Sermon Transcript
Earlier this week, I heard a radio DJ talk about the San Francisco 49ers, and he said that this is the winningest team in football right now. That was on Monday before they weren’t in the playoffs this weekend, but he said, you know, looking back, they won the last 5 games. Are you aware of that? It wasn’t a good season, but they won the last 5 games. They had a streak going there, and of course, the streak started after they got a new quarterback.
Jimmy Garoppolo. He came over from New England, and are we happy? Oh yes. And, you know, we’re so excited because the season had started terrible. They lost 9 games in a row.
They were 0-9 at the beginning of the season, and then they won a game, then they lost a game. And so the last, after the last 7 games, they won 6 out of the last 7 games. So everybody’s kind of finished with the season, even though, you know, the players have gone home now. And they cleaned out their lockers and all the rest of that kind of stuff, and they’re not gonna play in the playoffs and all of that, but they’ve gone home with a sense of hope and anticipation of what maybe could be next year, that maybe next year could be the winning season that we wanted to have this year, and maybe we could put it all together, and boy, that would be wonderful. We know one thing, we’re not the worst team in football.
I mean, we are among 19 NFL teams that are not playing here during the playoffs, so we already know that, but we’re not the worst. That would be Cleveland, They went 0 for 16. In fact, in the last 2 years, they’ve won 1 game. So yesterday, I don’t know if you saw this on the news, they had this losers parade. It was around the Cleveland Stadium.
They were celebrating their losses over the last couple years. I think they’re trying to draw attention to the fact that something must change. We need some change around here, that sort of thing. I mean, if you’re in football, obviously the whole point is to win. So you come into these seasons, as we’re gonna come into next season with the 49ers, you come into the season with some good intentions.
The good intentions are we wanna translate our desire for winning into winning, but winning takes more than just a desire, doesn’t it? Winning takes more than just wanting to win. You’re gonna have to put some kind of action to your good intentions. Now, most of us know that. I think we think about that.
Especially at this time of year when obviously nobody’s making New Year’s resolutions, at least in this hour. That was funny, 3 people. But anyway, so, you know, this is the time of year where we at least start the year with some good, good intentions. Maybe like, you know, I’m going to lose weight this year. I’m going to get back to the shape and the weight I was at 18.
You know, it’s going to happen this year. Or, you know, for you, I’m going to read more books this year, or whatever it is that you know, excites you. I was reading John Atwell. John Atwell is a longtime member of the church. He’s 92 years old now, and he sent out this Christmas newsletter.
And in the newsletter, he was telling everybody that he read 30-plus books this last year. 92, and he read 30-plus books this last year. He put in the newsletter that he calls himself a veritable book caterpillar. Veritable book caterpillar. I love that, don’t you?
Oh, that we would all live into our 90s and be people who are continuing to read and people who are continuing to learn. I don’t know what your intention is as you kind of look out toward the year ahead, but I want to focus on something that I hope could be something that all of us could be more intentional about, and it’s really the whole area of evangelism, or it’s the whole area of witnessing. Now, just before you leave me, okay, having mentioned that subject, just before you leave me, my feeling is, is that this evangelism thing should like get top priority in our lives. I mean, I really mean that, top priority. And if it’s not top priority, you know, on our good intention list, it should at least get like in the top 3 or something like that.
Okay, maybe in the top 5, but it really should be one of those things that should be top in our intentions as we look at this next year. You say, why? Well, because it’s an expression of our love to God. And as we’re involved in helping people understand that God loves them and he wants a relationship with them, Man, I mean, God is pleased. Other people are impacted and changed in just gigantic, wonderful ways.
And as an individual, you see yourself come alive in new ways. Honestly, really. As we translate the good intention of evangelism into reality in our lives, amazing things even begin to happen in us. Now, if you’re an unbeliever this morning, you’re saying to yourself, oh boy, I came to the wrong service, you know. What you want to hear is just simply this: God loves you.
God wants a relationship with you. People like those that are sitting in this building this morning love God, and they long to see other people come to love God and experience this relationship with God like they are right now. And we would love nothing more than to give you what is most valuable to us. Is the relationship with God and what difference it’s making in our lives right now and the ways that God is working with us. I don’t think there’s anything more important than connecting with the God of the universe now and for all eternity.
And so we’re going to focus on that wonderful privilege that we have to help other people come to know about God. And in saying that I would suggest then that we need to be intentional. Now, the reason I would say that we need to be intentional about helping other people connect to God is because we see that in our foremost example, Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself, he was intentional in helping other people come to faith. So he sent out his disciples and basically said to them, you need to be as intentional about this thing as, as I’ve been.
I want you to go, I want you to make disciples, and I want you to baptize these So people that come to understand I love them and want a relationship with me and the Father for all eternity, those people, I want them to go public with their faith through the act of baptism. And I want you to be a part of helping people do that. And I want you, Jesus said, I want you to go into all of the world and I want you to witness starting in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. So I want all of that to happen. Through your lives.
But if that’s going to happen through our lives, we got to get intentional about it. We really do. We can’t just have good intentions, but our intentions need to be turned into intentionality. They need to be turned into actions. And you really see this in Jesus.
So I’m going to just give you 2 examples just briefly this morning. The first example comes from a guy named Zach. Now you may know Zach’s story as the guy who’s known in the scriptures as Zacchaeus. What do we know about Zacchaeus? We know that he was a short guy.
We know that he was the chief tax collector. And we know that he had a lot of money, which means that at the end of the week, no matter how much he had, he always came up short at the end of the week. Zacchaeus did. Are you with me? Okay, that was a groaner.
All right, I understand. But there was a day where Jesus had a conversation with Zacchaeus. Actually, Zacchaeus was in a tree. He was up a tree. And in Luke chapter 19, verse 5, the last part into 6, Jesus looked up and said to Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, come down immediately.
I must stay at your house today. So he came down at once and he welcomed him gladly. Now I would call this intentional, wouldn’t you? Here’s Jesus, he’s walking along a street, he sees Zacchaeus, he says, you need to come down. I’m coming over to your house today.
Some people would look at that and say, that’s a little bit pushy, suspicious. I mean, like rude. He invited him— Jesus invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ house. Well, that’s the picture you have here. The people who saw all of this happening began to mutter, we’re told in verse 7 of Luke chapter 19, because Jesus had gone to be the guest of a sinner.
But that didn’t matter to Jesus because he had something more important on his mind. He had that instead of important in the sense of what other people thought, he had a desire to see Zacchaeus come into a saving relationship with God. In fact, that actually happened. In verse 9, it says that Jesus said to Zacchaeus, today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a son of Abraham. Zacchaeus evidently came to understand Jesus was the promised Messiah, and through him, a person can have an eternal relationship with God, become a son of Abraham, become a part of God’s family.
So Jesus made this intentional evangelistic connection with a guy named Zacchaeus, and then he defends himself to the religious elite who look at what he’s done, making this intentional connection to a sinner. He said to the religious elite this, verse 10, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. In other words, Jesus was living with a missional mindset. His whole desire was to bring people back into relationship with God. And if you’ve never heard this before, in the beginning, God created man and a woman to have relationship with him, to walk together with man and woman.
But sin came into the world and separated us from God. And God has put a plan in place to make it possible for us to have a relationship with God again, to walk with him again. And Jesus came with the intention to not only make that possible, but to help people come into a relationship with God through himself. So why did Jesus want to spend time with Zacchaeus in his home? What do you see there?
It wasn’t because he needed a place to stay. It wasn’t because he needed something to eat. It wasn’t because this guy was rich and he needed some money for his startup. No, that wasn’t it at all. He wanted to hang out with Zacchaeus because he knew that God loved him and he loved him.
And he wanted to make it possible for Zacchaeus to understand this gospel and to see that through Jesus he could be saved and begin a relationship with God now and forever. It was intentional. And I want to just ask the question, you know, is that our mindset? Do we live with that intentional kind of mindset where we’re intentionally connecting with people? We’re living with a missional mindset, a Christlike missional mindset.
We totally see this in Jesus, that saving other people, helping other people come to know about God was absolutely foremost in Jesus’ thinking. And that’s why he began connections with people like Zacchaeus. Nancy Carpiano was like that. I don’t know if you know Nancy Carpiano’s story, but she died this last year. For the past few years, she had been dying of cancer.
She thought she was maybe getting past it, but That didn’t happen, but she had an evangelist heart. If you knew Nancy, you knew that she had an evangelist heart. She was all about witnessing. She was all about praying for people. She was all about talking to people about the Lord.
She loved to share the gospel of Jesus with other people. I found that out several years ago when I met Nancy. We began to get to know each other, and then she started telling me about her desire to help people come to faith. Jesus Christ. Well, this past year she and I were talking, and at one point I was asking her, you know, about her treatments and the doctors that she was working with and stuff.
And she said, you know, I’m working with a doctor, and she named the doctor’s name. And I said, are you kidding me? That’s my doctor. She said, no, really. She said, yes.
She said, well, I’m trying to help him come to salvation. I said, that’s wonderful. I think that’s wonderful. I want to, I want to do what I can too. Well, just a few weeks ago, I was in that doctor’s office, the office, and actually I was there to meet with the dermatologist.
I love to meet dermatologist kind of people, but anyway, that’s another story. And so I’m in there to go to the doctor, and I am sitting in the room, you know, the patient room, right? You all know what this is all about. And so anyway, I’m sitting in the patient room, and in walks my doctor. And I’m not expecting my doctor to walk in.
I’m expecting the dermatologist to walk in. So in walks my doctor. He sits down. He says, Dave, I’m here. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I’m here because I just want to apologize that the appointment thing didn’t work out the way that, you know, you were trying to get it to work out and stuff.
And so anyway, he just— it was unusual. I’ve never had a doctor apologize before. So we had an interesting conversation about that. But then, but then, you know, I just, I felt this prompting. And you guys have had these leadings, these promptings, right?
Where I just felt like I needed to connect to Nancy Carpiano. And so I said, you know, how you doing in the aftermath of Nancy’s death? And he said, well, actually, it’s— he kind of paused there and he said, you know, she made an emotional connection with me. I said, really? I said, how so?
He said, well, the last time I met with her which was days before she died, she shared with me again why she was not afraid to die. She talked about how she would like to live, but he said, but she talked about how she was not afraid to die, and she was okay with that because she knew she was going to be with her Savior Jesus, and she was going to spend eternity with God in heaven. And so he said, so she shared this with me, and then she said, Doctor, I would like to pray for you. And my doctor said that he told her, you know, that’s not really doctor-patient protocol.
And I laughed when he said that, too. And he said, so I just kind of sat there and I thought, but, you know, she’s such a special person. So he said, okay, go ahead. So she prayed. And she prayed for him.
She prayed for his spiritual condition. She prayed for his family. He has twins, 2 kids. Obviously, twins, 2. Anyway.
And she made this connection to him, and he’s still thinking about it. He’s still thinking about it.
You know why she made the connection with him? Because that’s the kind of person she was. She lived with this missional mindset, this Christlike mindset. She didn’t just intend for people to know that she was a Christian. She wanted to talk to people about the Lord.
She prayed about it. She was thinking about it all the time.
You know, if, if we’re gonna see ourselves in the year ahead make greater connections to people that are outside God’s family, I think we gotta make intentional connections. I really do. I think we have to give some thought to this. We have to give some attention to this. There’s a second story I want you just to consider.
It’s John chapter 4. This is a great story about intentional intentionality. John 4, well, you may know the story. It’s about Jesus’ intentional encounter with the woman at the well, the immoral woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well. The 5-times-married woman at the well.
And if you know this story, you know that Jesus broke all cultural laws and he spoke to this woman in public, in public of all places, which totally caught this woman by surprise. In verse 7, it says, when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food. And the Samaritan woman said to him, You’re a Jew, and I’m a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?
For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. She was shocked that Jesus had engaged her in a conversation, had asked her even for a drink of water. Well, his apostles, when they came back— they had gone to get food— when they came back, it says in verse 27 that his disciples returned and were surprised They were surprised to find him talking with a woman, but no one asked, why do you— what do you want? Or, why are you talking with her? None of the disciples asked that.
You know why they didn’t ask that? Because they learned by now that when Jesus did things, he did them with a reason. He did them with intention, you could say. See, that’s why they were in Samaria. Actually, if you just go up to verse 3, it says, when the Lord learned of this, and the context here is is the Pharisees are now talking about how Jesus is baptizing more people than John the Baptist.
And he doesn’t want to, you know, make a big issue out of this or that sort of thing. So when the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and he went once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar. He notices He had to go through Samaria.
I don’t know if you’re aware of the geography of this whole thing, but let me just try to explain this. Okay, so they’re, they’re in Judea. Judea was to the south. So let’s just picture it as California. Judea, California.
Okay, not the same, but you understand. So in the south, and the next province to the north was Samaria, and the province to the north of that was Galilee. So this passage says Jesus has to go from Judea to Galilee. Now it would make complete sense to us to take the direct route, right? To go from California through Oregon through Washington.
I mean, just like, why else would you go any other way? Well, that wasn’t common in that day because Jews believed that if you got into Samaria, you were going to be, you know, polluted. You would be polluted just by being in the land, let alone coming in contact with any Samaritan kind of people. So what they would do is that they would take the long route. So it would be similar to us, you know, can’t go through Oregon, are you kidding?
They like marijuana up there. Oh wait, but anyway, so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go from California into Nevada and Nevada into Idaho and Idaho into Washington because we can’t go through Oregon. Okay, so that’s kind of the picture here is that they could not— a good Jewish boy would not go through Samaria because that was polluted and you didn’t want to contaminate yourself or be defiled. That’s the word. That’s the scriptural word.
You didn’t want to be defiled. But Jesus, it said, had to go through Samaria. Now, why did he have to go through Samaria? Well, Jacob’s Well was there. That’s why.
He had to go to Jacob’s Well to get some water. That’s what it is. He had to get some water. And they had good water in Samaria at Sychar at Jacob’s Well. So, no, I don’t think so.
Well, because there was a plaque there at Jacob’s Well and it was a memorial to Jacob. And he just wanted to see the plaque. You know, he wanted to go back and be reminded of, wow, they had such an amazing ministry back in Jacob’s day. Is that why he went there? No, I don’t think so.
Why did he go there? Because he wanted to make some intentional evangelistic contacts. He wanted to give people an opportunity in Samaria to hear about the gospel and to hear about that God wants a relationship with them too, with the Samaritans also. So Jesus answered this woman, verse 10. He says, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
And then he says in verse 13, you see it, Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water, this water here in this well, will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Now, doesn’t that sound good? If you’re the woman at the well, doesn’t that sound good? By the way, what’s her name?
We don’t know. We just go by woman at the well. But anyway, so if you’re hearing— you’re the woman at the well and you’re hearing about this water, well, she was eager to gulp the water down, to swallow the water. So she receives this gift. This gift that Jesus is the Messiah.
And you know what she did then? She went and she told others about it. Verse 39 says, many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. He told me everything I ever did.
How did that happen? Well, because Jesus broke all cultural norms and he intentionally, intentionally connected with lost people that needed the Lord. And he intentionally had a conversation in a culture where a conversation like that would be forbidden. See any connections here? You know, if we’re going to be intentional in this next year and live beyond good intentions, we not only need a Christlike mindset where we see people all around us as people that God loves and God wants a relationship with them, and we have the privilege and honor of introducing them to somebody that we love, too?
We not only need a Christlike mindset, but we need a Christlike mission. We need to be people who are constantly going, and that may, listen to this, that may mean in the year ahead, in 2018, doing things that we’ve never done before, and it may mean in 2018 going places that we’ve never gone before, and it may mean in 2018 talking to people that we’ve never talked to before, other than about well water. It may mean actually talking to people about living water, intentionally connecting with them. You know, Jesus wanted his disciples to get this. You see, they were busy about food.
What was on their mind wasn’t the gospel. What was on their mind was filling their belly. And when they came back, Jesus has an interesting moment with them because of the shock and surprise, and, you know, and He basically says, I don’t have any more hunger here. But He says, my food, verse 34, my food, Jesus said, is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. And I think it’s interesting, don’t miss this, that He sees evangelism as a work, as an effort.
Is something you’ve got to give some intentionality to. And so he says to these disciples who still haven’t got it that this is a priority. He says to his disciples, do you not say, 4 months more and then the harvest? Verse 35, I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. Look at the fields.
Look at San Francisco area. Look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages; even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, one sows and another reaps, is true.
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. What’s he saying? He’s saying to his disciples, guys, you got to get intentional about this. You’ve got to see this as like a farmer sees his or her work. It’s all about sowing, and it’s all about cultivating, and it’s all about reaping.
Why? So that there might be a harvest of lost souls for eternity.
So that people who are outside God’s family might come into relationship with God through intentionality, intentional work that’s being done with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So Jesus is just saying to them, I just want you to do that work with intentionality.
And thought and passion. You know, when I was sitting in that room with my doctor and he just told me about, you know, the last conversation he had with Nancy Carpiano and just told me that Nancy had prayed for him, there was a pause, right? There’s a pause at that moment. What happens at the pause? See, we all want to have a positive impact on people.
We want to walk through doors when they open. This was an open door, wouldn’t you say? And at that moment, it would have been very easy for me not to walk through the open door. I mean, you know, doctors’ rooms aren’t places to have spiritual conversations. Doctors’ rooms aren’t places to have prayer for the doctor.
Could have easily just, you know, Shut it down. But I think God’s Holy Spirit— and it was a moment there— I think the doctor, the reason that the doctor was there was because he felt like he needed to apologize. That was the only reason he was there. But could it possibly also have been a providential setup by God?
So I came with one thought at that point. It was just— I just shared the one thought I had in my mind. I just said, Do you believe there’s a God? After he shared what he said, I said, do you believe there’s a God? He said, well, I really don’t know how to feel about that.
He said, you know, I see all of these people die, good people like Nancy, they die, and I’m just not really sure how to feel about that. So I shared a couple of thoughts with him, but then I stopped and I said, you know, you have helped me a lot physically, especially in this last year. But I said, you know, maybe I could help you spiritually. Maybe we could get together, perhaps for lunch. Do you like lunch?
He said, oh, yeah. Maybe we could get together for lunch, maybe once a month, and just talk about faith matters. Does that have any interest to you? And he said, you know, let me think about that.
And I said, okay, why don’t you take some time and think about it? And he asked me to come back into the office and get together again. And so we’re gonna hopefully this next week or the week after reconnect and pick up that conversation and see where it goes. I don’t know where it’ll go, but here’s what I do know is that the Lord wants all of his children to have intentional conversations with people around us that he loves and he longs for us to love and he longs for us to share our faith with. So here we are at the start of 2018.
It’s another year before us and man, it’s a year filled with opportunity and You know, hopefully great things are going to happen.
What would it take, you know, for this year to be different than this past or past years in terms of different in us intentionally making evangelistic connections like Jesus did? What would it take? Well, I think at the start it’s going to take a Christlike mindset, we’re gonna have to in our mind say, you know, I wanna do that. I wanna be used by the Lord in that way. I wanna make a difference in this world for him.
I wanna see that when I look at people, I wanna see that that’s a person God loves, and that’s a person God loves, and that’s a person God loves, and that’s a person that he loves. I want to see people like that, that every lost person matters to God. And if they matter to God, then certainly they should matter to me. And I want to be a person who is missional in my practices, intentional in my practices. I just, I just want to follow the Lord’s leading and go where it is he takes me and courageously share what it is that he’s putting, putting on my heart.
Now today you have the opportunity to hear from Mike Fleshman. Come on up, Mike. Mike and I have really just over the past year or so gotten to know each other a little bit. I’m gonna grab microphone over here in the darkness. But Mike is the Vice President of Missions Door Personnel Department.
I’d love to just talk to you about that, but anyway, we won’t go over there. But he’s been a pastor for 25 years. By the way, Mission Store is an organization that we support. They have over 250 missionaries, different affiliates, thousands of supporters. They’ve been a part of our church since the beginning, so it’s a very significant, important ministry to us, and it’s a privilege to have Mike come into town and spend a few moments with us today.
But part of what I found out about as I was putting this all together was that Mike actually did a dissertation. He got a doctorate at Trinity Evangelical School, and as he was getting his doctorate, he did a dissertation on— what was the topic again?
The conversion of distinctively irreligious people. Yeah, so there’s like a question that’s typical, you know, dissertation kind of stuff. But anyway, so there’s, there’s a question connected to it. What is that? Well, I mean, I came out from a pastor.
I’m not an academic. I just want to see people reach for Jesus, and I want to do this as a Christian. I want to do it as a pastor. I want to lead churches to do it. Um, and yet the people that we are trying to reach more and more, you know, I realize These people, they don’t come from religious backgrounds.
They don’t know what’s in the Bible. They’re not sure if there’s a God. They haven’t darkened the door of a church since like, you know, 7th grade with their aunt or something like that. And so how do those people come to faith? So I wanted to find out, I mean, the miracle of new life in Christ is all the same, but when somebody from way outside the church comes to faith, how does that happen?
‘Cause as somebody who came up in the church, I needed to understand that if I was going to be effective at reaching them and leading other people to reach. And so we looked at that, I mean, through pretty exhaustive research. How do people from the outside, how do they find faith? Yeah, so what you just heard is he did a whole study focused on those people that we’re connecting to here in the Silicon Valley that have nothing to do with faith. They’re not growing up in Christian homes.
They’re not growing up in religious homes necessarily. They’re just, you know, divorced to all of that. So what did you find out? Well, we looked at thousands of people all across the country and dug down at people who had found faith and stuck, and then we identified those that came from those backgrounds. And just to boil, like, a bunch of boring research down to a couple practical things, the first thing I’d put on the table is the word relationship.
So when we talked to people who didn’t come from religious backgrounds, But we asked, who was significant in you coming to faith? And they didn’t say family because they didn’t come from religious backgrounds. Another thing they almost never said was like pastors or youth pastors or religious professionals. Those are way down on the list. Top of the list when we said, who was significant?
They said, a friend. Now that friend might’ve been a neighbor, might’ve been a coworker, might’ve been a mom they just met at the park when their kids were playing. It may have been a lifetime relationship, may have just been a season, somebody or somebodies came into their life in an interpersonal way and encouraged them one step at a time to come find faith. So the first thing was there was always at least one significant relationship, and they would call that person a friend. So friendships are very important.
The second word I would say is process and time. Um, so people who come from outside religious backgrounds are very sensitive to the fact, aware of the fact, that God worked in their life through a series of events and process over time. So for instance, one of the things when we would get data from people, we would say, pick from all these dozens of words any words that describe how you came to faith. It was instantaneous, it was independent, it was intellectual, it was emotional, you know, just pick whatever words or add your own. 2 words were at the top of the list.
People who came from the outside to find faith, they said gradual and encouraged. Gradual and encouraged were the top words they used. So what this meant is it doesn’t just come in a flash of lightning, you know, like right now the plane lands in 3 minutes, what do you say, all the way in or all the way out? They saw God was working in a series of events and somebody or somebodies was encouraging. They were nudging with that intentionality all the way along, all the way along the line.
So that’s why when you told me about the emphasis here at Bridges Community Church, you know, and this intentionality, these intentional connections, I say that’s exactly what makes— it’s extending yourself in relationship and then just intentionally, one nudge at a time, helping somebody along that process of coming to Jesus. So in a nutshell, it’s exactly what you’re talking about, what you’re doing here. Say something about the encouraging part of this. They were gradual, they were encouraging. In other words, they weren’t a negative relationship.
How do you— how did— what did you find out? Yeah, well, I mean, it was, it was whatever— I think the focus is on whatever the next step is. It could look like a lot of things. It could look like, for starters, just initiating a relationship. It’s a mom at a park, it’s a coworker in the next cubicle over, just extending them into relationship.
And then from relationship moving to points of significance. It may not necessarily be spiritual, but it may be a point of need. Somebody’s just gone through a divorce. Somebody’s, you know, lost their job sooner than they needed. They have a health scare.
And entering into those points of significance, and then from those points of significance moving towards points of spiritual connection. Just like the story you were sharing today. That’s exactly what we’re talking about. So the encouraging thing is if you’re like me, And you feel a little bit intimidated about being an in-your-face evangelist, which is exactly— and I taught evangelism at the graduate level, and I’m totally intimidated when that moment comes. So if you’re like me and you can relate to that, here’s the good news: you don’t have to bring it all the way home unless the Holy Spirit brings it.
All you got to do is make the next nudge. And you may not be the only one, just like in this story. You’re the next person to pick up in this story. So all you’ve got to do is, is introduce yourself into the process and say, what would be the next nudge? Because it’s going to take time for somebody.
But if you’re willing to do that, God will use that. I absolutely— and so to me, that was transformative in my life because I was just always the guy who’s like, I can’t do evangelism because I just get hives when I think about it. But I realized I didn’t have to do that. All I had to do was help make the next nudge happen, and it was wonderful to see how God did that. So that would be the encouragement.
Yeah, and you certainly see that with Nancy Carpiano. She made these nudges, and God’s going to use others after. How do you help us not turn something related to evangelism into a project? Here would be the simple thing. If you’re just here at a dead stop and saying, I want to do more, I know I should do more, but honestly, I don’t I just don’t know how.
I don’t know how to get in the process. Here would be what I would focus on right away that is significant. Number one, just focus on building friendships. Do not devalue that. The most effective way to share the good news of Jesus Christ is when one dramatically transformed believer tells their friends.
But for starters, you got to get some friends, and I mean outside of here. So don’t, don’t devalue that. Introduce yourself into relationship. Everyone we discovered, they came to faith, there was somebody. So be that somebody.
So first of all, that’s very important when you’re, when you’re doing that. And then the second thing is just to encourage towards that next step. If you can just do that, just whatever it is, whatever the Lord opens the door for, say, if there’s one more nudge, I’ll do it. If you do those 2 things and then everybody puts that together, And we’re talking about 20,000 nudges all put together. God will honor that.
God’s honoring that already. And you may say, building that friendship, what’s that? Trust me, you do it, you trust the Lord to work through it, everybody puts that together, the impact will be dramatic. It’s really good. Well, you can see why I said yes, let’s do this and see what God will teach us.
