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Holy Spirit

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Your 50% in the work of Evangelism

Steven Furtick blogs about not putting unnecessary burdens on ourselves while sharing the gospel.

He calls it “Your 50%”.

Essentially, Furtick calls us to remember that

  • We are called to bear witness to our faith.
  • God is responsible for calling people to respond in faith.

The proclamation of the gospel message through word and deed is our part.

The changing of the heart towards repentance is God’s part.

I’ve heard some teaching in the past that puts the whole burden on us:

  • If you don’t share, and they die in hell, it’s your fault.
  • If you don’t communicate the gospel exactly right, they are not converted.
  • If you don’t share the gospel from the right starting point, they are not converted.

Those might be extreme examples, but people carry that guilt.  In my conferences, I run into a lot of them.

We need to remember

Furtick concludes with

It’s good to feel the weight of people’s souls.

It’s motivating to your 50%.

But it’s bad to carry around the weight of their will.

That’s coveting their 50%.

And it will load a weight of guilt upon you that you were never meant to bear. Jesus wants to bear their guilt. If they don’t believe, they will bear it.

For your own sake, don’t take something that’s not yours to carry.

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30 Days of Prayer: Day 12 – The mystery of conversion

This entry is part 12 of 23 in the series 30 Days of Prayer

Mystery of Christian Conversion“Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.” – Mark 4:27

How does the seed grow?

I remember science projects I did in elementary school to make seeds sprout.

We played with the variables of soil, light, water, and even gravity (by using a record player) to see what might happen.

I recall the wonder and marvel that the seeds sprouted.

My children have repeated similar experiments with guandu and papaya seeds, and I got joy at watching their excitement over the shoots peaking out from the soil.

Watching a seed actually sprout and turn into something else provokes awe in my spirit at the great marvel of God’s design.

Scientists can probably describe

  • the mechanics of how a seed grows,
  • the right elements that contribute to helping a seed spout
  • how a seed shoots forth it’s roots
  • how genetics help it turn into the right plant,
  • how the chemical interactions with water, soil, and light make the seed sprout.

But the inner workings remain a mystery of wonder to me that seeds sprout and change into something beautiful.

Even without my attention, my care, seeds grow once they are activated.

Silently.

Mysteriously.

Over time.

Transforming into what they were designed to become.

The mystery of Christian conversion

As evangelists, we sow the seed of the word, but God makes it grow.

How the individual seed grows in the life of the person who receives it remains the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit.

How did you come to surrender your life to Christ?

Can you remember a day or even a particular moment?  You had come to place in your life where the invitation to follow Christ became irresistible and you surrendered your life.

Or maybe it was more of a gradual awareness and personal ownership.  You grew up surrounded by Christians, in a Christian environment, and somewhere along the way, you owned your own faith.

Either way, your conversion and surrender to Christ was at the end of a quest, a journey, a path of spiritual restlessness and need that led you to see your need for Christ.

A seed had been planted.

The journey began.

Eventually, it led to your conversion.

That mysterious inward journey is the Holy Spirit drawing you faith: “Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

That journey is unique

That seed cast by the evangelist or sower fell on the unique soil of your life:

  • the circumstances of your life at the time,
  • the people of spiritual influence around you,
  • your own background, upbringing, and personality.

These elements all make for a totally unique and mysterious process of conversion under the sovereign guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique to each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  There is no on/off conversion switch.

There is a mystery of the journey that we must acknowledge.

Today’s Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for helping me place my faith in You as my Lord and Savior.

I eventually saw my need for You.  Thank You for that drawing work of the Holy Spirit, bringing me to the place where I have found forgiveness, longing, and a peace that passes understanding.

I thank You for the circumstances that led me to surrender my life into the joy of following You, those trials and inner questions that helped me see my need for you.

Thank You for the people who influenced me to follow You: for their conversations with me, their patient answering of my questions, their trustworthy representation of a Christ follower.

I pray for my friends today that you would help the seeds that have been planted in their life to sprout.

Amen.

Today’s Action

Take some time to day to journal about your journey to faith in Christ.

  1. What circumstances in your life helped you see your need for Christ?
  2. Who were people of significant influence in your journey and what did they do to have that significance?
  3. What was in your upbringing and background that helped you see your need for Christ?

Spend some time writing out your answers.

Image Source: Morguefile.

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Links in the Chain Video

One of the greatest insights for my personal evangelism is the realization of the role of the Holy Spirit in Evangelism.

The Holy Spirit is the divine agent the Father uses to draw people to Jesus.

The Holy Spirit Prepares the Way by creating spiritual thirst.  Along the way, various events and conversations form Links in the Chain of Conversion.

To help explain this concept, I’ve started using a little macaroni tool that seems to capture this in a vivid illustration that people remember.

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Experiencing a Christian Conversion

Last night, I watched a deeply powerful film.

faithlikepotatoesFaith Like Potatoes

The story is based on the book of the same name about a real-life South African farmer named Angus Buchan.  Buchan accepted Jesus at a moment of crisis and began experiencing miracles, ranging from sudden rain putting out a wildfire to reviving a woman struck by lightning.

(Note: There is a death scene of a child that might be too graphic for some people.)

The Conversion Story

His character is developed from the beginning as the self-made man, broken by anger, rage, failure, and fear.

In one scene, he’s drowning his sorrows in alcohol that he vomits on an acquaintance.  In another, he assaults and punches a driver who cuts him off.

A friend invites his wife to breakfast at a church.

He doesn’t want to go and is angered over the issue of wearing a tie, but he goes at her insistence.

He goes to the breakfast, where a stranger invites him to church on Sunday.

For reasons not explained in the film, he attends church the next day, hears the testimony of someone’s life change by following Jesus, and the pastor gives a simple invitation to surrender one’s life to Jesus.

During that testimony and invitation, flashbacks from Buchan’s childhood are shown, where a missionary is telling the young Buchan about the Lord.

Those seeds of faith from his childhood, the present circumstances in his life, and the working of the Holy Spirit come together in a moment where Buchan responds to the invitation and offers his life to the Lord.

Here is a trailer:

Feed Readers, see the video trailer: Trailer from Faith Like Potatoes

Conversion in the film Flywheel

I saw a similar film last year, Flywheel (see my review) where the central character undergoes a conversion experience that was deeply powerful as well.

The story line reveals the struggles of the main character and all the circumstances that the Holy Spirit uses to bring this man to the place of surrendering his life to Jesus Christ.

The main character is a liar, a cheat, and morally bankrupt.  His marriage is falling apart, bills are stacking up, bank threatening to foreclose, and his own son doesn’t want to be like him.

One night, flipping through the TV channels, he hears a preacher who says the right words that speak deep to his heart.

“You are in this mess because of the decisions you made.”

On top of all other circumstances, this one line hits the man deep in the heart.  He turns off the TV, kneels on the floor, and invites Christ into his life with his own prayer.

The uniqueness of the mystery of Christian Conversion

Different seeds, different circumstances, different personalities, different portrayals of the experience of Christian conversion.

I think of my own conversion experience.

Different seeds planted early in life, different circumstances, situation, and so on.

The Holy Spirit, as the author of the story of my life, wove together the different elements to bring me to a place where I decided to follow Jesus.

In my case, I wanted to know God.

In my search and discovery, I learned that to know God, I needed to start following Jesus.

My conversion experience was driven by a thirst to know who God is.

I started following Jesus so that I could start to know God.

Different story, different need, different life situation.

Neither character, nor myself prayed a “repeat after me” prayer formula.

Their conversion was real, though the action of their responses was entirely different.

  • One character stood up and walked forward.
  • One character kneels and prays on his own, in his own words.
  • I remember saying, “I’m going to follow Jesus.”  I don’t remember praying, because I didn’t know what that was.

The genuine conversion experience is a work of the Holy Spirit unique in each individual.

We can’t restrict conversion to following a formula.  The act of praying can make an X marks the spot type of surrender, but the prayer itself is not a formula.  (See my thoughts at The Mystery of Christian Conversion).

God is the one who works conversion in the human heart.

As evangelists, preachers, and individuals who call people to start following Jesus, we can offer to pray with them, we can help them pray, but we are to help them respond to what God is doing in their heart.

Praying is one form of response to God’s awakening.

In the coming posts next week, I’ll tie this into:

  • Postmodern Evangelism: Find Your Story
  • Postmodern Evangelism: Discover Their story.
  • Postmodern Evangelism: Connect to God’s story.

To keep the articles readable and short, they are spread out over a few days.  Grab the RSS feed to get new articles automatically.

Order your copy of Faith Like Potatoes direct from Amazon.

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2 Keys for Reaching a City for Christ

Keys to City ReachingNot to long ago, I spoke at a Missions Congress on Cross Cultural Missions.

The event was awesome and I shared the stage with expositors from Costa Rica and Honduras.

The organizers wanted me to share on the theme of “Reaching my city for Christ.”

Reaching my City for Christ

For two to three weeks, I meditated on that theme, praying, reading Scripture, and pondering all that I had learned and done in my evangelism training.

“Reaching my city” is a big theme to cover in a 3 hour workshop, but as I reflected on it, it really boils down to personal evangelism on a massive scale.

One conversation by one conversation.

The funnel can widen out into things like churches working together with organized strategies, church planting, simple or organic churches, pastors cooperating, and strategic planning and stuff like that.  Books have been written on the subject, but what I haven’t seen yet is this theme boiled down to

One conversation at a time.

Key 1: Evangelism in cooperation with the Holy Spirit

Conversational evangelism is a personal work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit who Prepares the Way.

Evangelism seems to have the greatest impact one personal conversation at a time.  Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch is the best example in my book of a one to one conversation where Phillip cooperated with the advance work of the Holy spirit.

Other examples that strike me are

  • Peter and Cornelius
  • Paul and Ananias
  • Paul and Lydia

In each of the examples, the Holy Spirit had guided led the Evangelist to the right place at the right time to find a prepared heart.  Little churches got started.  Churches grew.

If we can learn how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, I believe most of us will discover that evangelism is much easier.

Key 2: Cooperating with the Holy Spirit is rooted in Prayer.

DSCF2744There are plenty of articles on prayer here.

In fact, I did a brief case study on a church that is rapidly growing through high adult conversion rates because of prayer (read 3 Keys to Church Growth — Case Study)

But to plow the field for evangelism, consider How to Lead a Prayer Meeting Focused on Evangelism.

Build an Evangelism Prayer List of people you are praying for regularly.

Read Ten Prayer Points For your Friends if you don’t know what to pray for.

If you want to be involved in reaching your city for Christ, prayer is the foundational work.

Paul wrote in 1 Tim 2:1

I urge then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone. (NIV)

Prayer should be our priority (urged, first of all).  Our first priority, rather than our last resort.

Prayer should be for everyone – that could be the whole group collectively, or each one in a group individually.

At the end of our workshop in the congress, we spent time interceding for the city, and crying out to God for those whom we know personally who do not yet know the Lord.

I believe that as we pray for the city, as we pray for those who don’t know Christ, as we cultivate listening to the Holy Spirit, we will reach our city for Christ, one conversation at a time.

Evangelism in the 21st Century

DVD Evangelism Conversations

Evangelism in the 21st century will not be solely dependent on the church.  The growing number of “spiritual but not religious” people means that more people will need to hear the gospel through conversations with Christians.

You’ll need to be able to comfortably talk about your faith in Christ without being obnoxious about it.

I have a DVD set that focuses on a conversational style evangelism that would be effective in:

  • casual conversation between friends
  • causal conversation between strangers

Read more about the Effective Evangelism Conversations in the store.

It is a recording of a live seminar I gave in 2012.

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The Art of Noticing People

BlurryCrowdonBusyStreetA moment with strangers

Have you ever been with a group of people and felt like you just needed to talk to that person over there?

A sense that God was pointing out that particular person?

Phillip (in the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch) was prompted to “Go Stand next to THAT chariot.”

Of all the chariots on the road that day, he was prompted to go next to one.

A moment with Friends

Maybe been with a friend, visiting in the coffee shop, and you have this unmistakable sense that they want to talk with you about their faith or yours?

Or maybe a friend has surprised you and started opening up about their faith struggle and search for God?

What are these moments?

These moments have the potential to become kairos moments, moments where we as Christians are aware of the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit to pay attention and likely talk about faith.

The are moments that are full of possibilities for a persons spiritual journey towards Christ, where the person who are talking with may make more steps closer in their relationship with Jesus.

Some might call these divine appointments.

I call them kairos moments.

Here are some examples:

Each conversation moment has been prepared and thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit another person makes another step forward towards discovering their relationship with Christ.

Some people search for God

Luke 19:1-10, the familiar story of Zacchaeus shows that noticing people and these divine appointments turns out to be more art than science.

Verse one says; “Jesus entered and walked through Jericho.”

Luke transitions from story to story with phrases letting you know that Christ was on the move.

On this particular day he came across a shunned tax collector named Zacchaeus whom we would place in the category of lost.

Nevertheless, verse 3 says that Zacchaeus “wanted desperately to see Jesus” (The Message).

The Greek rendering of the word “desperately” is zateo.

Zateo carries with it a meaning of a frantic pursuit. This is a very dramatic and passionate verb that Luke uses.

If you lost your child in a crowded public space, “zateo” describes the desperate search.

If your passport is missing the night before your international flight, zateo is the word to express the intensity of searching.

Do we believe that some people zateo Jesus?

They have been prepared and are so full of spiritual thirst they will do anything to find the water of life?

Jesus looks for them, rewarding their search.

Here’s what’s remarkable about Jesus. As he’s traveling along, he comes upon an ordinary tree and then does something extraordinary; he stops and notices! Jesus is busy, the religious crowd wants his attention and yet he stops and stares up at a tree. Go figure!

With all the travel language in the book of Luke, when Jesus stops it’s a big deal. What really happened at that tree could not be seen, the beauty is in the unseen.

When Jesus stopped at the tree of Zacchaeus, he ascribed worth to him and said that Zacchaeus mattered.

This was Jesus’ paradigm for letting people know that he cared about them—he stopped and noticed them. It wasn’t what Jesus said that was so compelling but what he did. In the economy of Jesus, Zaccheus had high value.

Others may grumble because you don’t do it right.

Verse 7 says, “Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, ‘What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?’ ”

Jesus was not playing the part correctly.

He was supposed to let Zacchaeus know how much he didn’t approve of his sin and share “the gospel” with him, which starts with an explanation of his failures.

Instead, Jesus stopped, noticed, called him by name and had a conversation with him on his turf.

The story ends with Jesus making this statement, “For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”

The Greek verb that is translated ‘find and restore’ is none other than zateo.

The art of Noticing People

Apparently, Jesus is passionately pursuing the people formerly known as lost. Pursuing Jesus was his business, his passion, his reason for existence.

Jesus profoundly impacted Zacchaeus not by sharing good news with him, but by being good news to him on that day. He stopped and noticed.

If we want to be on mission with Jesus, we’ll need to relearn the lost art of noticing.

Some of those conversations will go deep.

Some of those conversations that happen will go deep.  Others will remain shallow.

I have experienced lots of moments where after noticing people as in the Zaccheus text, the opportunity to offer a piece of the gospel happens.

Sometimes I get to harvest what others have sown, other times I get to water what was already there.  Sometimes I get to plant a seed for the first time.

It all starts with noticing those promptings of the Holy Spirit.

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