Hindrances to Evangelism

Evangelism — Steve Gregg

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Hindrances to Evangelism

EvangelismSteve Gregg

Explore the hindrances to evangelism as highlighted by Steve Gregg, including apathy, fear, rejection, and cultural isolation. While Jesus encouraged compassion and emphasized the worth of each individual soul, often we may find ourselves lacking concern or enthusiasm for sharing the gospel. Apathy can dampen our eagerness to evangelize, while fear of rejection and judgment can paralyze our efforts. Additionally, cultural isolation and a lack of shared presuppositions can hinder effective communication and connection with others. Recognizing and addressing these hindrances can empower us to overcome obstacles and fulfill our role as ambassadors of the Kingdom.

Transcript

Okay, we're going to talk today about the hindrances to evangelism in your life. Now, of course, one of the hindrances might be just too busy. But there are other reasons usually, because people who want to evangelize usually find time to do so.

They make the time. And, as I said in an earlier session, I would not wish for anybody to evangelize just because they feel guilty, or that they feel like they must do so, or that they're not a good Christian if they don't go out and witness on the street, or something like that. At the same time, I assume that most people who are Christians wish they could be more effective in evangelism, and really wish they did more of it.

I'm not sure that that's true of everybody, but most people I know who love the Lord do kind of wish they had more input into the life of unbelievers to influence them toward God and toward being a Christian. And yet, even though we have that wish, in many cases there are hindrances that keep us from realizing that in our lives, and I think it's good for us to focus on them, because those hindrances are all invalid. And so we need to use the truth to make you free.

The devil will get you to do what he wants you to do by putting misconceptions in your mind, or blinding your mind to the true state of affairs, and maybe lull you to sleep, or intimidate you, or keep you from doing what you ought to do, or what you even want to do, I should say. And the first hindrance I'd like to consider—there are three main ones, and there are sub-points under each one. The first is apathy, which just means we don't care enough.

Apathy is the state of not being too concerned about the situation. And that is a serious problem. If we feel apathy, there's—you know, we obviously aren't sharing in the heart of Jesus.

When Jesus saw the multitudes, he had compassion upon them. He pitied them. They were like sheep without a shepherd.

And it made him respond by teaching them, by feeding them in some cases, by healing them, by reaching out to them in whatever way they were receptive to being helped. And to have the heart of Jesus would mean that we would not be apathetic about the fact that people were dying. On one occasion, at the end of Matthew chapter 9, Jesus, it says, was moved with compassion when he saw the multitudes, and he said to the disciples, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few.

Pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest that he might send forth more laborers into the harvest. And obviously, if you care about the lost, you will at least pray, as Jesus said. Pray that more laborers will be sent.

But no sinner had he told them to pray for more laborers to be sent, then he turned around and sent them. The words I quoted are the last words in Matthew 9. And the opening words of Matthew 10 tell us that Jesus selected the 12 and sent them out to evangelize, preach the gospel. So, he calls upon us to be concerned enough at least to pray.

But if we pray, it may be that he'll also say for us to go. He may tell us to be the ones to be the answers to our own prayers. But some of us aren't even very concerned about the lost.

Not concerned enough anyway to act, and sometimes not even concerned enough to pray. And there are reasons for that. They're not good ones, but there are reasons nonetheless.

And if we can look at those reasons and see how invalid they are, illegitimate they are, it'll help us, I suppose, to overcome them. One of the serious problems, of course, that makes us apathetic, is that we don't see the world sometimes as individuals. We see the masses.

We're much more aware today than any generation before of how massive the task is ahead of us. And we live in, most of us live in cities now. Some people live off the country and things may be a little different for them.

I was raised in the greater Los Angeles area and spent my first 30 years in fairly large cities in California. And I was evangelistic a certain amount of the time, but there were times when I just really didn't get excited about evangelism because all those cars on the freeway and all those faces in the malls and all the masses around, and when you're in Los Angeles the masses are very visible, they just didn't seem like individual people a lot of the time. It was hard to believe these people really were individuals in crisis.

People who had hurts, people who had longings, people who were in total ignorance of God in many cases. And I just saw them as masses of people and that becomes rather impersonal. It's easy not to care very much when you forget that people are individuals.

And from time to time I just kind of bring myself up short and remember that all those people there have names and all those people that don't only have faces that blur into the masses, but they have personalities. And they have marriage problems or problems with their parents or they have maybe life-dominating habits that are a vexation to them. Of course many of them are rebels against God too, but a lot of them are simply bewildered and lost and of course they are rebelling in a sense against God, but many of them wouldn't respond to God if they knew where he was.

And we have to stop viewing the world population as just hordes like cattle, you know, that are just kind of moving en masse with a brainlessness about them that cattle are not personal beings, not like people are. And yet we can see the people just in the streets at some kind of a festival or something in such huge numbers that we stop thinking of them in terms of individual people with individual needs and problems and we just see them like a cattle drive, you know. And Jesus in a sense viewed them as cattle, but he had compassion on them anyway.

He saw them like sheep, that's livestock, but his seeing them like sheep of course was, he didn't really see them as merely sheep, he saw them as God's sheep that had gone astray and didn't have a shepherd. And he saw them as needing individual attention and even said on occasion that a shepherd would go after an individual sheep if it was wandering and leave behind the crowd of ninety-nine in order to be sensitive to the special need of one individual that was really in desperate need. And so we need to realize that we can't help all the people when we see the crowds.

A lot of times in the newspapers and the news magazines we see the horns of Chinese at Tiananmen Square or protests against the pro-life movement or something waged by the pro-choice people and there's crowds of them in the streets and we see these pictures and sometimes all the faces just blur into a multicolored collage and it doesn't really hit us as it should, these are real people, every one of them, and every one of them needs Jesus. And we have to have the sensitivity to individuals that Jesus did. It's true, we probably will not be able to reach the masses effectively as a group.

This is, I think, the misconception of much of media ministry, the idea being that if we just can get on television, if we can just get Christian movies, if we can just get Christian radio stations, somehow we'll reach the masses as a group. But even if people are reached through this, it's still this and that individual in the masses. For the most part, people are going to be one at a time.

And it may be that there will be a group of people in an evangelistic meeting or all at one time watching a television program, who will turn to Christ, but even so, there's still individuals that have to be discipled individually, they have to be cared for, they have individual needs that some church or some Christian is going to have to look after. We might as well just look at the crowds as made up of so many individuals. And you may only have time to talk to one at a time, and it may in fact be only one a week or one a month, it's hard to say.

You might spend your whole time for a year or so working with one high-maintenance individual that you're trying to bring to the Lord. But it's worth it. You're not the only Christian out there doing it, and it's worth the time spent.

If it's a person who's not resisting the Gospel, but maybe confused and just needs more attention, we have to realize that God will lead us to individuals, and we need to ask Him to do so. Even if we're witnessing in a crowded festival or something like that, we need to ask God to lead us to the individuals who are in need. I remember witnessing in Santa Cruz on the streets there frequently, and there was a sort of a little café where people would sit out in the open air and drink wine and eat food and stuff.

And I was just looking for some of the witnesses, and there were people walking by in great numbers all over the place. And I noticed a guy sitting at a table with a glass of wine in front of him, and he was all alone. And I just went up and started talking with him, and it turned out it was a very fruitful conversation.

In fact, after I talked to him for a while and told him about the Lord, he said that he had just prayed the day before, that if God was there, he would send somebody to him to speak with him. And that guy's face could have just been one of the hundreds that were passing by on the street or sitting in that café. I noticed, however, that he did seem not only alone, but a bit lonely.

And I was glad that God let me pick him out of the crowd. I didn't talk to anyone else that night, just him. And it was worth the time.

We need to avoid, or we need to resist, the tendency to be overwhelmed by the massiveness of the crowds. And a corollary of that, seeing the crowds, is to see the task as too large. There are just too many people.

We can't reach them all. The fact that the population of the world is growing much more rapidly than the population of the Christian Church, that is, people are being born onto the planet much faster than people are being converted to Christianity, which means as time goes by, a smaller and smaller percentage of the earth's population are Christians. The places where the population is growing the most are places often that are not Christian.

In fact, the places that have historically been most influenced by Christianity, the Western world, America and Europe and so forth, population growth is not very good in those places. As a matter of fact, shrinking. In Germany, for instance, they still do.

I know the government used to pay people to have children monthly, pay them a monthly stipulation. I think not only Germany, I think other European countries do that too. In fact, some Europeans were surprised to learn that America doesn't do that, because people are just choosing not to have many kids.

And the population is actually shrinking. The number of births in countries like America and in Western Europe is not even at the replacement level in many cases. That is, to replace the people who are dying.

And the population of some of these countries is shrinking, whereas the populations of the countries under Buddhism and Hinduism and Apothism and other pagan ideas are often growing by leaps and bounds, which means the task is great and growing greater every day. But again, we must not be intimidated by it. The Christian movement has always been swimming upstream against strong tides.

The Christian movement has always been perpetuated by a small number. Jesus in his own day said, The gate that leads to life is narrow, and there's few going that way. And there's many that go into the broad gate that leads to destruction.

That didn't discourage Jesus. Jesus said, The kingdom of God is like a little mustard seed. It starts out very, very small, but it grows.

And it grows very large, and eventually breaches out and provides shelter for a great number of creatures. It's like leaven in a lump. Leaven is a very small quantity of stuff that you put in compared to the lump of dough, and yet it affects the whole eventually.

And so we just have to have the hope that if we do our little part, if we share the gospel and shine the light in the corner that we're in, and if other Christians are doing the same, then that's all that's required of us. That God has promised that his kingdom is going to prevail. And while the task may seem extremely large, we have to go forth on the promises of God, just like the Israelites who were told to go in and conquer Canaan.

The spies came back in Numbers chapter 13 and said, We can't conquer this land. There's giants in the land. We were like grasshoppers in their sight and in our own sight when we stood next to them.

And so their hearts melted with fear, and they thought the task was too great. But there were a few, Joshua and Caleb, who encouraged the people and said, Well, yeah, there are giants in the land. It is a big task.

But we have a big God who's commanded us to go in there and who's promised us victory. It's just a matter of whether we're willing to go forth and be faithful and let him do through us what he wants to do. In our own flesh, of course, we can't do it.

But we're not expected to do it in our own flesh. We're supposed to do it through our God. We shall do valiantly.

It is he who will tread down our enemies. It says in Isaiah 42, speaking of Christ, in verse four, He will not fail nor be discouraged until he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands will wait for his law, that is, for his word to come. The coastlands of every nation are waiting for the gospel to be preached there.

And it hasn't happened yet. It's going. It is happening more and more.

Although the world population is growing faster than the churches, still the church is penetrating new territories all the time. And in some areas, the church is growing faster than the population. For instance, in Latin America, I read several years ago a statistic that said that the church in, not just the church, the Pentecostal churches in Latin America were growing at three times the population growth of the countries themselves where the church was growing.

I mean, if that goes on for very long, it wouldn't take very long for the church, for spiritual Christians to be in the majority of regions like that. Unfortunately, that's not true in all parts of the world. But in some places it is happening.

And when you hear of it in one place or two places, that just shows you that God can do it. And when he desires, he can do it anywhere. And he will not fail or be discouraged, it says, until he has established his reign and his word has reached the uttermost parts of the earth.

There is a promise of the scripture made to Jesus. It's a promise the Father made to Jesus. In Psalm 2, in verse 8, the Father says to Jesus, Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth.

Actually, in the King James following the Hebrew a little more closely, it says, the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. This is what God has promised to Jesus. The nations will be his inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth will be his possession.

And that expression, uttermost parts of the earth, Jesus borrowed it from this psalm. When he said that in Acts 1-8, you should be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth. The New King James in both places removes the term uttermost parts and puts in the word ends of the earth.

But in Luke 2 and in Acts 1-8, the term uttermost parts of the earth are used in both places. Jesus seems to be alluding back to the psalm. The psalm says that Jesus will receive the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession.

Jesus indicated that that would be done by his disciples being witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth. And so we must not be put off by the enormity of the task. It is not any guarantee that we will succeed in our generation.

But we do have to hold the torch to our generation. We do have to carry our own weight in this particular part of the race. Another aspect of the apathy that is sometimes seen is we can see whether we're apathetic for souls by the things we choose to do with our time and our resources.

The things in this world too often are much more important to us. In Colossians 3-2 it says, Do not set your affections on the things that are on the earth, but on the things that are above where Christ sits. You're supposed to be seated with Christ as far as your reckoning is concerned, and therefore you are supposed to be, as it were, in heaven.

It says, That's the one. Okay, let me see. It says, If you then were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

Set your mind, as the King James says, your affection on things above and not on things of the earth. That's Colossians 3-1 and 2. You can tell where your affections are by what you spend your time doing, what you choose as entertainment, what you spend your money on. And there's nothing sinful, to my knowledge, about enjoying yourself.

I don't believe there's anything sinful about entertainment. But I do believe that these things can be symptomatic of a greater problem. If we are spending our money more on ourselves, and on our pleasures, and our gratifications, and our hobbies, than we are on the mission of evangelism of the world.

If we are spending more of our time watching television than we are doing anything that promotes the kingdom of God. This may be symptomatic of an apathy that we have. Our priorities are mixed up.

Jesus said, of course, in Matthew 16-26, a passage which most of you could quote, I imagine. Matthew 16-26, he said, What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Well, we're not here talking about losing our own soul, but we're talking about other people's souls being lost. And Jesus indicated that a soul of an individual is worth more than the whole world.

At least it is to the person whose soul is in danger of being lost. And yet we often put the things of the world higher in our priorities, in spending, in our consumption of time, than we do the souls of men. And that simply shows a failure to focus on the right things.

It sets our affections on things below and not on the eternities of men. Like Jonah. Jonah is an example of this very thing.

Jonah was sent to preach to these people in Nineveh. He suspected that they might repent and get saved. He didn't want that.

So he fled through a series of circumstances that every Sunday school child can describe. The man was persuaded to go to Nineveh after all. And when he went there, he preached and then he went outside the city to watch and see what would happen.

Meanwhile, the people repented and God decided not to destroy them all at once. Well, Jonah was out in the hot sun not enjoying himself. And God sent a gourd, a large plant, to grow up overnight, miraculously.

Which covered him and provided shade for him. And the Bible says he was glad of the gourd. He was glad it was there.

It gave him a little refreshment. But then God sent a worm that ate the gourd. And it withered up and it died, apparently the same day or the next day.

And Jonah was angry that the gourd perished. And God's final words to Jonah at the end of the book are, You know, you care about this gourd, which rose up in a day and perished in a day. And you don't care about these many thousands of souls in Nineveh who would have perished.

In other words, you're more concerned about your comfort provided by this gourd than you are about the eternal destinies of these people that I sent you to preach to. That's the review he got at the end of the book of Jonah, the very last verses of the book of Jonah. We don't have any record of Jonah's response.

But it seems quite obvious that he must have repented because, you know, likelihood he wrote the book. But I think the American church is in danger. We are too, even though maybe we would consider ourselves to be the radical fringe of the church, since we're the kind of people who drop everything and go to a Bible school and stuff like that, that we're maybe a little different than the average pew-wormers.

Well, not always. We can still have our own things that we put as a priority in our spending and our time, and that may prevent us from really going about the Lord's business, from really doing the things that God would place first, like winning souls. And so we can sort of test our apathy level by our time commitments and our priorities in spending and so forth.

Of course, there's always the possibility that we're apathetic because we're Lukewarm, and backslidden in heart. It's possible that we've made compromises in our own lives. In Revelation chapter 3, the church of Laodicea is said to be Lukewarm.

It's neither hot nor cold in Revelation 3, verses 15 and 16. Jesus commands that church in verse 19, Revelation 3, 19, He commands them to be zealous and repent. Zeal is the opposite of apathy.

And so the church was Lukewarm in the sense of apathetic. Why was it? Well, He said, because that church was rich and comfortable and lived luxuriously, and they did not realize that they were really wretched and blind and poor and naked and so forth. That's how Jesus assessed the church.

Many times our own prosperity or our cares of this world and deceitfulness of riches will draw our hearts at least partially away from the zeal that we first had when we were Christians. We grow Lukewarm. And it may be that some of you can look back at the time when you were first converted, at a time when you were more evangelistic than you are now.

I can look back at that, and I don't know whether it's Lukewarmness or just because the way God has directed me, I'm now involved in other ministry far more than street ministry, but I really look back with fondness at times in my life when I was able to just be on the street and talk to people about the Lord a great deal or hitchhike around and do that. Sometimes I ask myself, why don't I do that anymore? Is it because I've become Lukewarm? I try not to be too easy on myself, but I think it's not that. I think it's that all my energy is now consumed with other ministry-related things.

But it is possible that we can look back at a time when we were more evangelistic than we are now, and the only answer for it is that we don't care as much as we used to. We've become apathetic about souls when we maybe weren't at first. It's interesting that Danny Lehman has statistics that are very interesting on a number of issues related to evangelism.

He said that statistically, most Christians who lead other people to the Lord do so within the first two years of their Christian life. After two years old in the Lord, their evangelism usually slows down a bit. Most people who are evangelized one-on-one are evangelized by somebody who's been saved for less than two years.

Now, of course, there's a lot of exceptions, but statistically, I mean, there's no doubt thousands of exceptions. There's thousands of people, no doubt, out there who've been saved for 20 or 30 years and are still witnessing and bringing people to Christ. But the much larger number, the majority, of people are being converted by young zealots who have first gotten saved.

And the question, of course, arises, why then don't these people continue to witness after the first or second year of their Christian life has begun? I wonder what is the factor that caused them to cool off? And there's a number of possibilities. One is that they're no longer really involved in the world that much. As you've been a Christian for a while, your old friends have kind of dropped off.

We're in the world, most of your new friends are Christians, and you spend your time in fellowship with Christians instead of out in the world. And that's obvious, and that's not bad. I mean, that's just the change of life that happens to a person when they get saved.

Their old associations kind of back away from them, and they have a new set of friends, and so they're not as much in contact as they used to be with unbelievers. And, of course, as they get more spiritually minded, they also have fewer and fewer things with which they can relate to unbelievers. I mean, it's not that you can't still communicate with an unbeliever after you've become very different than them, but there's fewer and fewer points of likeness between a believer's life and an unbeliever's life, where a real relationship seems impossible.

But I think it's also possible that people are just more zealous when they first get saved because they're exulting in the joy of their salvation, which is so new and novel. And after a while, they just take Jesus for granted, and they take their salvation for granted, and settle into a religion lifestyle, which is something I think to be avoided. There are perhaps some reasonable reasons why people don't tend to save as many people through their witness after they've been a Christian for a few years, as they did earlier.

But I would say, if that's the case in your life, or in mine, you ought to be looking back and saying, why is it that there aren't as many people being saved through my witness as there might have been at one time? Now, some of you might say, hey, I can't even look back and ever see the time that people get saved through me. Well, maybe that time is ahead of you, instead of behind you. When you're as old as I am, there's a lot of things behind you.

It's been a mystery as long as I have. I would like to think that an awful lot of evangelistic opportunities still lie ahead for me. But a lot of you people are in a much more free situation to actually share the Lord.

And if you're not, there might be good reasons for it, but there might also not be. And you need to check your own heart to see if it's just apathy. I think some people don't like to share because they've just kind of drifted from the Lord, and they don't have any vital testimony to share.

It's always surprising to me when I say in a meeting, does anyone have any testimonies of what God's been doing? And it takes a long time for someone to think of something. It seems like we ought to be walking with the Lord in such a way, prayerfully, night and day, that we see answered prayers all the time. Not that every prayer we pray is going to be answered instantly, but there are so many things we pray for that some of them ought to be coming in as answers continually.

We ought to be able to be hearing from God, and be able to testify to what God has told us, or what God has done in our lives. Maybe not every single week. Somebody said, if your testimony is more than a week old, or you're backslidden, or something like that, that might be a little unreasonable.

There are dry spells that are not marks of backsliddenness. There are times when you're really pressing in with the Lord, and yet you go through a dry period of time, and you don't have much to testify about. But, if you do have a testimony, if you are experiencing the goodness of God in your life, and you're recognizing that, you'll have a tendency to want to share that.

The Bible says, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. If you're experiencing God's saving and delivering power in your life, and answering your prayers, and so forth, you're likely to want to say so. And if you don't want to say so, you might check and say, well, what's wrong? Is my life with God not really as fruitful as it once was? Am I not really experiencing a walk with the Lord like I used to know? Or like I should know, perhaps? I'll tell you one thing that sometimes makes people apathetic in evangelism.

And it's a hard thing to overcome. And that is the lack of confidence in the churches. What I mean by that is, I've had many times people say, yeah, I'd like to lead people to the Lord, but where do I send them? And of course, the best answer should be, well, to the church, of course.

Unfortunately, though, in some areas, it's hard to find the kind of church you'd want to send people to. I mean, some of the better churches around, like in this town, there are a number of churches in this town. Some of them are probably pretty good, and others are difficult.

But so many of them have had problems. There's one spiritual church in this town that went through two pastors in a row, both committed adultery and had to be dumped. Another church in town, another charismatic church, or Pentecostal church in this town, has had some serious crisis and division over a pastor who appeared to be causing serious problems.

It looks like he's on his way out, and maybe the church will recover. But there's so frequently problems like these that are in the forefront of the church life. You go to a church, and it's either, you know, it seems dead, or maybe it's not dead, maybe it's wild, you know? Too wild.

Not too wild in the sense that it's too emotional, but so wild that there's no restraint on their doctrine or on their behavior, and there's maybe no holiness in the church. Other times you go to churches, and they're just about ready to blow up with the church split and so forth. After you see a few of these cases, and by the way, some people have been around long enough to have tried all the churches in town, and to be dissatisfied with them.

I don't say in this town, because I don't know all the churches in this town, but when I was in, I was in a small town before I came here, and I had only six evangelical churches in the whole town. And of course there are towns that have fewer, but there were only six there, and I tried them all, and boy, it was hard to pick one for my family to join. And it would have been very hard for me, when I led people to the Lord, to send a new convert to some of these churches.

In fact, it was very hard to decide where to send them. As it turned out, we had our own Friday night meetings, and we pretty much absorbed them there. But, I mean, there might have been things even about our meetings that other people wouldn't feel good about, so that they wouldn't want to send a convert there.

I don't know. But, I mean, the hard thing is, sometimes you've been really evangelistic, but then you see, you know, what are you going to do with these people after they get saved? Are you going to disciple them yourself? Or are you going to put them in a church? And if in a church, which one? And if all the churches you know of are kind of embarrassing, or worse, shameful, you know, it gets really kind of hard to get into evangelizing. So you say, well, these people are just going to have to end up in one of these churches, and they'll probably get blown out by some of the immorality, or the stupidity, or some of the divisiveness that's going on in some of these places.

And that may be a cause of apathy with some people. I've known people who've complained that way. They've said, you know, I just want to lead people to the Lord, but I don't know where to send them.

Afterwards. I can't. I can't take them all home with me.

That's what Keith Green did. He'd get people saved, and he didn't know any place with the disciples, so he just took them home. He eventually had 66 people living in six rented homes, in one neighborhood.

And as you know, he eventually went and bought some property, and had a community and a ministry down in Texas. But not everybody can bring them all home with them. And so I'd say that it's really, that can be discouraging.

As far as the solution to it, we should just warn people when you leave the Lord. Now listen, not everybody in the church is following the Lord. And you should be in fellowship.

Go to a church and try to find some people there who do love God. And don't be too stumbled when you find out there's people in there who aren't really believers, or who are carnal, or who are petty. Or if the church splits or something, that doesn't in any sense prove that Jesus isn't real.

And you should look out for those people in the church who are for real. And make close associations with them. I mean, you can counsel a person that way and put them into a church that you know has problems.

Just so that you kind of prepare them, and insulate them against the worst damage that might otherwise be done. If people go into a church all idealistic, that, oh, I finally found the people of God, and then the people act like people of the devil instead. It can be very disillusioning.

And there are no doubt many people in every town who have been disillusioned with several churches in a row, and now have just decided that it's not worth going to church at all. It's not very good. Those same people are not likely to be very strongly motivated to evangelism.

Unless they're starting a church in their home or something to bring people into. But it's hard when you don't really have much confidence in the churches, to want to get out there and make a lot of converts to fill the churches. A person may be apathetic about evangelism because he's discouraged by past failure.

I'll tell you, I evangelized for several years before I saw one convert. I started preaching, I guess, when I was in junior high school. I don't remember ever seeing any converts to my preaching in junior high school.

As a freshman and sophomore in high school, I took speech classes so I could preach the gospel to my class and stuff. I did so frequently. I witnessed to a large number of people who were my schoolmates.

I didn't see any people get saved. It wasn't until I got baptized in the Spirit when I was 16 that things began to change in that respect. I could have been very discouraged by the lack of success.

But I guess maybe I was conditioned for it because our church preached the gospel every Sunday and didn't see any success either. There were altar calls every Sunday and hardly anyone ever went forward. So maybe I was just conditioned to the idea that you're not really supposed to see results.

You're just supposed to do it. But anyway, the fact of the matter is, you should do it regardless of results anyway. The story of Adoniram Judson, the first missionary from the United States to go overseas back in the early 1800s, is a story of a man who really persevered for many years without seeing a single convert.

He went to India first. He got kicked out of there. He tried the Isle of France.

That didn't work out. He finally went to Burma, which was the armpit of Asia. A few missionaries had tried to go there before but had been run out of the place and had their churches burned down and stuff.

He finally went in there and he began to labor to learn the language and to translate the New Testament and to write tracts in their language and so forth. He labored for six years in Burma before he saw one bit of fruit. He wasn't actually witnessing that whole time because he had to take some time to learn the language.

But he labored nonetheless without seeing any encouraging fruit for six years before he actually began to see some converts made. Some of the ones that he made backslid when persecution came and so forth. That can be very discouraging.

But he said, the prospects are as bright as the promises of God. And you have to, when you're going to be a soul winner or attempt to be a soul winner, you've got to be prepared to not see fruit. I mean, you want to see fruit, of course, otherwise you wouldn't go out.

But you have to realize that being successful is not really the name of the game. It's being faithful with what you know. The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4 that he and Barnabas, I'm not here, but he and Apollos should be regarded as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

But he said, moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. 1 Corinthians 4, 1 and 2. He said he and Apollos, who were preachers of the gospel, were stewards. That is, they were entrusted with a stewardship, which means they had a management responsibility.

They were supposed to take something and use it for God, as stewards. He said that what is required of stewards is that they be found faithful. Not necessarily that they get results.

Success can never be guaranteed in any particular enterprise. But to do what you must do and to do it faithfully is what you will be judged by. And so, the fact that you may have had past failures should not be, I would think, an indicator of whether you should continue trying.

And sometimes people become apathetic in advance and become discouraged over past failures. There is a scripture, I think, that should be remembered if that is the case. That is, if you feel discouraged that you've witnessed and people haven't gotten saved.

In Isaiah 43, verses 18 and 19. Isaiah 43, 18 and 19 says, Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, and now it will spring forth.

Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Now, obviously this passage has a context. And it is talking about something a little different than the question of whether your evangelistic efforts in the past are going to be turned around.

But still, the warning is, expect God to do new things. And don't necessarily judge the future. Don't make predictions based on the past.

Make predictions based on the potentialities of what God can do. Even something totally new. He may watch you sow those seeds for ten years before you ever see the crops.

But we will labor. We should continue to reap, and we shall harvest if we do not faint. Is that what he said at the end of Galatians? Galatians chapter 6? Let me give you this passage.

Galatians 6, 9. Let us not grow weary while doing good. For in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Let's not grow weary in doing what's right, even if we're not reaping yet.

We will reap if we don't lose heart in due season. Remember, the man who will bring forth his fruit in his season, in Psalm 1. It may be that the season for sowing is all that you've known at this point. The season for reaping may be ahead.

It may also be that the season for sowing is all that you'll ever know. And that some other person will come along and reap. At any rate, that's all right, too.

Jesus said to the disciples in John chapter 4, when the Samaritan people were coming out at the invitation of the Samaritan woman, He said, I've sent you to reap where you have not sowed. I've sent you out to reap where other men have sown, and you have entered into their labors. And so the same is fulfilled.

One sows and another reaps. Let me give you that here. Let me read this passage.

It's in John 4, 35 through 38. John 4, 35 through 38. Jesus said, Do not say there are still four months and then come to harvest.

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest. And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life. And both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.

For in this the saying is true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.

Now the disciples, in other words, were sent out to reap what the prophets and others before them had sown for many hundreds of years. The prophets had lived and died without seeing success. Very few of the prophets ever saw their words heeded.

But the disciples came on hundreds of years later, and all that seed that had been planted by the prophets had made a harvest ready. So you may not even live to see the harvest, but don't lose heart. There will be a reaping in due time.

You just don't be weary in doing good. And if you've had discouragement over the past day, ignore it. Just keep pressing forward.

Don't remember the former things. Expect God to do something new. I will say one other thing that is a possible cause of apathy in evangelism.

One reason we are apathetic at times, and in fact maybe this is always a present factor in apathy, is that we have forgotten or have not given serious enough consideration recently to the terrifying judgment of God upon sinners. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5.11, 2 Corinthians 5.11, Paul says, Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men, that is, we God persuade men to become Christians because we know very well the terror of the Lord. What does he mean by that? He means the terrible judgment of the Lord upon people who will not turn to Christ.

Unbelievers are not anywhere near as concerned about their own souls usually as Christians ought to be about that unbeliever's soul. Because the Christian knows what the unbeliever doesn't. He knows that there's a hell of fire waiting for people who don't turn to Christ.

And that the devil has blinded the unbelievers from this fact, and that they're going along like an ostrich with their head in the ground, not realizing that things are about to come crashing in on them. But we have that information from God, from the Bible. And if you can imagine what it would be like to burn in fire forever and ever and ever, which you cannot, then you might have a brief glimpse of how awful the torment will be for those who do not turn to Christ.

And it would take a very hard heart, I would think, to know of that judgment upon sinners, and care nothing about warning them, care nothing about turning them to Christ. So, apathy may have many causes or many evidences. It may be due to the fact that we don't see people as individuals anymore.

We're just aware of this huge world population and the masses are impersonal to us. The task may seem too large and discouraging, because we could never imagine that we could accomplish it with our little resources. It may be that we're lukewarm and backslidden in heart, that we don't have a current testimony, because we haven't really been walking with the Lord as vitally as we once did or as we should.

We may be apathetic in evangelism because we don't have confidence in the Church, knowing very well that if we lead someone to Christ, they're going to have to end up in the Church. And if we don't think the Church is a very good environment for them, then we may feel disinclined to witness. And we may also be apathetic because in the past we've tried and failed.

And in any case, it's usually so, if we're apathetic, that we are not giving full consideration as we should to the terrible judgment of God upon sinners who don't repent. And if we remind ourselves of these truths, it should be a good cure for apathy. There's a second hindrance I would like to talk about, hindrance to evangelism besides apathy, and that is fear.

The fear of man. Fear of man. Proverbs 29, 25.

Proverbs 29, verse 25 says, The fear of man brings a snare, but he who puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe. A trap, a snare. The fear of man will trap you.

It'll keep you from doing what you ought to do. If you're holding out for human approval, it will paralyze you. And many Christians are paralyzed with fear when it comes to witnessing.

What are they afraid of? A number of things. One, fear of physical harm. Now, physical harm can be just pain, or it can actually be death, depending on what crowd you're considering witnessing to.

If you feel like you're called to go and talk to the hell's angels, or walk into a Satanist crowd, death may be a real prospect. On the other hand, or going to certain natives that are known to be cannibals, or people who've killed missionaries before. I mean, obviously, the fear of death can be a very realistic fear.

Realistic, yes, but not legitimate for the Christian. The Christian is one who has already decided that death is not the greatest thing to avoid. A Christian is more concerned about avoiding sin than avoiding death, at least he should be.

Because you can't avoid death ultimately anyway, can you? I mean, some Christians still hold out the hope that maybe Jesus will come back in their lifetime, in which case they won't die. But a realistic Christian knows that, although that is a possibility, there are no guarantees of that. Christians throughout history have hoped that that might be the case, and have all, until this present generation, died.

Now that isn't tragic, because death is not a tragedy for the Christian. The Apostle Paul says, oh, death, where's your sting? Oh, grave, where's your victory? There's no tragedy in death for the Christian. Death for the Christian is a graduation.

It's a coronation. It's a crowning. It's a rest from labors.

It's precious in the sight of the Lord, the death of his saints. And therefore, a Christian ought not to fear death. And a lot of times, the fear of death just comes upon us unbidden, unasked for.

Sometimes we have reason so much, we just, you know, when we realize that death is a possibility, suddenly fear comes upon us. This is an attack from the enemy. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and of power and of a sound mind.

And there's no reason for us to be afraid of death, 2 Timothy 1.7. 2 Timothy 1.7, a spirit of fear may come upon you. And the way to overcome it is simply to remind yourself of what you know as a Christian to be true. Death is not the thing I'm trying to avoid the most.

Death is not a terrible thing. Pain is undesirable. But death is not necessarily.

Paul said for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. That is, death would be an improvement. If you really understand and believe what the Bible says about Christians and the afterlife.

If you really believe that to depart from this world is to go and be with Christ, I don't see how anyone could wish to shrink from death. I mean, I can see how one might instinctively, because the instinct of self-preservation is said to be the strongest natural instinct of man. But that's just the point.

That's a natural instinct. We're not in the natural anymore. We're in the supernatural.

We have the divine nature is given to us. And we are informed now that to preserve ourself is neither possible indefinitely, nor necessarily even desirable. The fact that it's not possible for us to prolong our lives forever is just common knowledge.

If people would just take the time to really look at that fact, I think more people would get converted if they would look at that fact. Because an awful lot of people spend their time imagining that they're not going to die. I mean, they wouldn't really claim that they're not going to die.

They just don't think about the fact that they're going to very often and they just live as though it's not going to happen. And Christians have no right to be among those who do so. We should recognize the fact that death is something that happens.

Martyrdom doesn't increase the death toll of Christians. Because every Christian dies. The mortality rate of Christians is the same as the mortality rate of non-Christians, 100%.

The mortality rate of the human race is 100%. And to die valiantly while young, or to live, you know, compromised for a long time, do not provide two equally desirable options. I think that it's far more desirable to die in the service of Christ, even if that means our life is short here.

I mean, think about it. Suppose you die at age 25 or 30 in the service of Christ. Suppose that's one of your options.

Another of your options is to avoid all danger, to kind of shrink back from situations that might be risky. And you manage to prolong your life to age 70 or 80, maybe even 90. Suppose you manage it and then you die.

What have you gained? You've gained 60 years. 60 years here. But when you die you go into eternity, and you know how long 60 years is going to seem like when you're in eternity? You won't even be able to remember 60 years.

60 years will be so unutterably small a period of time compared to the billions of years that await you. To have compromised your soul in order to gain 60 years of time on this planet will seem like the most utterly foolish choice a human being could make from that perspective. Now, there's no reason that you have to wait until you die to have that perspective.

That's the wonderful thing about having the Scriptures. We know already what we will think about such things then, because God has told us. God has informed us something about eternity.

See, the world doesn't know. The people in the world, this world is all they've got. To lose it is to lose all they know.

And to go into death is to go into a realm of uncertainty, because they don't know what awaits them on the other side. But we don't live in that category. We know that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Is that really undesirable? Not that we should be suicidal or eagerly and unnecessarily hasten our death, but if we would go forward with the Gospel, even not fearing death, then we would be in the company of those of whom it is said they overcame the devil by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto the death, it says in Revelation 12, 11. Those who overcome the enemy are not those who are trying to hang on to their lives. They're the ones who do not love their lives, even unto the death.

It says in Matthew 16, 25, Jesus said, in Matthew 16, 25, for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. So if you try to save your life, it's a hopeless errand. It's a fool's errand.

You're not going to save your life. You try to save your life, Jesus said, you'll lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, you'll find it.

This is the Christian perspective. It's often not the perspective that all Christians live with, but they should. That's the normal Christian truth.

And when Christians are afraid to die, a lot of times they're just not paying attention to these facts. Now, at the same time, there is wisdom. I mean, we eat food, partly because we know we will be in poor health and eventually die, if we don't eat food.

And we think it's a responsible thing to eat food, and it is. It's good stewardship of our body. Likewise, we don't get in our cars and drive 80 miles an hour on the wrong side of the freeway toward oncoming traffic, just because we're not afraid to die.

I mean, that's foolishness, that's poor stewardship, and so forth. But at the same time, we should be willing to just go forward for the gospel's sake, if that's what Christ calls us to do, and not fear what men shall do to us. And that's what it says in Hebrews 13, in verse 6. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what men will do to me.

Hebrews 13, 6. Galatians 1, 10. For do I now persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. If you're hoping to curry the favor of the world, forget it.

I mean, forget being a Christian, because that's not what being a Christian's all about. You've got to make a choice. Everything has its price tag.

If you choose the Lord, it'll be at the cost of the world. If you choose the world, it'll be at the cost of the Lord. You can't have both.

You just have to decide which price you're interested in paying for which commodity. In 1 Peter, chapter 4, I believe it is. It says in verses 3 and 4. 1 Peter 4, verses 3 and 4. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles.

We've pleased them long enough. Before you were a Christian, you always wanted to please the heathen, your friends, keep their favor. It says we've spent enough of our time doing that.

When we walk in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drunk drinking parties, and abominable idolatry. In regard to these, they think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation. Speaking evil of you.

They speak evil of you because they think it's strange that you're not running the same way they are running anymore. But you've spent enough time trying to please them, it says. Pleasing man is not what being a Christian is about.

And so, the fear of death is not a legitimate reason to back off of evangelism. Although it's understandable, but it's not legitimate. Also the fear of pain.

A lot of people say, I'm not afraid to die for the Lord. I hope I die at the firing squad, or maybe the guillotine, or something like that. Because that's pretty quick.

But to be tortured for 13 years or something like that, and then finally die, or even to be released after that, is not exactly my idea of my first choice for my life. And pain is something that probably we all want to avoid. There's very few people, and the ones who are of this category are warped, who enjoy pain.

Pain is something that we're not supposed to enjoy. The fact that it is a universally disliked experience is the very reason that torturers use it. You don't have to like pain to be a good Christian.

But you do have to be willing to trust God not to make you face any pain that you're not able to endure without Him giving you the grace for it. Paul had pain. It was apparently a tremendously afflicting, burdensome problem that he had.

We don't know what it was, but when he prayed to God that he would get out of it, God said, in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, My grace is sufficient for you. Now, that is a promise of God. God's grace is sufficient.

And He will not allow you to be tempted beyond that which you're able to endure. Of course we'd rather live painless lives, but that's not a good enough reason to shirk responsibility, or to not do what's the best thing to do. If there's a course of action that would be less painful, but also less fruitful, then the Christian should be willing to choose the more risky, more costly, more painful course, if that's the course of greater fruitfulness for the kingdom of God's sake.

We only have a short time on this earth anyway. And by the time that we get raptured out of here, and we know that eternity is all that's left for us, we'll wish that we'd been willing to suffer a little more pain in the short time we're down here, and to do so, to pay the price a little more than we did. By the way, I personally think that Christians are indestructible until God wants them home.

We have an instance in the book of Revelation of the so-called two witnesses. And in Revelation chapter 11, it says, after they've witnessed for about three and a half years, and everybody hates them, would like to do them in, but apparently are unable to do so. It says in verse 7, when they finish their testimony, the beast that descends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them and overcome them and kill them, but not until they finish their testimony.

And I don't believe that anybody will be killed until they've finished their testimony. I don't think that until God's done with you here, he'll let anything happen to you. Now you might say, oh yeah, well let me go lay on a train track and see.

Well, you may find out that you've finished your testimony sooner than you thought. But as long as there's something more for God to do through you, that he intends to do, he'll keep you around. And by the way, if God's finished doing anything through me, I don't want to stay around.

I can't think of anything more boring than living in this world and having God do nothing anymore, because he's finished with me. When I'm done here, I want to go. In fact, I'd like to go now, as a matter of fact.

But as long as there's something for God to do through me, I'm willing to stay. But as soon as he's finished with that, I don't really have any desire to stay around. And so, again, to prolong our lives a little bit, or to attempt to do so, by compromising the best course of action that we might otherwise take, is obviously a very stupid choice, it seems to me.

Remember, you can count on the grace of God. You can't count on the pain. And you know, many times the things we fear are lies of the devil, and will never happen anyway.

The devil will tell you, oh man, you're really going to get beat up, or you're really going to get killed, or something horrible is going to happen here. And in most cases, it's a lie. How many Christians do you know who are evangelistic, who get beat up most of the time? I've known a few who got stabbed, I've known a few who got beat up, thrown in jail, stuff like that.

I've seen some, and Paul, and some of the guys in the Bible certainly did. But what percentage of the time that these people witness do these kinds of things happen? I would imagine that if you know someone who's been beat up for witnessing, it was one of the 10,000 times that he witnessed to somebody that it happened to him. The averages are very much against somebody reacting violently toward you.

Not that you want to put your faith in the averages anyway. But the point is that the devil will often keep you from talking to somebody because you're afraid of them. When in fact, if you had witnessed somebody, you'd find there was nothing to be afraid of.

You'd find just ripe ones ready to pick. And God knew it, and the devil knew it. And that's why he intimidates you.

You can't even count on pain. You can't even count on these people reacting violently to you, but you can count on the grace of God if they do. And so fear of pain should not cause us to shrink back from doing the will of God, especially if we're supposed to witness to somebody and we're kind of afraid they might hurt us.

Better be careful about letting your imagination go wild. The devil will try to paint pictures of intense pain that are very often not realistic. And even if they were, the grace of God is sufficient for them.

By the way, the choice to not go to battle, to avoid pain and to avoid the risk of death, may involve you in spiritual harm. We read in 2 Samuel 11 of David, in the opening verses of that chapter, 2 Samuel 11, verses 1 through 4, It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Reba, but David remained at Jerusalem.

Here's the time where kings go to war and he didn't go. He just stayed home in his safety and security of Jerusalem. Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house.

And from the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman, and someone said she was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Then David sent messengers and took her. And she came to him and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house. If David had been out in the battle, he would have never seen this woman, and his kingdom would have endured.

As a matter of fact, this sin was the great turning point in his ministry. And while he didn't die, as a result, Nathan the prophet said, because of this sin, the sword will never depart from your house. And sure enough, three of his sons died violent deaths.

One of his daughters was raped by one of his sons. Horrible things began to happen to his family. According to Nathan, because of this sin, he would have been far better off going out and risking his neck on the battlefield.

When we try to make the easy choices, when we try to avoid risks, let someone else go out there on the streets, let someone else go out to battle. A lot of times, that very choice, the soft choices, are choices that lead us more and more into spiritual danger. In David's case, that was the case.

In fact, I would say the more evangelistically aggressive you are, I don't want to guarantee this because the devil has tricks too, but I'd say the less likely you are to fall into casual sin. It seems like when you have the devil on the run, when you're being aggressive and he's on the defensive, it's harder for him to shoot his flaming arrows accurately, because he has to shoot over his shoulder while he's running, you know? If you're just sitting there letting him take his time, he can aim with care. But you take the offensive, and he's got to take the defensive.

The Bible says, resist the devil and he'll flee from you. And when he's fleeing, he can't take very good shots at you either. I don't want to give the impression, though, that you won't succumb to temptation if you're evangelistic.

Arthur Blessed is a good example of a case where a man who's very evangelistic nonetheless seems to have been wounded by the enemy and possibly immortalized. If you don't know that story, I'm not going to go into it right now. But there are things we fear besides physical harm.

Death and pain are among the things that may intimidate us from witnessing, but there are other fears. Sometimes we know very well that we probably won't suffer physical harm, but there's something we fear even more. Rejection.

We fear rejection. Rejection is something that hurts our ego, our pride. And many people would rather have their arm cut off than have their ego wounded.

And rejection of man is something that often will keep people from going out because they know that the gospel we preach is not a popular word. And if they do go out and preach it often, they'll soft-sell it because they want to make it as palatable as they can to an unbelieving world. They don't want to draw the rejection and the anger of the world against them.

And this, even altogether apart from the issue of whether they're afraid of being hurt physically. Sometimes physical pain is the last thing that one seriously considers fearing in a situation, but they still don't want to speak up because of fear of rejection. One of those things, fear of rejection can sort of disguise itself with good-sounding motives.

I know this because my own heart does it. Sometimes I feel like I ought to go up and talk to them, but I'm afraid that they'll mistake me for Jehovah's Witness. Of course, not with a chance of mistaking me for Jehovah's Witness, but if I was more clean-cut and dressed nicer, they might mistake me for Jehovah's Witness.

Or just think I'm a fanatic. The devil always says to me, these people may be thinking of Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart as the typical preachers, and they'll just immediately associate you with them as soon as you come up and talk about religion with them or whatever. And these kinds of ideas say, well, I don't want to bring a reproach on the gospel.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. I don't want to be misunderstood and have people reject the message because they think I'm associated with this or that person or whatever, this group. That's a ploy of the devil.

Because, I mean, obviously if you think that way, you'll never talk to anyone, because anyone might misunderstand what group you're with or what you represent. You've just got to be who you are. Let them make their judgments on the basis of what they perceive in you.

I think people can pretty well tell if you're different than others, or if you're not different than others. If you are just like the Jehovah's Witnesses, or if you just come with insensitivity and just a doctrinal thing to bang people over the head with, then of course they can tell that too. But if you're a sensitive, genuine Christian person, with a conviction that what you have is true and necessary for them to hear, and you know you're good and you love them, then regardless of what they may have seen in the past, what bad experiences they may have had with Christians or whatever, I think they can overcome that because they'll realize you're different.

And I've had many times people who I thought would mistake me for someone or judge me by something they've seen before in another Christian or another religious person. As it turned out when I talked to them, they actually mentioned, well, you're not like other Christians that I've talked to. Which is very encouraging, because I assume that they mean that as a flattery, not as an insult.

Keith? What about like talking to kids? You know, like parents think they're all Christians, but they're actually kids. That is a hard thing, talking to kids. For that reason, you know, people are more and more suspicious these days if an adult or a young person talks to a little kid.

Very few people really love kids in the pure way anymore, it seems to me. And most people are thought to have some kind of corrupt thing on their mind if they talk to a kid. I suppose if you're talking to kids out in the open, you know, maybe if there's a group of kids or something, in a situation where you're clearly not playing the part of a kidnapper or a child molester or something, I mean, obviously a person who wants to do those kinds of things with kids would single out a kid all by himself or something.

Whereas if you reach out to kids who are in groups or something, it's less likely that you'd be suspected of evil motives. It might be good to find some good children's tracts just to give to kids, because then no one will suspect you. You don't have to spend that much time talking to them unless they ask questions or something.

It is a hard thing to decide, because not only that, but a lot of times parents don't want their kids to be witnessed to. I mean, there are people who are really dead set against the Gospel, and would be really upset if they thought you were influencing their kids to become a Christian. And I don't know what percentage of people that would be.

I think there's a higher percentage of adults like that now than there used to be. I think that might be an increasing number because of the New Age and other philosophies and witchcraft and so forth, that are now popular alternatives in our culture. Some of those people would be very upset to think that you were making a fundamentalist out of their kids.

So that is a difficulty. I think the thing is, you just have to have tact. I'm not sure whether to advise you to ask a parent for permission to witness their kids.

I don't know that you owe to them to ask their permission. I mean, their kids belong to God, not to them. They're just there to raise them for God.

And the parents are negligent, so I don't know. It's a hard decision to know about kids. I just say be led by the Spirit.

You might find in some cases striking up a conversation with the parent will lead to an opportunity to speak to the kid, or maybe you just want to go over the parent's head and talk to the kid anyway, or whatever. But I would say be careful because there are people who will misunderstand. If you're approaching kids, they might wonder what you're doing.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Someone's got to reach these kids. It would be very good, I think, for people who have a burden for children to start things like good news clubs, which when I was a kid, I know I was a lady in our neighborhood who had a good news club.

And about once a week or twice, we've got to remember how often we'd go over to her house, and there was Kool-Aid and stuff, and there was a Bible story with a flannel graph and stuff, and she preached the gospel to the kids and stuff. And I was already saved, so I don't know if I would have gotten saved had I not already been, but I know a lot of neighborhood kids went there. And I think a lot of parents would be glad to send their kids there because they're always looking for ways to get their kids out of their hair.

And if you're doing it openly in your home and stuff, they'll be less likely to believe that you're doing something secretive and naughty. So that's just something to consider. There may be necessary special strategies for child evangelism because of the special suspicions and problems that have arisen in our own culture in our day.

Let me give you some scriptures about rejection, suffering rejection. The hard truth of the matter is you've just got to accept it. You've just got to be willing to be rejected by men.

And the reason that's so hard is because we spend all our lives, from childhood up, trying to get approval from people. And one of the things we want the least is for people to reject us, and it's our conditioning for our early childhood, and we have to just get reconditioned by the renewing of our minds. So that we realize, hey, they rejected Jesus.

If they reject me, I'm in great company. I mean, it says of Jesus in Isaiah 53, He is despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrow is an acquaintance with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him.

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53, 3. Jesus Himself was rejected. When Samuel was approached by the elders of Israel in 1 Samuel 8, and they said, we don't want your sons and you to be judged anymore, we want you to give us a king like all the nations have.

Samuel was displeased, and no doubt a little bit personally hurt, because he'd been a good ruler, and the people were obviously expressing some dissatisfaction with the current situation. And the Lord spoke to Samuel, 1 Samuel 8, 7. The Lord said to Samuel, Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Now, Samuel, don't take it personally.

It's true, they have asked that you be replaced with a king, but it's not really you that they don't like, it's me. And that is certainly true in the case of a person who witnesses, and is rejected for his witness. The people would not reject you if it was just you.

They reject you only because you stand for Christ, in which case it's not you, but Christ that they reject. And that's something you just need to be prepared for. It says in Hebrews chapter 13, in verse 13, Hebrews 13, 13, says, Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.

For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. In the verses previous to that, it mentions that Jesus was treated like an unclean thing and put outside the city and crucified. He says, Now let us go out to him outside the camp.

Let us bear his reproach also. If he does, if they reject him, let them reject us as well. I mean, do we deserve more than he to have the approval of men? And if it did not please the Lord to give Jesus the approval of man, then apparently it's not the greatest thing to be desired.

Jesus said, Blessed are you when men shall persecute you and revile you and say all men are evil, and cast out your name as evil. Cast out your name as rejection. What did he say to people like that? He said, Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. It's Matthew 5, 11 and 12. Matthew 5, 11 and 12.

And in a parallel over in Luke 6, it's even more interesting because he not only says that, but he adds to that, Woe unto you when all men speak well of you. For so they spoke of the false prophets. That's Luke chapter 6, verse 26.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. These scriptures you need to bear in mind when you're fearing rejection. Because rejection is a reality.

People will reject you. They will speak evil of you because you do not run with them to the same excess of riot or flood of dissipation, the New King James says. And therefore you just got to be prepared for it and don't be afraid.

We also fear, besides fear of rejection, we can fear our own inadequacy. We might fear that maybe I'll go up there and try to talk to them and I'll just look stupid. And then people, you know, it'll make Jesus look bad.

I mean, they'll think, oh, another nerd Christian. You know, another stupid, you know, religious fanatic. You know, and you think, oh, gosh, I don't want to, you know, what if they ask me questions and I can't answer them and I just look dumb? Or what if I, you know, what if I just don't seem cool or whatever? Maybe I'm just not the person for this position.

If I was just a football star. Or a weightlifter. Or a rock and roll star.

Or something like that. Then people would listen to me. Maybe I should just leave the job to people like that.

I'm not adequate for this business. Because I might just, you know, give a bad name to the gospel if I get up there and just kind of, I'm all thumbs and I, you know, I stutter and I just can't really be a good witness. But the Bible says that that's how Moses felt when he was sent to speak for God.

That God said, I'll be with your mouth. Who made your mouth? I'll be with your mouth. Next is 411.

And Jeremiah had the same kind of response. He felt inadequate. God called him to be a prophet.

Jeremiah said, I'm just a child. God said, don't say I'm a child. I'll be with you.

You will speak. And I'll be with your mouth. Jeremiah 1, verses 6 through 8. And those are Old Testament cases.

But we have the New Testament promise of Jesus Christ also along the same lines. Luke 21. Luke 21, verses 13 through 15.

Jesus said, but it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand what you will answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.

This is very much like what God said to Moses. And what he said to Jeremiah. And to others.

Don't worry about your own inadequacy in this matter. God will give you the mouth, will give you the words. And if he doesn't give you the words you think he should.

If you feel like you've bumbled or whatever. Don't worry about it. Because God may even use that.

You know, Daniel Amen tells a story of a group of Y members at the Honolulu base that went out witnessing door to door. And there was this one guy who was just really terrified of witnessing. He was really intimidated.

And he was just really shaken up. And he and another person who I guess was not very bold either were on a team going door to door. And one of the first doors they came to, they knocked on the door and the door opened.

And there was this huge intimidated looking guy. I mean a real rough looking monster of a guy. And the Christian who was really intimidated.

He just stuttered. He could hardly get out what he was trying to say. And I think he handed him a track and said, you know, we're here to tell you about Jesus.

He could hardly speak. And the guy said, I can tell you're really terrified. So you must really be concerned.

If you come into this situation you're so scared of. And tell me about this. I want to hear more about this.

So the guy brought him into the house and got converted. And this guy, this Christian could have argued that he was obviously not a good speaker. Not the right man for the job or inadequate.

But his very inadequacy and yet his willingness to go out and do it. In spite of his obvious inadequacy. In that case, I've only heard one story quite like that.

But that's a true story. It made an impression on the unbelievers. Hey, if this guy, he's acting like a total jerk.

But he must be really serious. If he's willing to come out here and look like a jerk like this. You know, and it made an impression on him.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3, 5. 2 Corinthians 3, 5. Paul said, not that we are sufficient of ourselves for anything. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves. But our sufficiency is from God.

And there should never be any fear of inadequacy on the part of the Christian. Because our sufficiency and inadequacy is from God, not from ourselves. And even though we may feel like we totally belude the witness.

Because we didn't have the right answer or whatever. God may use it. The sufficiency is from Him.

Of course, there's always the fear of failure. But we've already talked about that. It's largely based on discouragement from past failures.

And we're afraid we'll fail again. But we're not called upon necessarily to be successful. Only to be faithful and let God take care of the success rate.

Well, let me take one third back. We talked about apathy and fear. I want to real quickly talk about a third hindrance to evangelism.

And that is simply the cultural isolation that Christians experience from unbelievers. This is probably the case more and more as time goes on. A generation ago, I think most Americans thought of themselves as being Christians.

Even though they weren't. Many of them weren't what the Bible calls Christians. But they were yet Christianized.

The majority of people went to church. If you suggested they weren't Christians, they would have been offended. Nowadays, that's different.

People aren't pretending anymore in quite the same numbers. There's more people choosing alternative religious ideas. Or just outright atheism or secular humanism.

And setting themselves against Christianity subconsciously. That has changed within a generation, I believe. And so there's a growing alienation between Christians and others.

There was a time when Christians could talk to a non-Christian. And the non-Christian would not be hostile toward Christianity. Because he himself, though he was ignorant of what true Christianity was, thought he was a Christian.

Nowadays, you'll have people who really are opposed to Christianity. And are opposed to your way of life. There's a world view difference that's increasing all the time.

People who have a Christian world view are getting to be more and more in the minority. And just the belief that there's a God who has moral standards and will judge the world. Is something that people are not necessarily aware of or willing to believe anymore.

So much. I mean, there's people who believe that there may not be a God. There may not be a hell.

There may not be any absolute morality. New Age philosophy, for example, basically leads to the view that there's not a judgmental God up there. It's just, you know, everyone is his own God of his own universe.

And there's no reckoning except for karma. And if you make the right choices, for the most part, you'll have good karma. And you'll do better the next time around and everything will be rosy.

People didn't always believe that way in America, but that's true now. And more and more people are just not sharing our presuppositions. Makes it harder to witness to them.

Well, let me take it back. In one way it makes it harder, in another way it makes it easier, of course. Because they know they're not Christians.

It's easier to convince them that they need to be Christians if what they have is not satisfying. Or if they know that what they have has not given them assurance of salvation. At least they're not going to say, what do you mean, tell me about Jesus, what do you think I am, a heathen? Because they are heathens.

In the old days people would sometimes resent being witnessed to because they thought they were already Christians. But there's a sense in which it's harder and another sense in which it's easier. At least it's better to know who the enemy is, rather than have them all wolves in sheep's clothing looking like Christians and calling themselves Christians.

But at the same time, the presuppositions are not there. The Apostle Paul could go to a synagogue which shared his world view. That knew the Bible, that knew about the Creator, that knew about the Law of Moses and so forth.

And he could start with those shared values and shared presuppositions and argue from that reasonably and logically to the need for people to receive Christ. He could even point out that the prophets had predicted him and Jesus fulfilled the prophecies. But when he was with Gentiles, there were fewer things he had in common in their world view.

He was among people who believed in many gods, people who believed that immorality was not immorality. They just had totally different ideas about moral issues and ultimate issues. And Paul would have to start from square one and try to build the foundational concepts.

There is one God who made us all. And start from that. And sometimes we have to do that now.

We feel so... our minds are in a totally different place than that of the heathen. We feel culturally isolated. And many times that's exactly the way it is.

Paul said, what fellowship has light and darkness? In 2 Corinthians 6, 14. And a lot of times there's not much fellowship. But we still have to penetrate their world with the gospel.

There is, I think, also a general unsociableness of people these days. Which adds to the cultural isolation. Christians tend to be friendly people.

They hug each other a lot. They smile a lot. They like to be friendly and sharing and sing.

When you're a spiritual Christian, you tend to lose a lot of the inhibitions that you had before. Non-Christians, as a rule, are a little more isolated. They don't necessarily trust people.

They're often cynical, fearful, insecure. And a lot of times, you smile at them on the street, they won't smile back. That's not always the case, of course.

I'm just talking about trends in our culture. More and more, especially in the cities, people are wanting to not be noticed. Not be paid attention to.

They just want to live and not live. They want you to let them live alone without intruding. They want their own space.

And there's a general unsociableness in an increasing way, especially in the cities of our world. And that makes it a little difficult for Christians to penetrate their world a little bit. Of course, Christians also have their, as I pointed out earlier, church time, their fellowship times, their Christian friends, their family, and so forth.

Which, as you get older, especially as you have a growing family, there's just more demands on your time and fewer opportunities to go out and penetrate the real world out there. I mean, the world of the heathen. But it needs to be overcome.

Like I said, you can't schedule time for that. The Bible indicates that we need to be sensitive to the culture of the people we're reaching out to. That's true not only if you're going overseas to China or to the Aborigines, but it's true of our own culture.

We have to realize that generation gaps are happening much more quickly on the average now. It used to be about every 20 years there was a generation gap between the beatniks and their parents, and then later on it was the lowriders and their parents, and then it was the hippies and so forth. And now, even just since the hippie moment, there's been the punk rockers, there's been the neo-Nazis, which are somewhat similar.

Of course, there's the yuppie movement, which is entirely something separate from that. And there's a whole bunch of other social phenomena that have their own culture. And even in the United States, if you're going to reach out to people, you're going to have to be sensitive to what their culture is, what they value.

Paul said that when he was with those who were under the law, he lived like one under the law, so he could win those who were under the law. When he was with those who were without the law, he didn't live so strictly and religiously, so that he might win those who were not under the law in 1 Corinthians 9, 20 and 21. And there needs to be a commitment to penetrate the culture of the unbeliever.

We can't just wait for them to come to us. We can't say, well, the church doors are open, why don't they come here? One reason they won't come here is because they've given up on the church. The world doesn't any longer really believe the church has the answers, and that's the church's fault.

For one thing, they've seen that notable people in the church have not lived better lives than other celebrities. They've also noticed that the church copies the world, which strongly communicates then that the church must not have anything of its own better to offer. The church just copies the world in its styles, in its entertainment, and even the way it runs its organization, in the moral quality of some of their leaders.

There's not really a distinctive. The church has no longer looked to it for moral guidance by the world. And so you can't expect them to come to the doors of the church.

And some people say, well, I don't feel sorry for heathens who perish outside the door of a church because they could have gone in and heard the gospels they wanted to. Not necessarily. What makes you think that they have reason to believe that they'd find God there? It's true a generation ago, the average person who went into the church went in there with a sense of reverence and awe and thought, well, I'm in the house of God, and kind of expected to encounter some kind of higher power or at least some kind of loftier ideals than they would find outside the church.

That's not what people see the church as anymore, again, because the church is bloated. So we can't just wait for them to come to us. We have to penetrate their world.

And if we can do so, there are ways to do it. Later in the week we're going to talk about strategies for cultural penetration. At this point I just want to say that one of the reasons that we don't witness sometimes as much as we should is because of this cultural isolation.

And isolation, culturally, between Christians and non-Christians are three of the reasons I think that are the most hindering toward an evangelistic lifestyle. We'll continue our studies on these subjects next time.