiting people that all of a sudden that I'm just super
comfortable with it. And you probably are not.
Can I put it to you this way? We're all in the same boat
because again, Satan doesn't want you to be comfortable with
it. Satan doesn't want you to be
able to do this. That's where we have to be able
to push past that initial fear that we have and say the Lord
has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love
and of sound mind. So what are some principles that
we use on visitation? Let me help you with this.
We go 2 by two. First of all, we don't send
anyone out by themselves on visitation.
That's not something that we do really.
If anyone ever goes out by themselves on visitation, it's
me. And the reason why is because
sometimes there's not enough pairs to be able to do so.
And I do feel like a pastor can go up to someones house by
himself and people are willing to answer.
But even then I have to be careful because if it's a woman
that I'm going to visit, I have to stand on the doorstep.
I don't go inside. I have to really kind of think
about those kind of things. But for the best, really going 2
by 2 is the way to do it. And you see there it says, first
of all, it's not required, but it is a biblical principle.
Do you think there's a reason that Jesus sent the disciples
out two by two? I think there's several reasons.
Maybe. What would a reason that you
would think that Jesus And you just speak up.
The microphones will pick you up.
Don't worry, everybody's watching hundreds of people.
OK, I shouldn't have said that, all right, But what is the
reason you think Jesus would have sent out the disciples 2 by
two? Moral support?
That's a big one. That's a big one because if
somebody is not happy you're there, at least you got your
buddy with you, you know what I'm saying?
That's a big, that's a big deal right there.
It's an important thing for us to be able to go out to do that.
Now, would you say, John, that's a big one.
That's a big one as well. We'll talk about the silent
partner in a minute. And the silent partner is the
one that really is not taking the lead route, but is in prayer
the whole time, praying for the situation, praying for wisdom
for the soul winner, praying that distractions are kept at
Bay. That's a huge one as well.
Were you going to say Dan? The work of the church is a
group effort, right? It's.
A group effort. Even in those situations, if you
don't have two by two at times, you report back at the church,
the church, correct? Absolutely.
Yeah. And we can end up being a little
bit of a lone wolf, have lone wolf syndrome.
And so it's good to be able to go out together, to rejoice
together. Also, if someone gets saved,
guess what? You can't take all the credit,
by the way. We can't take any of the credit.
The credit goes to the Lord. But having someone else there is
just a reminder. Hey, it wasn't just me.
That's a very good point as well.
All these things are good. What would you say, Lisa?
Safety, Safety Boy, I tell you, nowadays that's true.
Even then you consider how people would have been to be
able to have someone else with you is an important thing.
And so that's what we do to be able to go and we always have
two by two. Again, I'm not saying that that
it has to be this way. There's no biblical command, but
we do see the principal and I do think it's a wise principle for
us to follow. We just have right here.
First of all, I could set the person at home at ease when they
see two people there. Usually it would be a little,
believe it or not, better than one person there.
There have been times we've sent three people to a door because
we've had odd numbers. And you get to the point where
the group starts getting that big and it looks like, you know,
a barbershop quartets coming to your house to sing.
And it's it's not really something that you're going for.
And so you do have to be careful that the group is not too big.
But at the same time, it could set them at ease.
Who was on the inside, Fend off possible distractions I have
dealt with before having a dog come.
And this dog is just rambunctious, honestly, the
silent partner, that person, excuse me, we'll talk more about
that in a minute. Could play with the dog you say,
well, that's that's kind of dumb No, it's not because if that dog
is barking the whole time you're not getting anything across and
so that dog can that person can talk to the dog that person can
talk to the child maybe there's a child that's kind of there.
And I think of a visit we had just recently from the back to
school bash with a family that's here right now and I could sense
as we were talking that my wife was really making the connection
with the family. I'm not saying that I wasn't,
but I could just tell that she was kind of zeroing in on some
of the needs and they were talking about special needs and
those kind of things. And then the kid comes out and
he is, he's excited. Like he's excited, we're there,
he's excited, the pastor's there, the pastor's wife there,
and he's full of energy. And so the next thing I know,
I'm on the ground playing toys with him.
Here's the pastor and I'm playing.
You know why? Because somebody needs to talk
to him about the Lord. And if one of us didn't take the
step back, then what was going to happen?
Nobody was going to be talking about the Lord at all.
And so there's a recognition that that is part of it as well.
And then again, can be in prayer, the silent partner and
you probably had training in this before, John and and that
your experiences before is that typically we'll look at this in
a second. There is someone who takes the
lead because if not, it's two people talking over one person.
That can be intimidating. I've also found that if I'm
talking more primarily, but then someone else starts talking as
well, I could be going One Direction and that other person
go the other direction and all of a sudden maybe the groundwork
that we're laying gets overturned because of the other
person's random thought that comes in.
And so it's always good to be able to have a lead even as you
go 2 by two. Now ask yourself this, what kind
of visit are you making on visitation?
We have all kinds of different visits that need to be made.
All of them can be about Jesus Christ.
All of them should be about Jesus Christ.
But there are different kind of cards that you will find on the
table. If you are making a visitation
visit. You have to ask yourself this
question, is this someone who you know has a testimony of
salvation? Because on this table could be
someone that is saved, but maybe it's been out of church for a
while. We do have benevolence visits,
the type of visits where someone is sick, someone has been laid
up and they just need someone to come by and just encourage them.
We have those kind of visits. But sometimes, especially those
visits we have from the Back to School Bash.
We have 40 some families that came to the Back to School Bash
in August. We've already visited them all
one time, but, or at least we've attempted to visit them all one
time, but the idea is we have no assurance that these people are
saved. So what are we gonna do?
We're gonna go to them and talk to them about the church.
But that really is a way because for us to talk about the Lord.
Because I wanna remind you, the visitation is not about Liberty
Baptist Church recruitment. It is not about, hey, let's get
a bigger church and let's just get some people to come over
here. If we're going to do that, we
might as well just join Amway because that's probably the best
thing that we can do. This is an Amway.
You know what this is? If we're building anything,
we're building the Kingdom and if the Lord sees fit to build
Liberty Baptist Church at the same time, we thank the Lord for
that. But it's all about their soul.
But we do talk to them about the church and we don't apologize
for that because we want them to be able to come and hear the
gospel on a regular basis and we want them to be able to come
here to do that. So you ask yourself, is this
someone that I know has a testimony of salvation and take
the card. Talk the card over with your
soul winning partner. Don't just consider the card
when you pull in the driveway. One of things that I love about
Marsha, for instance, is not able to be here tonight as an
appointment, but one of the things I love about her is that
she'll get her cards and she'll ask me.
Pastor, tell me about this one. Pastor, tell me about this one.
She wants to know before she gets there a little bit more
about that person. Because you imagine just walking
up and I try to put notes on the cards about who you're going to
visit. But Can you imagine?
Just go in there and you have no clue who they are.
You've never seen them before. You don't know if they came to
the church last month or 10 years ago.
Hey, I'm from Liberty Baptist Church.
Now if someones been here 10 years ago, we still go visit
those people. Sometimes I'll put cold call on
there. And the reason why is because,
well, it's, it's going to be cold possibly.
But we've had people from cold calls who have said, you know
what, you came at just the right time.
I've been going through some difficulty right now and, and
the Lord, you know, I've been thinking about going back to
church. So we got a name, we got an
address. Until they tell us, don't come
back. Guess what?
We're going to keep coming because we want to at least be
able as the spirit allows for us to visit those people.
Don't if you got a visitation card, don't just pull up in the
driveway and say, all right, now who's, what's their name?
What are, what are we visit them for?
It's a little bit late because you're going to see as soon as
you pull up in their driveway in front of their house, they're
already looking at you. They're wondering who you are.
They're wondering why you're there.
This is a conversation you have way before and at times when I
have neglected that, I'll pull over maybe a block away before
and I'll have the conversation with my wife is usually who I
visit with. But I visit with pretty much
everyone here at some point or another and I have a
conversation about that visit before that time takes place.
Are you going door knocking? This is different procedure
altogether. If you're just going door to
door, a lot of times we do door hangers instead of actually
knocking on doors. But I would love for us to get
to the place where some people, not everybody can do this, but
where we actually go and knock on some doors.
I think that's a blessing to be able to do.
I know it's hard in 2026, there's so many people just
won't open their door. Even 20 years ago, you'd have
someone knock on your door almost every day.
You'd have a salesman, you'd have a kid selling magazines.
You have a kid, you know, girl selling Thin Mints, you know,
those kind of things that would be happening all the time
nowadays, unless it's Jehovah Witness or a Mormon, nobody's at
your door. And so a lot of people are very
hesitant to open the door. And so that's been a little bit
of a difficulty for us even in Easton from us door knocking the
first few years that we were here.
But if you're just going and laying a door hanger, a lot of
times we like doing that because if nothing else, you see people
in the outside in the warmer months, you're able to interact
with them and talk with them. And we'll talk about more about
how you would interact in those areas a little bit differently.
And then the soul winners appearance, say, pastor, you're
going to talk about how I'm dressing.
Well, yes. And the only reason I'm going to
talk about it is this is because when you are going up to
someone's door, they're looking at you, they're staring at you,
they're wondering who you are. You say, pastor, are you saying
I have to wear a three piece suit to be able to go visit
somebody? Oh, I sure don't wear a three
piece suit. I go visit somebody because they
won't answer the door. If I do, they'll probably think
I'm the funeral director trying to check them out for who knows
what what. So no, we don't do that.
But I say this dress to represent the Lord in your
church. When you go out, you just make
sure that you're wearing something that you know is
clean. You're making sure you're
wearing something that's pressed at least or something that's not
too wrinkly. Because when we're going out, we
are literally ambassadors of Christ.
And I'm not trying to tell you how you were supposed to look,
but I'm just saying that when you think about what you were
doing, just consider that as you're going to represent the
Lord. That's all I'm saying with that.
But do dress to be comfortable. If you're going out from doing
door hangers and those kind of things, make sure you're wearing
the right kind of shoes to be able to go out.
I've seen more slip and falls over the years.
That's why even I'm hesitant to send people out on Saturday
because we've had people that have said, oh, it's OK, the ice
is melting or whatnot. And we had people slip and fall
and it's been a bad thing. And so we do want to be careful,
but dress to be comfortable. And I put this for the men
specifically, wear colorful clothing if at all possible.
You know what, you ought not to wear a short sleeved dress white
shirt. Now, why would I say that?
Because every single person, what was that?
Sweat stains. That's it.
Oh, that's true. Like, is it hot here?
Is it just me, but Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, I mean,
that's that, that's the look right there.
You know, Elder Rivero, come by on my bicycle to come see you.
And so I, I, I don't wear a tie on visitation.
The reason I don't is I just try to be more casual.
Wear a polo shirt. A lot of times I wear a polo
shirt with the church's name on it that I have because it just
identifies me. But at the same time, you don't
have that. That's OK, but you don't want to
look like a Mormon. You you just don't want to.
We don't want to be the the Jehovah Witnesses do wear some
more colorful clothing at times, but the Mormons are usually
white shirt dress, you know, slacks, khakis, those kind of
things. And so we avoid that all
together. All right, just a little bit of
overview. Why don't you go ahead and go to
the next page? Anybody any questions about that
before we move on? We have any questions just
talking about the very basics of other than AJ.
All right, so we're not talking about witnessing to your cats.
All right, What do you do when you go visit somebody at the
door? You know, this has changed so
much over the years. This has changed so much.
And I'll be honest with you, I've had some very interesting
stories about this. I'm going to go ahead and tell
the story because Dan Dave wants me to go ahead and tell the
story. I could see it on his face.
Dave has a very interesting way of visiting people, including
visiting vets, because he could talk to them in a way he doesn't
talk to other people. We went to see a gentleman who's
been here several times before, went to go visit him about a
year or so ago. And I remember knocking on the
door. We drove probably about 30
minutes to get there and we knocked on the door and he
didn't answer. And I said, well, you know, I
guess he's not here or whatever. He says, Pastor, stop that, hold
on a second. And so he pulls out the phone
and he calls this guy and he calls him by name.
He says, hey, hey, are you home? And he says, he says, I'm, I'm
home. He goes open the door.
The preacher's here. And the guy comes out and just
starts talking to me. I'm thinking if I do that,
somebody smacked me right across the jaw.
This guy does it because he's in the military.
And all of a sudden people are like, oh, yes, Sir, OK,
whatever. You know, look, we all can't do
that, you know what I'm saying? We got to have some kind of
ability at the door. What do we do?
Well, we make a good impression before the door opens.
Before the door opens, recognize that people were probably
watching you come up the sidewalk.
I'll tell you this, and I live in an apartment building, but if
I had someone coming up my driveway, you can be sure as
soon as I saw them, I'm going to be staring a hole right through
them from behind a curtain or something because I want to know
who they are and what they're doing.
And so just recognize that as soon as you walk on somebody's
property that there's probably somebody watching you the minute
you're on their property. Be constantly aware of that.
And this is really the big game changer right here.
Understand the reality of doorbell cameras today.
That's the game changer. Going up and doing door hangers.
It's not unusual for me to go up to see a camera.
I'll put a door hanger there and I'll look at the camera and I'll
wave, I'll give a thumbs up, something like that to let them
know I'm non threatening. But there have been times I have
been walking up to put a door hanger up and I'll hear who is
this? They've already patched in
through their phones and are talking to me through the
doorbell before it. It is weird, let me tell you,
but I would say probably about one out of every 5 or 6 houses
in Easton will have a Ring doorbell or some kind of
equivalent. And so you have to be aware of
that, that even if somebody's not watching you go up, there's
probably video evidence of you walking up to their door that
they're going to look at. And so you want to make sure
that you are handling yourself well.
Another thing, don't walk across the lawn.
Never walk across somebody's lawn.
Make sure you're using their sidewalk.
Make sure you're using their driveway.
You really don't want to do something to be offensive.
You say, well, that grass doesn't look like they've cut it
for about 3 months. Well, listen, they probably
don't care about it until you walk across it.
And now all of a sudden they care about it again.
We're trying to find reasons to not be offensive.
Why? Because the gospel is already
going to offend people. And if somebody's offended, I
want them to be offended because we gave them the truth and the
right spirit, not because I walked across their lawn and
they're already mad because I got there.
That's not what I want. If look, if they're upset at the
gospel, that's on them. But if they're upset because I
did not respect their property at the beginning, then that's
something. I'll say this as well.
If you get to a house and there's a thing that says no
soliciting there, we typically don't knock on those doors.
If you have a visit and it says no soliciting, go back to your
car, give them a call first, shoot them a text.
The reason why is if you say, you say, well, we're not
soliciting anything and we're not soliciting.
The the Supreme Court has been clear over the years that we are
not soliciting in the traditional sense of trying to
sell Amway or Girl Scout cookies.
I'm not the Avon lady. OK, so this is not who we are.
But at the same time, if it says no soliciting and someone knocks
on the door, you think you're going to be happier there?
Nope, probably not. The best thing you could do is
leave a track there and then move on or leave a track, go out
to the car. I was making a visit.
You know, we're from Liberty Baptist Church.
We saw you visit a couple weeks ago.
We just wanted to talk to you. So there's no soliciting sign.
Is it OK if we come see you? That's what I would do in those
kind of situations. A smile at the door again.
They'll probably be looking at you through the peephole or
camera. Don't just stand there doing
this, Frank. I hope they don't answer the
door. I hope they don't answer the
door. And don't tell me you don't do
that, because I've done that, too.
All right? You're not going to.
I hope they don't answer the door.
Like that's going to wear on your face.
OK. Be pleasant there.
When you're at the door, keep the conversation between you and
your partner to a minimum. I'll be honest with you, I've
been with brother Vince for a very long time.
We have a good rapport with one another.
We talk with one another, and it's very easy at the door for
us. Just continue the conversation
that we had in the car all the way up the driveway, all the way
up the door. We knocked the door.
We're still talking about. Yeah.
You know, the veal parmesan over at AJ's Grill is really good,
you know, and he's like, yeah, no, I don't think so.
I think that's trash. You know, And I'd say, and we're
talking, then they open the door like, oh, hey, Liberty Baptist
Church, we're here. Just kind of keep that to a
minimum and understand that you're focused on what you're
trying to do in that moment and decide before the door opens,
who's talking. You need to know before you get
to the door who is the one that is going to be the primary
speaker. Of course, you both want to
speak in the sense that you don't want the other person to
think that you can't speak or not able to speak.
But the one that's going to be the primary, I've always done
it, either you take turns one between the other, or if you're
with somebody who's new or somebody's not done it before,
then you just tell them, well, you'll be the silent partner
today. Why don't you pray and you'll
observe and let the other person do that.
That's really what you can do. Either of those.
Any questions about any of those, Any comments, maybe a
situation that you've had before, Anthony?
Another thing is when you knock on the door, keep looking at the
door. Don't turn around, look at the
yard. Don't.
Because then they open the door and he's not, you're not facing
them anymore. It's like, oh, you didn't even
care. Yeah.
We're looking at the door, wait
for them to come out. One of the things I love doing
is looking at that peephole because I love when the peephole
goes dark. I know they're looking at me and
then it goes light again and they don't answer.
It's like, I know you're home, man.
OK, so, and I'll add this as well, I understand there's some
people who are uncomfortable. I'm just showing up to somebody
house. What if they're mad?
What if they get angry? I just show up.
Should I, should I call first? Shouldn't I text them first?
Here's what I do, and this is what I encourage you to do.
This mindset is helpful. These are people that have
already come to Liberty Baptist Church.
We're not just going through a phone book, not that we can find
one, but we're not just going through a phone book and say,
hey, who can we go visit today and just randomly visit people.
The people that we give you visits for here are people that
come to Liberty Baptist Church before they've given us their
name. They give their address, they
give us their phone number. If they didn't give it to us, we
wouldn't be able to go see them. So they've already said in
essence, you know, we don't mind you coming at some point.
But in your mind, I've said people, people told me, but a
pastor, they might be offended. They won't it.
Here's the thing, just go to the door, knock.
If they don't answer, then you don't be offended about it.
Don't worry about it. We'll go back another time.
It's not a big deal. Maybe you caught them.
They just woke up, they had a long night shift.
They know they're home, but they're not going to answer
because they just got up. I get that we, I, I barged into
your territory. I get that.
I'm not going to be offended by it.
Maybe it's a bad day. Maybe they're not feeling well.
Maybe they just don't feel like answering the door.
They don't know who I am. That's OK.
Don't be, don't you be offended by that.
That's the way I handle is like, look, if you answer or you don't
answer, I'm not offended. I'm just, I'm just happened to
be in the area want to come see you and we leave it at that.
And so that's a way that I have. But yeah, keeping your face
forward is, is definitely a good thing because you don't want to
be turning around. Go.
Well, look at that. Yeah, look at those.
Look at those. Look at those petunias over
there. They turn around.
They're standing there one foot away from you, just staring at
you. So be aware of your surroundings
because safety is a key nowadays.
It's a it's a big deal. I guess it always has been, but
even more so now. You need to be aware of your
surroundings. What to do when the door opens
again? Immediately identify yourself
and where you are from. You don't want them to guess who
you are, you know, Are you selling solar panels?
You know who Who are you? Oh wait, I know that guy, but so
are you are you selling solar panels?
Are you are you with the the Boy Scouts of America?
Are you from doing a fundraiser? Your kid is over at the local
elementary school. Hey from Liberty Baptist Church.
My name is Adam. This is my wife Diane.
You know we're from Liberty and we want to come by and see you
today. Honestly, if soon as if this is
something that you have met through a visit here, they've
been here before, there's immediately going to be a
connection. I'm not saying it's always going
to go well, it usually does at least, you know, for the most
part, but you got to identify yourself or who you are.
And that's why I loved having church polo shirts.
We really should probably do that again.
Dave and I were working on that and then I kind of dropped the
ball on that. But it's nice to be able to go
to somebody's house and have that right on your chest to be
able to identify you're from Liberty Baptist Church and not
from Verizon or not from Bill Pay Company or Bill Collection
company. You're not the repo man or
anything like that. Let them know immediately why
you're there. We're in the area inviting
people to church. That's true.
Maybe if you're just doing door hangers, you're going from door
to door. Somebody's out in the garden,
they're working. Don't if we're doing door
hangers and those kind of things and you're trying to, if
someones in their garden, don't just walk past them and go to
the door and then walk away. Okay, That is the opposite of
you want to do. In fact, we're praying for those
people to be out. That's why I love doing that
outdoors once it's warmer, because people are outside the
gardens. People are outside doing
different things. Don't say why.
I really don't want to interrupt you, you know, so I'm not going
to, I'm just going to leave something on the door and walk
away. They're going to think you're a
creep. All right, Don't do that.
Say hey, hey, I'm I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Being a garden's beautiful. You're doing a great job here.
But you know, I'm, I'm from Liberty Baptist Church and we're
just inviting folks to church in the area today.
I'll just wonder if you have a church that you go to, you'll be
able to strike up a conversation just from that.
These are things that you could do.
I we're in the area inviting people to church.
You could say, hey, we, you came to visit our back to school bash
and we just want to come visit and see how your family's doing.
Want to see if there's anything we could pray for you all about.
That's a wonderful thing to be. You know, a lot of people can be
offended about a lot of things, but when you tell someone you're
going to pray for them, all of a sudden the defenses go down and,
and, and I want to be careful how I say this.
This is not a trick like let's let's ask them.
About praying for them so we could.
Well, if you say that, you really need to pray for them.
Right then and there on the doorstep.
But a great way to be able to talk to people about spiritual
things. Hey, we, we, we noticed you came
to the back to school back bashed in August.
You know, it's been a few months since the beginning of the year.
Our church is stopping by. We want to see if there's
something we can pray for you about today.
And of course they might say, well, you know, I have, I have
someone who's very sick, my grandmother's and not in good
shape. Well, what's her name?
If do you mind if we could pray for her right now?
We would like to do that. And you can do that.
And then as the defenses have gone down and you show that
you've cared about them, you could say there's one other
thing I mentioned because really the greatest thing that anyone
could really have is the gift of salvation.
You can start by that or just ask them, you know, while we're
here, you know, I would love to be able to talk to you about
Jesus And if you were certain you're going to heaven someday,
these are the ways that you can actually open up a conversation.
A lot of times people don't want to make the ask because they
feel like they can say, hi, I'm from Liberty Baptist Church.
Are you going to heaven someday? You start talking to people like
that, they're thinking, are you going to send me there?
Why are you, Why are you asking me this question?
You know something I don't know. And so these are things you
could say, hey, you visited church last Sunday.
We really try to make sure that everyone who visits who gives us
a card. And a lot of times we don't get
a card back from people. But if someone gives us a card,
the next time we have visitation, we want to go see
them and just tell them, hey, we're glad you visited.
Do you have any questions? And of course, the real issue we
want to get to is do they know Jesus Christ their Savior?
Because again, we're not just the welcome wagon going by and
saying, hey, isn't liberty great?
And you like liberty? We like liberty.
OK, well, see you at Liberty sometime.
Well, we've completely missed the boat of what we're trying to
do again. Do we want them to come back?
Absolutely. We want to come back.
But they could come here for 20 years.
They don't accept the gospel. They're no better off.
And so the real issue is that they need to understand the
Gospel. Invite them back to church.
This is a great question to ask people.
Do you go to church anywhere? Do you go to church anywhere?
It's a great question to ask because you will find that
people will immediately answer in a variety of different ways.
They'll tell you why I'm a Catholic.
I'm a Catholic. That doesn't answer the
question. They'll say I'm a Jew.
Now, remember how I answered that a few weeks ago?
Somebody says they're a Jew. You say, oh, you're 1 of God's
chosen people. Our church loves the Jewish
people. And all of a sudden, once their
heart, you know, starts beating again because they're so
surprised that you would say something like that, you might
be able to have a conversation with them.
But a lot of times people will say, oh, yeah, I go to church
Ohio. Which?
Which church do you go to? It's that one over.
It's over. I'm 44.
No, it should be maybe a one O 6.
It's amazing to me. People will tell you they go to
church and they couldn't even tell you what the name of the
church is. But I've met people like that so
many times. You go to Liberty, like what's
the name of the pastor? I don't remember.
I've been going for six months. I don't remember his name.
You know, Revivio, I don't know something like that, but you
say, hey, do you go to church anyway?
That's a very non threatening question, honestly, to ask you
go to church anywhere. You know, they know you go to
church, you go to church anywhere and you know they'll
answer that a host different ways and you can respond
accordingly. Hey, we're not trying to take
you from your church. I say that to people sometimes
and we're really not trying to steal people from churches.
If they're going to a good Bible preaching church, I'm not.
I don't want them to come here just because of that.
Really. I want people to know Jesus
Christ their savior. Now, if someone is going to
some, you know, Pagan church or something like that, I guess you
could say I do want them to steal them from the church
because we want them to get saved.
Amen. But so, so be honest about it.
But, but you could say we're not trying to steal you from your
church or take you from your church.
We love to have you visit our church this Sunday.
If possible, strike up a conversation while you're
talking to them. What I try to do is I'm walking
up the I'm not very observant about a lot of things.
There have been several guys here who have shaved a beard off
and I didn't notice like until two months later or changed a
haircut and I didn't realize it till a couple months later.
That's just the way I am. But I would tell you, I zero in
when I'm making a visit. I want to know the cars that are
there. I want to know what they're
driving. I want to know what's on the the
porch that they have, if I'm able to go in the house and make
a visit. I'm kind of looking around now.
I'm not trying to be a Snoop. I'm not Colombo or anything like
that. But the idea is I do find things
to make conversation and listen. Sometimes you'll swing and
sometimes you'll miss. It's OK.
I remember going into a visit several months ago.
It was actually the same visit I was talking to you about a
little bit earlier with the child and I saw one of the cars
had a veteran plate on it. And so I thought, here's a great
point of conversation right here.
And so the gentleman was in there and I said to him and part
of conversation I said, I saw you're a veteran.
I just want to thank you for your service.
And he goes, I'm not a veteran. And I said, well, I saw the
veteran and, and, and, and the woman there, she says, well, I'm
a veteran. And I was like, Oh, well, I
guess I just assumed the man was a veteran.
So thank you for your service. I was like, wow, I felt about
this big. I really did.
But I would tell you, and I say this to say, Pastor, this is not
a good illustration to tell us about why we should be more
personal people. When you work with people, you
can either just clam up because you might make a mistake, or you
can just do your best and people will appreciate you.
Do your best. There are times I get people's
names wrong because I'm trying to remember their name.
So I could just say, hey man, hey buddy, hey brother, buddy.
But you know, you can do that. That's the cover for everything
is hey buddy, how you doing? Or you can swing and you can
miss and you can make a joke about it.
You can laugh about it and then hopefully the next time you do
get. Now, if you just keep swinging 3
or 4 times in a row and missing like you got to, you got to get
a better system. But I think a lot of people are
afraid to make the mistake in being conversational with people
so they don't make conversation. But you're better off just
trying your best. You know what's funny about that
family? That we still I've laughed about
that with them several times since.
And honestly, talk about observance.
As I left, I looked at the license plate again and it had a
pink frame around it, and so I probably should have noticed
that pink frame probably doesn't belong to him and it probably
belongs to her being a veteran. But I swung and I missed.
But you know what? I still showed that I cared and
I tried. And that's what you need to do
as well. Don't let your fear of not being
able to make a connection or doing something wrong stop you
from trying to make that connection Now.
If possible, transition to talking about salvation.
You'll be able to tell how the conversation is going fairly
quickly. I've been at people's doors
before and the door is closing as I'm talking to them, and
unless I put my foot in the door, that door is going to
close on me. I can tell pretty certainly that
I'm not going to be able to make a gospel presentation there.
In fact, I would be better not to in the sense that maybe if I
can give them a track or something to hold on to, but if
I try not to handle myself like a fool there, that the next
person who does talk to about Jesus will have an opportunity
as long as I don't make it harder for that next one to come
by. Again, I'm not talking about
being not being emphatic. I think it's important that
we're passionate about what we're in, but we also need to
understand that, you know, some plant, some water, but God gives
the increase. There's many people along that
journey, Lord willing, who'll be able to impact them for the
Lord. And so you want to make sure
that you do do your best with that.
Very quickly. We'll go to the next page.
We'll we'll stop in the middle of this here.
And then we're going to get to really the nuts and bolts of the
verses and talking to people by the handout.
I want to give you tomorrow. It's not in here.
I mentioned it before because it's the perfect size to be able
to cut and put in front of the flyleaf of your Bible to be able
to answer questions. And I want to give that to you
tomorrow. But we'll get through some of
this. I'm going to give you a story,
then I'm going to be done here for tonight.
And then we'll take some questions if we have any, a
transition from your previous conversation, once we get to the
place, want to talk to people about the Lord.
Now you're not talking about veterans and now you're not
talking about the teams, and now you're not talking about those
different things. Now you want to really get to
the place we're talking about the Lord.
Because what if you're there for 30 minutes and you're just
talking about all these other random things and you never talk
about Jesus? We kind of missed the boat.
So you want to make sure you transition that conversation.
You can't ask. Do you mind if I ask you a
personal question? But it's not necessary.
You don't have to be able to do that, but I know some people
that do. And you can say something like
this. Even more important than church
is having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
I find that that's a good way for me to transition because I'm
talking about the church. I'm talking about the church
like, hey, we would love to have you at Liberty Baptist Church,
But you know, there's something more important than coming to
church, and that's having a relationship with Jesus Christ.
He said, well, that doesn't sound very natural.
It doesn't sound natural if you've ever said it before.
But if you get to the place where you are able to have a
conversation with somebody, you will find that it will become
more natural than it has before You could even say this.
I used to have some of the same doubts, but I've asked Christ to
be my Savior. My life has changed.
You can relate to them. Really, the best way that you
can relate to somebody is to tell them your testimony is to
be able to talk to them about what the Lord did to you.
I think of being outside really the first time I met you guys, I
think with Bill, with your dad, and we were outside talking and
you could tell the Lord was really working in his heart.
But at the same time, he just really wasn't want to make that
next step. And so, you know, you can only
ask somebody, you know, do you want to get saved?
You want to get saved so many times.
And they say no. But I really just felt like in
my spirit that there this conversation shouldn't be done
yet. And So what I did was instead of
just asking him the same question over and over again
from different angles, I just said, you know what, I kind of,
I was in a situation very similar to you.
I mean, I was only 16 years old, but, and what I did is I just
started, I just gave them a testimony.
And I've found that being a Lutheran, I can talk to a lot of
people, have a high church background, a Protestant
background, even a Catholic background and talk about the
sacraments and those kind of things.
And then able to do that. And it's amazing how many people
don't want to have the personal question about them, but they
will let you talk about you. And so that's a great place to
start about how the Lord has worked in your heart and in your
life. And there are two very important
questions to really understand where somebody is spiritually.
I think this is where we'll lay off here in just a moment.
And the first is this. If you were to die today, are
you 100% sure that you would go to heaven?
There's a lot of people that will say no to that question.
They'll say, I hope so. I think so.
I want to listen. Those are not the same as yes,
hope. So salvation is not what the
Bible says when it talks about having the hope of eternal life.
That's a firm confidence in eternal life.
That's not what this is talking about.
I, I, I hope so. I, I might, I, I, I don't know
that I can. I've done too many things.
These are things that I've had people say to me in the past,
but there are a decent amount of people who say absolutely,
absolutely. And now if you're not careful,
you'll automatically think, well, they're saved.
But there's more to it than that because you have to understand
if they actually understand the gospel message or not.
What if they've been in the Catholic Church all their life
and they firmly now, I don't know how they could in the
Catholic Church because they never have assurance.
That's why they keep working. But I have heard people say of
that fate, Well, yeah, well, I'm, I'm sure I'm going to
heaven. But they're relying on their
works. So the next question that I ask
is, well, you know, I imagine that you got to the gates of
heaven. I said, you know, it doesn't
work this way. It's not this way in the Bible,
but but just for us to be able to talk about this today,
imagine you got to the gates of heaven and there was someone
standing there and says, why should I let you into heaven?
What would you say? And that answer to the second
question is the most revealing of all because that's when
they'll say, well, I've been a good person.
Well, I've I've tried to help people.
I was in a church for 40 years, I was a founding member, and
that's when you could all of a sudden get to the point of, OK,
now I understand where they're coming from and I can better
understand how I can give them the gospel in their situation.
And we'll talk more about that tomorrow.
I will readily admit this is not an easy process and you may not
always have all the answers, but I'll tell you the one thing that
will overarchingly help everything is to love people.
Because if you love people, you will find that there will be
more opportunities that you can imagine.
And if you love people as Christ loved people, that you will be
able to, even if you don't have an answer for them right away,
that they'll be open enough for you to follow up with them and
talk to them again in the future.
Because people will ask you some very weird questions and you may
not have the answer. You say, again, Pastor, this is
not a good thing to tell us about wanting to share our
faith. What I'm telling you is this is
reality and don't let the fact that you don't have all the
answers stop you from giving the gospel.
I, I appreciate so much. I appreciate Charlie Kirk and,
and the videos and the things that he stood for.
Very much so his mind worked in a, a way that it's hard for me
to even fathom. People would ask him very
difficult questions and he could answer with grace and authority.
In a second. I don't get it.
I don't understand how we did it, but I think a lot of times
we think that the only way we can be a real soul winner is
that we have to be the exact same way.
I have to answer every question, every moment the right way.
And if I don't, no one will ever get saved.
Now what you really need to do is just let the spirit lead love
on people. And if you don't have the
answer, say I don't have the answer to that, but we can talk
again. I know where the answer is for
the Anthony. I have some fellowship today and
he asked me a question. I'm almost embarrassed about
this. I've been a pastor for 12,
almost 13 years. I've been in the full time
ministry over 20 years. He asked me a question,
obviously came from some some soul winning that he's doing
with some working with somebody and he want to get my opinion on
it. He asked me this question and I
just sat there for about 15 seconds and I kind of felt dumb,
to be honest with you, Anthony, because they're like, why don't
I have an answer to this? Because it was a little bit kind
of out there. I don't know that anyone had
ever framed that thought in that way to me before.
And I kind of worked through it. After a few minutes, I just kept
talking until I finally was like, Oh no, that's it.
I think that's it. That's what I would do.
It took me a few minutes. But if I study the Bible for a
living, not just getting sermons, but then also for
study, for personal and just my own edification.
And I could admit to you tonight that there are times that I
don't just have the right answer right away.
It's true for all of us. Don't let that stop you from
being a witness. That's Satan trying to tell you
now. One, we can sharpen our tools.
We can learn more. There's some of the stuff we
talked about today. It's like I got to dig into that
after I dig into some of the other stuff that I have on my
list of things I need to dig into.
But at the same time, you can look at somebody in the eye and
say, I don't know the answer to that today, but I know where the
answer is. And if we can meet another time,
we can meet next week. If I can call you during the
week, I'd be glad to tell you what the Bible says.
But I'm not going to try to pretend to give you an answer
that I don't know. I'd much rather be honest and
tell you I don't know. Because The thing is, when it
comes to soul winning, this is again not, we'll go full circle
here. This is not a debate to win.
Well, I answered the question fastest and most articulate.
So I win. Though this is an issue of truth
against error. Truth always went, and so we
need to make sure that we are being truthful in what we say
and how we say it. And if you don't have the answer
right away, don't be embarrassed, don't be ashamed.
You're not a failure. You should never go share the
gospel again. You just go back to the word,
find out where you missed it, find out what the answer is.
Go to another soul winner. By the way, it's another reason
to have two by two, because the other person might have the
answer when you don't, but you can go and get the help that
they need. Thank you for listening to the
sermon from the pulpit of Liberty Baptist Church.
If this message was a blessing to you, or if there's any way we
can serve you, please let us know by contacting us at
info@mylibertybaptist.org. Or you can visit us this Sunday
at 800 Washington St. in Easton, MA.
May the Lord bless you as you grow in His Word.