Spirit-Led Evangelism: Stepping Out in Faith

So we’ve been hearing a lot about you gotta go out. You got to share. So important right. We’ve been trying to just put that that heart into you. I’m going to keep trying to do that. just. And speaking next week, he’s going to really just, you know, smash it, smash it into you. Okay. He’s going to do a really good job with that.

I just want to give you guys some tools, though, today so that you could see how this might really look in your life and where we first have to look. What we have to look at is what it looked like for the early church, what it even looked like for Jesus. How did Jesus preach? Well, he went.

He talked about himself being the Messiah. And by the Holy Spirit, signs followed that people were healed. Demons were cast out. The mute could speak. Lepers were cleansed. The dead were raised. Physical, tangible stuff. That’s why John Wimber calls this doing the stuff in the book. If you guys are nerds called Power Evangelism by John Wimber that I.

I recommend you guys get that book because he talks about how to share the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. When you speak the voice of God, people should feel the touch of God. It’s not just saying words without power. The kingdom of God is not talk, but power. When you share about Jesus, you should expect the Holy Spirit to back you up.

Now understand this the signs are not the red carpet carpet in front of us. They’re the reinforcements behind us. The signs follow this word. A company that’s used twice in this passage. It actually means to follow closely right after someone, to even be right at their side. Like crouching along beside them, lifting them up. That’s how close behind the signs are going to follow.

The signs are not the same thing as the message. Did you see that the signs confirmed the message? The message is pretty simple. God loves you. He sent his son to die so you could come home. And he rose again to give you a fresh start and a new life. Do you want that? Okay, that’s. That’s the message.

Now, what’s going to show you that? That’s true. Holy spirit, I can’t prove that that’s true. I can do a lot of stuff. I can reason, I can use apologetics. I can use my mind, I can study, I can remove obstacles from in front of people. But only God can prove to someone that it’s true. So my job isn’t to prove the gospel.

It’s to speak the gospel. God will prove it. Amen. When I say the name of Jesus, Holy Spirit already wants to start doing things. Okay. Turn to someone next to you right now for 20s. I want you to tell that person a bunch of stuff you love about Jesus. Ready, set. Go!

Just tell them. Tell him some stuff you like about him.

Okay. Switch partners. Switch partners. 20s. Other person. Tell him some stuff you love about Jesus.

All right. We shouldn’t cut this off, but I’m going to say bring it back in.

Dial it back in. All right. You guys are like evangelism freaks. You’re preaching about Jesus for so long. All right. Guess what you guys just did. You just evangelized. You just evangelized. And if the other person felt anything, the Holy Spirit backed up. What you said. So, Todd, why, it calls it dropping the J bomb. So in a conversation, you just say, hey, what do you think about Jesus?

All of a sudden? He goes, oh, right. It switches something when you say his name and you actually have faith behind it, and you start loving the person and ministering to them. The Holy Spirit says, okay, I got something to work with now. Now there is a fall out. All right. All right. This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I can’t tell you how many preachers have said this. How many prophets, whatever they quote, Saint Francis of Assisi who said, preach the gospel and if necessary, use words. Now, Saint Francis, preach the gospel a lot. By the way. He even preached to rodents and trees. If you read about his life. So he wasn’t saying you don’t have to talk, but people make it out to be like, well, my my life shows people Jesus.

When I give, give someone a tip, an extra tip, when I give him a 25% tip rather than 20, they know that God took on flesh, was born of a virgin, died on the cross after three days. He was raised from the dead and they need to receive him by faith alone, and that through his resurrection they’re counted justified of all their sins.

And Jesus is returning to establish his kingdom on the earth. Because I gave 25%. That’s not right. You have to talk. Introvert. Introvert. David needs to talk. I need to be putting something out there. So the signs can follow. Yeah, a lot of times we think like, oh, I hope God puts a burning bush next to every single person I’m supposed to talk to.How can I? I’m not feeling anything. I don’t have any emotions. Okay, I guess I’m not supposed to share today because God didn’t give me any emotions for anybody. It is emotion-led evangelism. It is religion-led evangelism right now. Spirit-led evangelism. So maybe I should look at someone and say, Holy Spirit, what do you think of him? Holy Spirit, give me your love for him. Holy Spirit, bless him. Give him everything that he needs. Restore him. Minister to his heart. Tell him he’s a man of God. Tell him he’s being faithful. Show him who he was created to be. And by the time I pray enough silently for that man, I’m going to say I want to meet that guy. I actually want to go meet him. And I go say, hey, I’m David. Can anybody here not do that? You don’t say David, you say whatever your name is, you say whatever you’re in, and it’s can anybody. Unless your name is David. Okay, but you go over to the person and you say, hey, how are you? Good to see you. You say hello. You greet them, you greet them, right? Jesus said, if you only greet your brothers, the people you know, you’re no better than a Gentile. You’re no better than a tax collector. You got to be meeting strangers so that they’re no longer strangers, so that you can have a relationship with them. And like my mentor Larry Cavallaro said, you’ll make a disciple before you ever make a convert. You make a disciple. You make a friend. You teach them who Jesus is, who Jesus is to you. And somewhere along the line, they’re going to be a convert. Somewhere along the line, they’re going to come into the fellowship. Somewhere along the line, they’re going to get it. This makes sense to everybody. Okay, but it has to be motivated by love. It has to be motivated by honor because there are two facts in this. There’s two facts. One, we owe the gospel to every single person. And number two, we can’t share the gospel with every single person. Wouldn’t it be great if we had God’s wisdom to lead us in how to do this? See, the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead with a cookie cutter. It doesn’t go okay. See Todd White. See David. See Billy Graham. See, you have to be like that. Could you, cookie? Could you? Oh, good. You imitated them perfectly, right. I’m just giving you some examples of what this could look like today. But the Holy Spirit is going to show you what it looks like in your life. I don’t have your life. I get I’m stuck in the church all the time. I wish I had all the opportunities that you guys had. Okay, I’m doing other stuff anyway, but you got to help me out because I got to send you guys out so that you do this. Okay, I also need to go out. But what I’m saying is, when you go out, you’re in a place that you’ve been assigned by God. First Corinthians seven you have a life that God assigned to you. You have people in your life. You are called to reach them, and you owe the gospel to them. Paul said in Romans 114, if we have that slide, it says, I am under obligation both to Jews and to barbarians, okay? To give the gospel to everyone, he said. Therefore, as much as it is in me, I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are also at Rome. So we owe everyone the gospel. We are a debtor. Is anybody in here in debt? Raise your hand really high. And I’m asking. You don’t have to do that. All right? I’m just kidding. I got a couple of you. Right. Okay. You don’t have to do everything I say. It’s just a, you know? But, yeah, if you’re in debt, it’s like. That’s on your mind a lot, right? If you have a bunch of debt, you think about it. You think about how am I going to release this? How am I going to unload this? How am I going to get it off of me? Okay. And the Lord has put something on you. It’s called the Great Commission, but he’s giving you the Holy Spirit to help you carry this. And he says you owe the gospel to every person you can give the gospel to within the guardrails. Love and honor. It’s make sense. That’s fact number one. Fact number two, you cannot share the gospel with every single person. So we have to be led by the Holy Spirit. We need his wisdom, okay? We need to be asking him. We need to be so aware of what he wants us to do. Okay, so, let me backtrack a little bit because I got way off my notes here. Okay. So this is a partnership. I want to tell you guys that the Holy Spirit leads those who are prepared to follow. If you’re not prepared to follow, you probably will not be led by the Holy Spirit. If he tells you to do something and you don’t do it, you’re not being led by him. Does that make sense? If he tells me to go right and I go left, I didn’t obey him. He could have led me, but I didn’t follow. The main idea here is where the Spirit of God leads. Signs will follow where the Spirit of God leads. Signs will follow and you should expect that to happen. You should be prepared to listen to him. So can we do that? Do we actually have the ability to ready ourselves for action, to gird up our loins for action, like the Bible says, because this is a partnership with God? First Corinthians three nine says, we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field in God’s building. That means that to be led by the spirit in evangelism, it’s not emotional. It’s a choice. It’s bringing yourself under the yoke. He says, hey, I want you to come under this yoke and move this plow. So you go, okay, cool. I’m moving the plow. No. Come under the yoke and move the plow. Amen. Prepare yourself. Get it on you get the mindset on you. Get the earbuds out. I’m being practical. Okay, get the earbuds out. Maybe get the phone in the pocket. Maybe look around and go. All right, Lord, give me your heart for these people. How about this person catching my eye? What an amazing person. Thank you. Lord bless her. Thank you God that you have created her. You have a design for her. You want to use her mightily. She has one that can actually persuade people and bring them to a place where they have hope. Thank you, God, for revealing that to me. I pray that you would just bring hope to her life and through her life, so that when she touches people and talks to them, they don’t despair. They don’t give up hope. That’s what you’ve created her to be a light in a dark place. Thank you for her. Maybe I should go. What’s your name, by the way? This woman with the glasses here next to you, next to Sheryl Sandy. I believe you’re a person that gives people hope. I believe the Lord just wanted to reveal that. That he knows you that way. That’s your father. He’s made you a mighty spirit of hope. He’s going to use you in that way if you’re just listening to him. And I know you’ve you’ve had experience in that. Just to encourage you to keep going in that. Okay. and so this is really what we need to do. We need to be prepared that as the God, as God shows someone to us that we just silently start lifting him up in prayer. Okay. Lord, how we’re no longer asking should I talk to them? Should I love them? Should I honor them? Should I help them? Should I offer them salvation from eternal destruction? No. What we ask is how. How now? Okay, well, we’re asking different questions. It’s kind of like the guy where Jesus said, you know, they say he says to Jesus in Luke ten. how do you get eternal life? And Jesus goes, what is the law say? And the man goes, love your neighbor as yourself. He says, that’s right. Do it and you’ll live. And he had to justify himself. So he goes, well, who’s my neighbor? And Jesus goes, let me tell you a story. Good Samaritan is the story he tells. And the point is, your neighbor is anybody that needs mercy from you. And. So the person you share the gospel with is anybody that needs Jesus. Anybody that needs Jesus from you. Now, again, be led by the Holy Spirit. Be in the guardrails of love and honor. You’re keeping your commitments. You’re honoring your commitments, your job, your family, your church, everything you committed to. You’re honoring their commitments, everything that they’re committed to. And within those guardrails, you say, Lord, how? I don’t know. Look at them. Pray more. How, Lord? Okay. Well, if nothing else, you start to get interested in them. The Lord starts to help you care about them a little bit. Then you go meet them. It’s really like. I hope it’s simple for you guys. Okay. Because I want us to actually do it. When you do it, you’re stepping into the adventure of your lifetime. Have you ever thought of the Holy Spirit as the spirit of adventure? He’s like, hey, come over here. Watch what we’re going to do. You go, oh, I don’t know. I’m an introvert. Well, all the heroes are introverts at the beginning. Bilbo Baggins just wanted to smoke his pipe and eat pancakes.

And then Gandalf shows up and goes, has an unexpected party.
Okay. Gandalf is the Holy Spirit. I’m just kidding. But, you can always. You can always connect, right? You can always connect Lord of the rings to anything, right? That’s what I prove over and over in my teachings. Okay. but he is the spirit of adventure. And he says all you need to do is start talking to me.

Start looking at people and asking me what? What do they need? How can I love that person? Maybe what they need is friendship. That would be pretty awesome. Maybe what they need is to just tell you their problems. That’s always a hard one. Maybe what they need is to tell you the stuff they’re mad about in the political realm.

And I didn’t even believe, really, in the charismatic gifts at that point. And I was like, Lord, would you just show this man your love? And he goes, oh, ha ha! What the f? Like? He just starts, like he just starts screaming. I’m like, he’s like, what did you do to me? I’m like, I didn’t do anything to you.

I don’t even believe this stuff can happen.

I don’t think it’s decent and in order, you know, the Holy Spirit isn’t always right, so I’m not going to say that. All right. What’s going to happen if you invite the Holy Spirit to show people who he is? We would do this in the mission field. We would do this if we were on a mission trip.

Why don’t we do it in our lives? What do we have to lose? That’s the question you have to ask yourself. Okay, that’s a question I have to ask myself. What do we have to lose and what do we actually have to expect? I want to give a few things. What to expect when you’re expecting. Yeah.

All right. I’ll just leave that there. Okay. All right. So open. You should expect a few things when you obey and you bring the gospel everywhere you go. You bring Jesus everywhere you go, right? You should expect hearts to open. Let me read Acts 16:13. On the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together.

One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. That is probably the most common sign that will follow you. Somebody that didn’t know anything about grace, about the love of God.

They might know who Jesus is, what the church is, but they haven’t entered a relationship with their father. And as you share, the Holy Spirit will open their heart. Let’s say I want that. That’s an incredible thing. You should expect that because it says in Romans 1:16, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes the Jew first and also the Greek.

The gospel itself has power to open a heart if you speak it. If you’re like, oh, they’re already seeing it and being nice. Okay, sorry about that. I’m being nice. They already know the gospel. Well, no, you’re not going to see a heart be opened. But if you say, hey, do you mind if I just share?

Like, Jesus loves you so much. You’re so important to him that he would even die for you, to cleanse you, and he would rise again so you could have a fresh start. Do you believe that? Someone might go, I actually do believe that. I’ve seen it countless times. Seen it countless times. So you should expect open hearts. You should expect outpourings of the Holy Spirit.

Like when that guy freaked out that I just mentioned. You should expect words of knowledge. One time I walked up to this big guy who’s probably like 370 and he had these tattoos all over his face. I was like, hey, hey, brother, you know, Jesus loves you. And all of a sudden I just heard from the Lord that he has these two kids and he’s trying to get them back.

And I shared it with the guy, and he broke down and started crying. And he gave his life back to the Lord. And so it’s just like, this stuff can happen to you and you always try it out. You go, hey, do you have two kids? You don’t say you have two kids. You try it out and you ask, is that accurate?

And if they say no, it’s not, you go, oh, sorry. I actually believe in God. I’m trying to learn how to listen to God better. Do you know God? Okay. And so then you’re talking about God. Okay. So you should expect words of knowledge to come. You should expect healings. I remember one time when I was at Calvary Santa Barbara, we would do this outreach to Huntington Beach, and it was the first time I really believed God was going to heal.

I read this book by Bill Johnson and I think Randy Clark, and I was like, yeah, I’m going to pray for people to be healed. And I go out and I share Jesus with this kid, and I’m like, hey, can we pray for anything? And he says, yeah, I’m legally blind. I can’t see in the sky.

And I go, oh, can you read the sign over there in the building? He goes, no, I prayed for him. Hey, can you see it just now? Say, oh Lord, please help him see in the name of Jesus. He goes, I can. Actually, it’s blurry, but I can kind of see it. I go, okay, Lord, just give him. Give him the sight back all the way. And then he rea

ds the sign. I go, okay, you need to come to the crusade tonight because Jesus has shown you who he is. He’s proved to you who he is. Okay, so that doesn’t always happen. It has to be led by the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit has something to give every person.

He has something to give every person. It could be, like I said, a listening ear. It could be that you actually just encourage the person, say, hey, you’re doing a good job. I know this job that you have is difficult, but you are crushing it. Thank you so much. That might be exactly what they need.

Then you say, hey, you know, it would mean a lot if you come to church with me. Can I get your number and invite you? You take that extra step and you call for a response. Cool. All right, so expect healing. Expect prophetic prayer. Expect demonic manifestations. This happened to me at Walmart one time. It was really crazy. I’ll tell you about it later. Expect deliverance to happen. Expect persecution from nonbelievers. Sorry. Not, you know, sorry. There will be some persecution. Expect persecution from believers. I’m really, really sorry about that one. Probably believers that aren’t doing it themselves. That would probably be the ones that would persecute you. And expect to see that resurrection, that new life.

Expect disciples to be made, and expect the gospel to fill our region as we all get in the field of battle. You’re going to see the gospel will fill this region. If we were all out praying for people, ministering the love of Jesus, sharing the gospel, it wouldn’t be long before everybody in our region said, all these freaks from word of life are always loving us all the time.

They’re always just praying for us and sharing Jesus with us. Please, Jesus freaks are out there. That would be a great thing. Don’t think of like, oh, that’d be horrible. Think of like, well, that would be the book of acts. That would be why we signed up for this thing. So I think we have a slide where there’s a couple scriptures about this.

We’re actually in Acts 19:9. It says Paul reasoned daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord. How about this one? Acts 5:28. The Pharisees said, we strictly charged you apostles not to teach in this name. Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching.

So do we expect this to happen? And if we expect it, we’re going to seek after it. This is all about seeking, becoming the seeker. I said this in my last message, and I just want to say it again. It’s not about being ready for people to seek you. It’s not about I have all the answers. If anybody ever asks me a question.

It’s about Jesus said The Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost. The same Holy Spirit that was leading the Son of Man is leading you. The same Holy Spirit that was seeking the lost in the days of Jesus is seeking the lost today, and he wants you to seek others. He wants me to seek others.

He wants us to say like not where is the wide open door where someone’s running up and falling to the ground and saying, what must I do to be saved? But the door that’s maybe just unlocked and I go, I have to actually try it. Oh, it’s open. I actually have to go. Hi, my name is David. I actually have to go.

Hey, I was praying for you. Is there anything I could pray for you specifically? I have to actually try to open the door to see if it’s open or not. I know it’s kind of, like, probably seems simple, but, everyone’s okay here. All right. Remember, honor, I have a slide here. It’s called avoid the cringe.

Do we have this? Okay, I want to just put this up. There we go. Avoid the cringe. Just avoid that. Avoid, like, interrupting someone in the middle of everything that I mentioned. You don’t have to be that person. You could just be sincerely loving someone, sincerely talking to them. And if they want to go, you let them go.

You honor their no. This makes sense to everybody. Don’t be this. It’s the worst. All right. So let’s not do that. We don’t need to do that. I’m going to give you a couple scenarios as we end because I want this to be even more clear. I have a few plans for you.

I have a few game plans for you to get you started on spirit-led evangelism. So as I put the slide up, you can even take a picture of the slide. So it’s kind of a step-by-step way that you can get yourself started sharing the gospel. I really want the Lord. May the Lord equip you. May the Lord launch you in this because He’s the spirit of adventure.

You guys, I don’t want you to be missing out. So, number one, this is called fishing trip. So number one, see if a friend will join you. It’s more fun to fish when you have a friend. I know Jess goes with me a lot. We go out and fish. We go out and talk to people about Jesus.

You just walk around somewhere. These are not very hard, are they? Number two, walk around, ask God for his heart for people. Pick a person and pray silently for their good. Greet and meet the person. Can we go on? Everybody getting pictures? Tell this person you’re a Christian and you’re praying for them.

Tell them anything else God showed you. Ask if they need specific prayer. They say yes. Ask them if they’re a follower of Jesus. Because our point is actually to connect them to God, not just to do miracles. Fair enough. Then listen. Very important. This probably took me the longest to learn in evangelism. Is it more about me listening than talking?

Amen. Listen. Anyone listening? Cool. Listen to what they say. Then when they tell you what’s going on in their life, you build their faith. Hey, I really believe when we pray things are going to be different because the Bible says this. And because I’ve seen this and Jesus has done this. If Jesus were here, would this prayer be answered?

I like that one. If Jesus were here praying for you, would you be healed? They go, yeah, like, well, the Bible says we actually have Jesus living in us. So when I pray, let’s expect God to break through on this. Build their faith. Pray according to what they shared and what you hear from the Holy Spirit, and then follow up with them afterwards.

That’s game plan number one. Plan A. You can do this every day. If you have like ten minutes in your day. Put it on your calendar and say fishing on your schedule. Fishing. I eat my lunch for 20 minutes and I fish for ten minutes. I go walk around on the street. I look at someone, I pray for them, and when I actually start to care about him, I go talk to him.

If I pray for him, I’m going to start caring about them. If I don’t, I probably am not going to care about them. I’m probably either not going to talk to them, or I’m going to talk to them for the wrong reason, because I feel a religious pressure and I’m OCD. I have to do it. God’s going to hold me accountable.

That’s not why we do it. We do it because the Holy Spirit brings the love of God into us, and we want to actually meet someone and help them.

Each one of you should say yes. I should say yes. Lead me, Holy Spirit. Let’s plan a fishing trip every day. Plan B every day fishing. So I’m going to talk more about this in a couple of weeks when I’m talking about conversational evangelism. But this is evangelist goals hashtag evangelist goals. Sorry, that was stupid.

But anyway, so I put a little acronym here. You guys can take a picture of it if this helps you. So you’re talking. You see somebody, the Lord highlights them. Let’s say the Lord highlights Jayden. Right there. And I go. All right. Hi, Jayden. I’m David. I go greet him. He says, hey, I’m Jayden.

I go, wow. I observe that you have some awesome shades in your hand right there. And so he goes, yeah, I got those shades. You said, what do you use them for? Are you like a skier? And then you start asking about it. Then you listen to what they say. And as the conversation goes on and God shows you something, you give a sincere offer.

Either something comes up that they need prayer for and you say, hey, you mind if I pray for that? Or you actually offer him Jesus? You say, hey, you know, I’m actually a Christian and I’m walking around trying to see if people know who Jesus is, trying to see if people want to come and experience a relationship with God.

Have you ever come into a relationship with God and a sincere offer makes sense. So greet, observe, ask. Listen again. Listen. And sincere offer. If you were to observe first, it would be ogle, right? I didn’t want to put that one, though. Probably the best one to use, as I’ve seen a lot of people with cross tattoos and cross necklaces and cross earrings.

And I just say, I see that cross. Is that significant to you? And it has opened up so much. Tattoos are great. You see? Oh, I love that tattoo right there. What’s that mean? Why did you get that? People will be like, oh, yeah, IAnd I just say, I see that cross. Is that significant to you? And it has opened up so much. Tattoos are great. You see? Oh, I love that tattoo right there. What’s that mean? Why did you get that? People be like, oh, yeah, I got it. Because, you know, because it’s cool. They put it on their body. It means something to them. Right there. You’re able to have a great conversation with them. And at some point you can say, oh, just. You mind if I ask you, are you a follower of Jesus and you’re talking about Jesus? Make sense. Goals. Hashtag evangelism goals.

Plan C, let’s go to plan C. We’re almost done here. Plan C is called fishing with dynamite. Now, this one, you greet every stranger you see with eye contact and a smile. All right. This is tough. Especially if you had a bad day. That’s why sometimes you want to fish a different way. It’s like you don’t have to be someone you’re not. But if you’re full of the spirit, you’ve been praising God in the car. You’ve been praying in tongues, you’ve been reading the Bible. You’re stoked about Jesus. You come out of the car and you’re just you’re looking around and you kind of look like a bit of a crazy person and you’re awesome. Hey, you know, and people aren’t used to they’re used to looking at their phone and being like, oh. You go, hey how how are you doing right now. Bless you Jesus loves you okay. And you actually you lock eyes with them and something happens. Something happens. Did you know there’s multiple multiple instances in the New Testament where someone locked eyes or fixed their gaze on someone and God triggered a miracle. And I’ve experienced the sharing the gospel with people when they start to feel the weight of their sin and their shame. Maybe they start to feel convicted about their sin. They go. They go like that and you go, hey man, look, look right here. Jesus loves you so much. And when you’re able to meet the eye contact with them, they go, wow, okay. And you can by you actually acknowledging them, looking right into him. Something shifts, something’s different. So you try to make eye contact with someone, you go, hey, bless you. Jesus loves you and you throw out that bomb. You throw out that Jesus loves you. Either people will be like, oh, and they’ll walk away from you, or they’ll be like, oh yeah, I’m a Christian. Jesus. Jesus loves you too. And then you meet someone who’s awesome. Or they go, oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not really. And then you have a good, good conversation. Okay. So, Yeah, if they if they stop and talk, you linger with them and you ask them if they need prayer. Okay. And then you can leave them with a tract or a gospel of John. You can hopefully get a number where you could be friends with the person.

All right. How about plan D? We go to plan D fishing with the father. Okay. I like this one. So we take some time for deep prayer and worship before we even enter the public sphere. This could be before you leave your home. It could be in your car before you get out and go into your office or to your job. You take some time and you worship you. Just thank you, father, for your goodness. Thank you for my beautiful wife. Thank you for my incredible kids. Thank you for my dog. Who’s the best dog ever. And he’s actually quiet. He doesn’t bark at night. Thank you, Lord, for my house. I’m just so blessed, Lord. And I just, you know, I’m just giving thanks. And you’re being honest. You’re like, I have a good life. I can’t believe the Lord did this. I’m so undeserving. Thank you. God. I remember when I didn’t think this would ever come. Right? And you’re just. You’re giving thanks and you’re worshiping. And then you just start to ask God, you say, father, who do you want to send me to? Where do you want to send me today? When would you like me to go there? What will I encounter? Does anyone here ever had God speak to them? All right, so I know at our church, probably everyone raise their hand. Okay, so you know, God will speak to you if you’re in prayer. If you’re in communion, sometimes he’s going to give you a picture. This week I was doing this. I thought I was going to do some different work. And he’s like, he showed me this picture of the clock at the junction and he said, fishing, I’m okay now. Yes. Okay. So I had an and I went there and I was able to meet this wonderful couple that had just come out of, the trial when I got there. He’s the L

Lord’s like it’s them. I was like, okay, this is going to sound really weird, you guys, but I was praying earlier and the Lord showed me this clock and I didn’t know it was going to be you. But is there anything I could pray for you about? The Lord loves you guys so much. And it was an amazing divine appointment.

Okay. And so if you just will ask God what is going to happen and where he would like to direct you to. It says in Ephesians 2:10 that we’re his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that he’s prepared in advance for us to walk in them. So if you say, hey, dad, where do you want to take me fishing today?

Your dad take you fishing? Okay, that’s pretty cool, right? And I just want to say, like, evangelism is for us. Yeah. I mean, it’s for others primarily, but you’re going to get to know God so much when you step in and you partner with him and you take risks to get to know people, to minister to people in the community.

And sometimes you get rejected and sometimes it sometimes you don’t catch anything when you go fishing. My mentor also said it was if it’s called fishing, not catching, and also everybody would do it okay. You a lot of times you’re not going to catch anything. Get over it. Yeah. Get over it. Get back out there. Okay. But as you go out fishing, you’re fishing with your dad.

You’re fishing with your best friend Jesus. You’re fishing with your. Help me, Holy Spirit, you’re going to get to know God. You’re going to get to spend time with him on the edge, walking in faith. You’re going to grow. You’re going to get to know his heart. You’re going to get to know his pain. When you see people, you start praying for people that are in a dark spot.

His pain is going to come into your heart right? You meet people that are Christians that are faithful. His joy and his pride in them is going to come into your heart. Just like when we minister in here. Everybody is with me on this. You’re going to get to grow in your faith if you say yes, if you say, I want to be one that’s prepared to obey.

I want to be one that expects signs to follow, and I want to be one that actually will introduce Jesus into a conversation and see what the Holy Spirit does to back me up on it. He will do insane stuff. You can ask anybody that walks in this like I’ve seen insane stuff out there that I haven’t seen in here, and we’ve seen some nutty stuff in here.

Can I get an amen on that? Okay. We’ve seen some stuff in here. Okay. But we’ve also you can see some amazing things out there because he is a god of redemption that has a heart to bring every son and daughter home. He’s our father of lights that we honor today on Father’s Day. So, I just challenge you guys if this meant something to you.

If you’re ready to step into this. Grab a couple of these on your way out or in the foyer, and just prepare yourself for your adventure. The spirit of adventure is knocking. Prepare yourself. Go out. Practice. Show love to someone. At the very least, you loved somebody at the very least. No matter what happens, you no longer kept your faith to yourself.

And you said, I want to share who the Lord is to me. You grew in that. Okay, so again, we are here for you to pray with you afterwards. And, I’m here to if you ever need help on this. And I know jazz and you know George also he’s he’s out there a lot. We’d love to go with you.

If you want to try this fishing stuff. You want to fish with a friend? Go. Go fishing with you. You know, it’s it’s a fun thing to do. So let your light shine. Amen. All right, father, thank you so much for your word. And I pray, oh, God, that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit and power, and that we would be willing to obey.

We would go proclaim the gospel everywhere. We would show love. We would show honor, Lord, and that we would see a harvest God, that we would reap where we are sowing and that we would not so sparingly, but that we would so liberally. God, in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.