I am Urgent with the Gospel:
If I’m not urgent:
- You won’t understand the implications of the Gospel
- You fail to see yourself as ambassador
- You just don’t care
- In Prayer, I am Alert (Col 4:2)
- In Presentation, I make it Clear (Col 4:3-4)
- In Wisdom, I seize the Moment (Col 4:5)
- In Speech, I am Gracious (Col 4:6)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:07
Colossians chapter 4, we're continuing our series through Colossians and we are winding down to the end.
00:10-00:18
And if you're visiting with us today, last week, this is really part 2 of a message, but last week we were really emphasizing a word.
00:18-00:23
And what was that word? Urgency! Right, urgency.
00:24-00:27
So let me ask you, imagine a scenario with me, if you would.
00:29-00:39
But imagine it's the middle of the night and you're woken up and you look out of your window and you see that your neighbor's house is on fire.
00:41-00:47
Now you can actually see in their living room picture window, you see your neighbor, he's asleep in the recliner.
00:49-00:51
But you see the other side of the house is just ablaze.
00:53-00:54
What would you do?
00:56-00:57
what would you do in that situation?
00:59-01:00
Go back to bed?
01:03-01:11
Would you say, you know, this is not really my place to force my beliefs about fire on people.
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I don't want my neighbor thinking I'm some kind of a fire marshal, you know, I get out of a burning house.
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Is that what you'd do? What would you do? For real, what would you do?
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you would do whatever it took to get him out of that house, wouldn't you?
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It's the urgency. But you understand, we have something eternal that we've been talking about. There's something a lot more dangerous than somebody's household fire.
01:41-01:44
And that's, you know, heading to a Christless eternity.
01:46-01:58
But why is it that we would be so urgent over a temporal matter, but when it comes to eternal matters, somehow the church has dropped off in its urgency.
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Just this past week, I was talking to my brother Paul and Aaron and I had this discussion, but I want you to think about this.
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How many times have you been witnessed to?
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Just think about that.
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How many times have you been witnessed to?
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Now, one thing you might be thinking is, from a cult, right?
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"Oh yeah, these Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door, or these Mormons came to my door." When was the last time you were witnessed to by a Christian?
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Is there anybody here that was witnessed to in the past week?
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In the past week, somebody's like, "Hey, do you know, do you go to church anymore? Do you know Jesus Christ?" In the last week, anybody? Has anybody been witnessed to in the last month?
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Heather! You have.
02:50-02:51
Alright, just Heather.
02:52-03:25
anybody in the last three months six months anybody get with you know you know more okay J alright that's great there like what or I you know here But isn't it sad that we have a room full of people that say, I haven't been witnessed to?
03:26-03:26
Isn't that sad?
03:28-03:29
Where's the urgency?
03:30-03:31
Where's the urgency?
03:32-03:45
Aaron and I were thinking, I can remember one time in my life that somebody like outside of a church-- aside from the person that led me to the Lord, obviously.
03:45-03:50
But outside of that, I can think of one time somebody witnessed to me.
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With that said, I'm 36 years old.
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I can think of one time that some random person witnessed to me.
03:57-03:58
Where's the urgency?
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It's gone.
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And that's why Colossians chapter 4, as Paul's closing his teaching, what's he calling us to?
04:11-04:12
Yeah, thank you, Dan.
04:12-04:13
What's he calling us to?
04:13-04:13
Urgency.
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Urgency.
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Do you feel it?
04:16-04:17
do you feel it?
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and really there are three types of Christians I hate when people say something like that, you know there's really only two kinds of people in the world but for our purpose today, there's three types of Christians when it comes to witnessing there are some that never witness they're just like, I just don't, I keep my religion to myself, there are Christians that don't ever witness they've never given anybody a gospel tract, they've never sat down with the bible with someone invited someone to church and they have no intention.
04:51-05:23
The second group, there are Christians that are always witnessing. Does anybody know somebody like that? I have a couple friends like that. I love those people. They can be just, you know, in line at Walmart and it's just like, boom, sharing the gospel with this random person behind them. You know, I just love that, but there are people that always, it's just, it's always on the tip of their tongue. Always, always. Every conversation with strangers. It's just like, you know, it looks like we're going to get a little more cold weather this week and it's just like, "We're going to steer that conversation.
05:23-05:37
Let me tell you about Jesus Christ and what he's done." I love people like that. I love hanging out with people like that because I kind of hope some of that rubs off on me, right? There are people that never witness and there are people that always witness.
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The third group, somewhere in between, right? Somewhere in between, and that's probably where most of you are, somewhere in between.
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So let's review, let's read the text and then we'll do a quick review of what we talked about last week.
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But we're in Colossians chapter 4 verses 2 through 6 and what's Paul talking about again?
06:00-06:01
Urgency.
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He says, "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
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At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.
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Walking wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.
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Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
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Now, I'm not mic'd.
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Wilson, can you hear me okay?
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So I'm going to try to project a little bit here since we're not in this setting.
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So if I need to speak up, Wilson, give me the sign.
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What's the sign?
07:04-07:08
Alright, so here's a quick review of what we talked about last week.
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I'm urgent with the Gospel.
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First of all, in prayer, I am alert.
07:13-07:14
Remember that from last week?
07:15-07:18
You can jot that down in your outline, maybe the same sermon outline from last week, right?
07:18-07:20
But in prayer, I am alert.
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Did you see that?
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He says, "Continue steadfastly in prayer, because God may or may not do something." No, he says, "Being watchful." When you pray, you should have your face on the ground and have your eyes up.
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Like, "Okay, God's going to do something. I know God's going to do something. I know He is. I know God is active. I know He hears me. I know He's going to work." And he says, "Be watchful." Be watchful in prayer.
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Urgency means, "I am watchful for my opportunity." This whole passage is about evangelism, obviously.
07:55-07:57
But urgency means I'm watchful for my opportunity.
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You know, if you start your day saying, "God, give me opportunity to glorify your Son in somebody's life today, to share the gospel with someone." You make that prayer in the morning and then you're going on through the day like, "Okay, I know God's going to bring somebody into my path that I can witness to or I can share the love of Christ with.
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God's going to bring somebody.
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I know He is.
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It's being watchful." And secondly, last week we saw, in presentation, I make it, what did we say?
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Clear.
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Clear.
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Like, well, how do you, how should you share the gospel with someone?
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Sorry, Jeff.
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That's alright.
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How should you share the gospel with someone?
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Is there a right way?
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Is there a wrong way?
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And there's certainly some elements that you should include in sharing the gospel with someone.
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But the number one ingredient you need to have over all of it is what?
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Make it clear. Make it clear.
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That's exactly what he says here. I'm not making this up.
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He says that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
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Paul, how should someone share the gospel?
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How ought someone to share the gospel, Paul?
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Make it clear.
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Somebody might be offended at what you say, but they shouldn't wonder what you say, right?
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They shouldn't wonder.
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And he said like something Bible, something, he lost me.
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Make it clear.
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So we talked about how urgency means I don't blow the opportunity.
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I don't blow the opportunity, meaning when I have an opportunity to share the gospel, I want to do my best to just make it clear.
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I just want to make it clear.
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Do you know some things about the gospel?
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Make it clear.
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So thirdly, I merge it with the gospel.
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Thirdly, in wisdom, I seize the moment.
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Excuse me. In wisdom, I seize the moment.
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Look at verse 5 again.
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He says, "Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time." Last week we talked about how God opens doors. We can't do that.
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God opens doors.
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So you might be asking yourself as you go through the day, you know, somebody comes in your path, the question you should be asking yourself, being urgent, is this an open door? Have you ever asked yourself, is this an open door?
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Is this an open door?
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Well, that can be hard to discern.
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So what do we do? Well, he tells us here, "We walk in wisdom.
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We pray, we look for open doors, but we do it in wisdom." Now, what does that mean?
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I'm going to define it for you by telling you what it doesn't mean.
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Here's some, and I've been guilty of this, probably more than anybody in this room, I've been guilty of this.
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But this is not wisdom.
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It's not wisdom to try to kick down a door that's not open.
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guilty okay I'm so guilty trying to kick you know me like I'm sure this guy and he's totally like here he's like like I'm just getting started please I'm like door you're gonna hear this you're gonna hear this like dude I hate religion like you know what religion is Satan's favorite word you're gonna hear the gospel and we're just kicking the door down we're kicking it down I admire seawork but listen wisdom says we don't try to kick down the door that's not open. Why? Why don't we? Because if you can't pick the fruit, don't bruise it. Because if they're not ready to receive it, you're just one more arrogant, idiotic, religious nut that's trying to cram something down their throat.
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Listen, it took me a long time to get this. Some people aren't ready to receive the Gospel.
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people just aren't.
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And that's a heartbreaking reality.
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Because I'm like, man, you could be dead tomorrow.
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You need to be ready now.
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That's why the Bible says, today, if you hear his voice, you're not hurting your heart.
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Like, look at Hebrews, what is it, 3 and 4, over and over and over.
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Today, if you hear his voice-- there's an urgency.
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And sometimes I've mistaken that urgency to mean that, all right, man, you're going to hear whether you want to or not.
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and that's not wisdom.
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And you can push somebody further away when you're trying to bring them closer to Jesus Christ.
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So I just encourage you, that's not wisdom, kicking down a door that isn't open.
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That's not wisdom.
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Everybody say, that's not wisdom.
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That's not wisdom.
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That's not wisdom.
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Thank you.
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I agree with you.
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Isn't it great when we all just like we're in the same corner?
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but that's not wisdom.
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But then there's the other thing we do that's not wisdom.
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It's there's a door open and we don't enter.
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Right?
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God opens a door for us and we just don't go through it.
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You know, somebody comes up and they're like, Dan, you know, I really noticed that just the way you talk and the way you act, you're just not like the other people around you.
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you know, what's your deal man?
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What am I seeing in you?
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And you're just like, good parenting.
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(audience laughing)
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Yeah, my parents, they did good job raising me.
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Anyway, you go get lunch and it's like, don't open the door.
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Or like, you know, hey, I see you're reading the Bible, what are you reading there?
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It's all nothing, nothing.
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Sometimes God opens a door for us.
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Sometimes the doors... again it's walking wisdom, you need to discern that.
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It's when the guy comes to you and he's just like, "Sam, my life is a wreck, man.
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My life is a wreck. I can't figure out this parenting thing.
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My kids are out of control and my wife hates me. My life is a wreck, man." That's an open door.
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Because you have somebody that is starting to understand their total desperation, their need for Jesus Christ.
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So walking in wisdom, is this an open door?
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We discern the situation, so what if it is an open door?
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I feel like, you know what, this is a door God's opening for me to share the gospel.
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So what should we do?
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I'll look at what your text says in verse 5.
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Making the best use of the time.
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I just tabbed out seize the moment.
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Seize the moment.
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Making the best use of the time.
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Seize the moment.
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Make the best use of the time.
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That means when I see an open door, I'm not going to sit back and think about it.
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It's just like, you know what, door's open, I'm going in.
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Seizing the moment.
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It's like being a coiled spring.
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We have a boxer, he's a knucklehead, his name's Gordy.
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But somebody once described boxers to, this was the perfect description, they said, "Boxers are like a coiled spring." And yes, that's exactly what a boxer's like.
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Because Gordy's just always like at the drop of a hat.
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He can be in a dead sleep.
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"Hey Gordy, if I flinch out, he's off." launching himself. Coiled spring.
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He's always ready. Always ready. I was thinking about this week.
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How can I illustrate that?
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Always being ready.
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I thought of so many times when we go on vacation.
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Aaron is the meticulous planner.
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Aaron is. If it was up to me, it would just be like, "I packed my swimming trunks, what else do I need?" with Aaron it's "Oh you know what, I forgot to bring that medication." Aaron's like "I brought it." "Oh you know what, we forgot to bring the cage thing." Aaron's like "She's just always ready. She's always ready." She's meticulous. She plans it out. But she's ready.
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But what happens if we're on vacation and this happens? What does Aaron do?
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Tell me. "I'm not doing that." Yeah, thank you.
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Thank you. She's ready. She's always ready. She's always ready.
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Making the best use of the time means I'm always ready.
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I'm always ready. I'm always ready.
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I'd encourage you, get in the habit of what I call nudging doors.
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Sometimes, like my dog, I'm an Applehead, it's hard for me to discern sometimes door so I've just gotten in the habit of just cutting right up to the door just giving a little nudge.
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Is this open or not? And how do you do that? Well, learn to steer conversations to spiritual matters and see how people respond.
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It takes some practice and the best way to learn how to do it is by doing it. But learn how to steer the conversation into spiritual matters.
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I can think of times when I've had to wait, you know, did you ever have to go to the garage and they're just putting tires on your car and it's taking like six hours and you're just kind of sitting in that little waiting room and the TV's on and somebody's like, "I was just doing what's wrong with the world today." You just kind of give a little nudge.
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"You know what I think's wrong with the world today?
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I think people are lost because people have turned their backs on God." You know, to just kind of give that door a little nudge.
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yeah yeah okay maybe this isn't an open door but then maybe you know they'll respond with something like you know why do you think that?
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what do you mean people have turned their backs on God?
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Nudge the door. If they brush you off they're probably not ready. But if they seem interested in discussing spiritual matters try to drive people to the point where you can ask them this question.
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Would you like to know what the Bible says about how God saved us through Jesus Christ?
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Sometimes I just ask people that question.
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They might be like, no, not interested.
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Okay, what do you do if they're not interested?
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Say, okay.
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Opportunities, if you wanna talk about it sometime, I'd love to talk to you.
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But again, we're not kicking down doors that aren't opened.
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But they just ask, do you know what the Bible says?
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Would it be okay if we sat down sometime and just go through the Bible together?
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I'd like to share some things with you.
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Just an invite like that.
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And when we have that opportunity, what should we do?
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Well, that goes back to verse 4.
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We make it clear.
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We make it clear.
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Another thing I'd encourage you to do, Sammy just printed these up.
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Isn't this pretty?
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Thank you, Mark.
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Now everybody.
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No, we've got to start over.
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Sammy just printed these up.
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Aren't they pretty?
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Laura came up with the saying on the front, I like that, it says, "He won the victory, we get the prize." And these are invites to come join us for Easter. And what we're going to ask everybody here today to do, we're going to give everybody three of these. It's not hard. You just go up, "Hey, you know what? I'm part of this new church we just launched But that's all you need to do.
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You think you can do that for three people?
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If you do that, we get a box of them.
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We'll get you more. We run out.
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Sam will print more.
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All right.
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It's a counterfeiting machine.
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I thought our offering was awfully big last week.
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No.
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actually those bills these are put in California right but anyways we're gonna give everybody three of these today and we just want to invite people to say hey you know I'm part of this new church I'd like you to come check it out if you don't have a church home that I always qualify that we're not trying to steal people from other churches you get that but just say if you don't have a church home we'd love to have you come with us and give them a card all the information is on there. It can be that simple.
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So urgency means I don't miss an opportunity.
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Urgency means I don't miss an opportunity.
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Seize the moment.
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Maybe you're saying, "You know what?
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I hear what you're saying, but where I work, I've been looking for the open doors.
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I've been looking, I just haven't seen.
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I just, people know I'm a Christian, and sometimes I do try to have spiritual conversations and I'm just not seeing an open door.
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So what do you do in the meantime?
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Well, I'm so glad you asked because the Lord addressed that.
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Look at verse 6.
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"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you want to answer each person." So in speech I am gracious.
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You don't see your open door yet?
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going to come. In the meantime, I'm going to speak graciously. By the way, what two things do unbelievers typically look at when they find out you're a Christian? They're looking at your walk and they're looking at your speech, right? And he addresses both of those in here. Walk in wisdom, speech, always be gracious. But he says to have gracious speech sadly church what do we tend to do towards unbelievers what we can do uh... here's a here's something that a lot of churches a lot of christians and it comes to do we put up there Hi, my name is Jeff, it's nice to meet you.
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What's your name?
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Aaron. - Yeah, that's right.
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I remember that because I know someone else in there.
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Yeah, it looks like you have a serious Capri Sun addiction, man.
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(audience laughing)
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You know, but Lord doesn't want you to be addicted to anything.
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Addiction's really a worship disorder.
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And you need to stop the Capri Sun thing, man, all right?
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You're killing yourself!
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So if you could just kind of lay off the Capri Suns, man.
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But that's what we do.
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I'm just kidding, you can have more.
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(audience laughing) That's what we do is we point out their sin.
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Oh, well, Beth.
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Did you know the Bible says you shouldn't be doing that?
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We don't play cards and we don't dance and we don't this and we don't that.
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And here's the danger.
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So often Christians are known for what they're against.
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Right, that's a problem.
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It's like, you know, here comes so-and-so to work.
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Oh, we know them.
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We know what they're against.
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It's as if our end game is to get people to stop sinning.
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Is that our end game?
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To get people to stop sinning?
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Is that what we're going for?
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Is that our goal?
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We'll just get them to stop sinning.
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They're still heading for hell.
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But their lifestyle is more what I would like it to be while they're on their way there.
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Our endgame is not to get people to stop sinning.
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That's not our endgame.
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That's not our endgame.
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Say, "That's not our endgame." That's not our endgame.
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I agree with that, too.
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But listen, I'm not saying that we never address sin.
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Somebody's going to leave here today saying, "Oh, Pastor Jeff says we don't address sin." I'm not saying that.
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I'm not saying that.
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But when we are gracious, listen, this is so important, when we are gracious in our speech and God opens the door, we're going to have opportunity to explain sin.
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But my encouragement to you is to do it when God opens the door.
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All right? You'll have opportunity and yes, sin needs to be addressed. Yes, you'll have opportunity to explain that.
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But sin is the symptom, it's not the disease.
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Sin is the symptom, it's not the disease.
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Be like if you had brain cancer and it was giving you horrible headaches, and the doctor was like, well, here's the problem.
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Just take some aspirin and have it help with the headaches.
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That's not the problem.
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The problem is you have something that's killing you, or in Sin's case, you have something that killed you.
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See, people are dead and they need life. They stand condemned and they need grace.
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We're not talking about reformation, we're talking about transformation.
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Now, God wants to lead people to repentance, right?
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Do you know what the Bible says He uses to do that?
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Romans 2.4, it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance. Did you know that?
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Some people think it's God threatening us. Shape up! Shape up!
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Does the Bible say that at times?
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But what leads us to repentance? It's God's kindness.
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It's God's grace. It's God's mercy that brings us to that place.
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We have a holy God who hates sin, but this holy God graciously is inviting us to receive Him.
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It's His kindness that leads to repentance.
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Newsflash, you can't change anyone.
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But when someone comes to know God's grace, He changes them.
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Right? You can't breathe life into anyone.
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Not on your resume anywhere, right?
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You can't give life to anyone.
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Do you know that's God's thing?
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Did you know that?
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On God's resume, that's one of his top things. What do you do?
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I give life to the dead.
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That's his thing.
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When they come to know God's grace, he will change them.
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Gracious speech, seasoned with salt.
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What does that mean?
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Means this, here's how you should talk towards people.
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Your words should be, just jot these down.
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These are just a few things that I was kind of thinking through, and I'm sure you'll think of some others.
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But what does gracious speech mean?
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First of all, uplifting.
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Uplifting.
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Again, I mentioned Debbie Downer earlier.
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Some Christians are just totally like Debbie Downers at work, and people are complaining, and they just jump into the complaint party, right?
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Let's get some cheese with this one.
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and we just complain, complain, it's tearing down.
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Your speech should be uplifting.
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Also, we've seen this throughout Colossians, jumped on the word thankful.
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Thankful.
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Even when things are at their worst, you have something to be thankful for, and you express that.
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Here's a big one, encouraging.
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Encouraging.
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Any family members you have that are not believers, or co-workers, or whoever you encounter that are, they should look at you as an encourager.
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Like, I might not agree with, he really seems to be into that church thing, but he's just so encouraging to me.
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Encouraging.
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I don't see what this does, there's two words, but personal interest.
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Personal interest, meaning you take a personal interest in people.
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People are not projects.
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There's Tom, he doesn't know the Lord.
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He's my next project.
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Tom's going to figure that out real quick.
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He's going to figure that out real quick.
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You're not really interested in me, You just want me to come be on your church team or whatever.
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You know, people, not projects.
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People should say stuff like this about you.
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You know, if I were to grab some, let's just say some coworkers that don't know the Lord, if I were to sit down with them and say, "What's he like?" They should say things like, "You know, I really like talking to him.
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I really like talking to him.
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He just makes my day.
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You know, she acts like she really cares about me.
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When I talk to her, you know, we disagree on a lot of things, but she acts like she really cares about me.
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It's gracious speech. Gracious speech.
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Do you know, do you know Christians who, if they were the only Christian you've ever met, you'd be like, "I totally wouldn't be a Christian." that? Like, man, if that guy was the only Christian that I ever met, I don't know if I'd even be interested in cracking the spine of a Bible. But they're just always, like, angry about everything, complaining and bellyaching, and they're mad about this, and you're an idiot for that, and always negative, always condemning. But I'm sure many of us in here would fall into this category, that if an unbeliever met you and you were the only Christian that they met, they would want what you have. Always encouraging, always uplifting.
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You know, obvious question, which one would you rather be?
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The more sobering question is, which one are you?
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Are you the gracious speech person?
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you just go with the same negative, condemning, bellyaching, tearing down speech that so many are engaged in.
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And finally, look at the end of verse 6. I'm going to point this out. He says, "How you ought to answer each person." Circle the word "each" in your Bible.
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I don't write in my Bible.
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Well, if you're sitting next to a person that's like that, reach over and circle each in their Bible.
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Circle the word "each." Now notice there's no one-size-fits-all phrase that you can use to show the Gospel.
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I almost wish there was.
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Wouldn't that make evangelism easy?
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There's just like one phrase.
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It's just, "Okay, God's opened the door, "and here comes my Gospel sentence." Boom! It's done.
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Another open door, gospel phrase, here it comes, boom, done.
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Have this whole city come to Christ by the end of the afternoon.
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Well, it's how you want to answer each person.
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Again, we talked about taking a personal interest in people.
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How do you know how you want to answer each person?
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I encourage you to do something that is an art that I'm still trying to let the Lord work on me.
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But take time to listen to people.
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Just take time to listen to people.
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That's how you're going to know how you ought to answer them.
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Take time to listen to them.
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And when you take time to listen, you're going to want to, if they're not a believer and they have some hang-up.
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I just put this down on my notes.
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You need to discern what their obstacle is.
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Okay, so they're not a believer in Christ.
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So the question is why?
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And we know the whole, you know, salvation is the work of the Lord, I get that.
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But when you're witnessing to people, why aren't they believing?
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What's their hangup?
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And you know, I have three broad categories that you gotta think about.
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The first one is this.
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Maybe their obstacle is just ignorance.
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Maybe they just like don't know.
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They just don't, you know, I've never read the Bible.
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Which, by the way, you might think, well, yeah.
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Maybe in some third world country, you might run into people like that.
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You don't run into people like that in this area.
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Did you know that?
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I run into people that are like-- they couldn't list me two facts about Jesus Christ.
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We just take that for granted.
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We live in America.
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You know, baseball, apple pie, and you know the gospel.
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We're wrong.
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They don't.
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I'm running into people more and more that are just like, "I've heard of Jesus. What?
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We're running into that here." So maybe for some people their obstacle is just ignorance.
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Can I sit down and tell you, you know, what the Bible says about Jesus?
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For some people it's an intellectual obstacle. It's an intellectual obstacle.
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They say things like, "I don't know, man. There's just some things about the Bible that don't make sense to me." right like how did Noah get all those dinosaurs on the ark? I mean, for reals, for real.
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How did Noah get all those dinosaurs on the Ark? You know how he did? What's that?
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I think Noah probably took babies or young ones because nothing's born full size, did you know that?
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My mother's thankful for that.
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Nothing is born full size.
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I think he probably took very young ones, or babies.
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Right? Doesn't that make sense?
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And for some people, it's just like, "Oh, I never thought about that." Or, what about dinosaurs? Where do they fit into everything?
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Some people have intellectual hang-ups.
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What about all this proof of evolution?
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That's why we're going through this answers in Genesis thing in our small groups.
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That'll help answer some of these intellectual issues.
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And for some people, it's an emotional obstacle.
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It's an emotional obstacle.
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A heartfelt, passion-type obstacle.
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My father passed away several years ago, but that was his thing.
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You know, I'd share the gospel with him, and he'd say, "Jeff, I just don't understand.
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If God is so loving and powerful..." You know, the next thing you're going to say, right?
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Why does he allow evil in the world?
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Why are their children suffering?
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And it was an emotional obstacle for my father.
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And I believe that before he left the earth, he was able to work through some of that.
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But for some people, it's an emotional obstacle.
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They haven't really thought about what the Bible actually does say or intellectually thought through.
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It's just purely emotional.
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So urgency means I speak graciously until I have my opportunity.
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I speak graciously until I have my opportunity.
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Sometimes the Lord gives me little reminders about these things.
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And I had one of my biggest ones just a couple of years ago.
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And I've shared with you before I was involved with the prison ministry.
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there was a season for several weeks that there was this one young man that came to Bible study.
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Sometimes we get a room full, and sometimes we get one.
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This one young man came every week.
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And sometimes it was just him and I and sitting across the table for an hour, just talking about the Bible.
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I'll never forget him.
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The one day he said-- he was raised in the church, and he knew the gospel.
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He knew of the gospel.
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He said, is it possible to get to a place in your life where it becomes impossible to repent?
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And by his own admission, he knew the gospel, but he wasn't a believer.
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He said, I'm not.
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And I know that I should give my life to Christ, and I just haven't.
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So is it possible to get to a place in your life where it's impossible to repent?
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And we sat down and had a great Bible study, and I shared so many things with him from the Bible.
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Had a great talk, prayed together.
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And a couple weeks later when I went back in, I was looking for him because he was like a regular, right?
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And I said, "Hey, what happened to so-and-so?" I'm not gonna mention his name.
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And one of the CEOs said, "Oh, you didn't hear." I said, "Hear what?" And they said, "Well, he was released last Friday." And I said, "Well, that's funny because he said he was released, we were gonna get together." And he said, no, he was released that same day he overused.
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Died that same day.
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And that's sad.
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But what did that remind me of?
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Urgency.
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I thought this guy was gonna get out and we'd have hours to sit down and continue to talk and we didn't.
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As if that wasn't enough, I was looking up his obituary information online.
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and when I was going through the listing there was another very familiar name to me on there and I'm like well wait a second and I clicked on it and read through there was a guy who I've tried witnessing to for years he would come to me at the gym and he'd be crying his life was a wreck and you know for years I'd often say let's go to lunch this week, here's my card, give me a call so we can sit down Why don't you come visit us at church?" And he never did.
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And Aaron will tell you that weekend was kind of a rough one, because here are two people that I tried to spend so much time with that left the earth a lot sooner than I'm sure that they expected.
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And the reason I'm sharing that with you is because this is urgent.
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This is urgent.
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And nobody in here knows how much time we have left.
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And who knows?
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You know, the door is that the Lord's going to open for you.
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But urgency needs to be your motto in evangelism.
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So just to sum up, and then we're going to take the Lord's Supper together for ushers would get ready so as we set up what's this passage about what we do what then shall we do brothers well he tells us we pray we pray then what we watch for god okay then what we present the gospel Okay, how do we do that?
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We do it clearly, right?
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When?
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In every opportunity the Lord gives us.
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What do we do while we're waiting for that opportunity?
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We speak graciously, okay?
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Colossians 4:2-6
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another.