Speaker: 00:00:00

Ever uh click with somebody right away and make a friend immediately, or cross paths with

somebody you would never normally cross paths with, but hesitate to take the opportunity

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to say anything about Jesus because you start to come up with reasons why it's not a

divine appointment?

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What is a divine appointment, and how do we know we're in one?

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This episode is for the Christian who wants to be able to recognize divine appointments

and know what to do with them.

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Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world

become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.

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I'm George Binoka and with me today in the studio is the founder and author of the

exchange, Jeff

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Musgrave.

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Hey Jeff, how are you?

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We're doing good.

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It's beautiful weather out here in Colorado today.

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I gotta imagine it's a heat wave over here in Arizona and California.

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in in January sometimes.

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we don't even get much of a spring, know, so yeah.

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Well, um I'm really excited about this topic.

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Just even off air, we were just talking about, you know, there's two sides of struggle

when it comes to this topic of divine appointments and your section in giving the exchange

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that you've written there, the outline is it's gold.

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I mean, it's pay dirt, you know, and so I'd love for our audience just to, cause I've had

this struggle in my own mind of.

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You're in the middle of something, you don't know how to discern it, you don't know what

to do with it, and how do you know?

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Yeah.

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And we're working right from giving the exchange.

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mean, the outline that we're going to follow in our conversation here is, is right from

giving the exchange.

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So anybody who has given the exchange book already, it starts on page 26.

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And it's, it's a great tool to help us remember that God is always at work.

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mean, when we see these God moments, it's, it's not just

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uh cool.

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It's literally God's saying this is where I am.

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And I want you to join me in this.

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So it's I love this concept.

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And I'm, I'm so dependent on the fact of providence.

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I mean, God is constantly in control of everything that happens in my life.

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And to be able to put together a concept of

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Providence and God inner working with me and and and my choice is getting involved with

them.

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That's it's just really, really fun stuff.

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It's where life is.

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Yep, I 100 % agree.

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I think the thing I've struggled with though, all my Christian life, is that I sometimes

am trying to sense those moments, you know, a divine appointment.

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I'm trying to decide, is this God's providence?

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And I'm kind of using my feelings as a judge.

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And I always walk away with a little bit of regret when I don't take it, but I don't know

if I should have regretted and if I shouldn't have regretted.

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And I mean, what's the grid work?

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How do you even know?

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What's evidence of how these things work?

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What are the facts?

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Yeah, well, I think the very first fact is, he's the Lord of the harvest.

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It's his harvest.

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And what he's looking for is laborers.

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And if we put ourselves into that category, we were, we're not in charge of all of that.

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And we don't have to fret.

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All we have to do is be available and be God's laborer.

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And let God deal with the heavy stuff that's kind of above our pay grade.

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and knowing that God is sovereign and knowing that he is working.

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All we do is live in dependence on him to lead us.

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And so I love this prayer.

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Lord, would you give me an open door today and make it obvious because I'm a little dense.

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And just just ask God look, put this on him.

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He's big enough and and wants to work with us enough.

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that he can really, really genuinely help us.

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Does that make sense?

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yeah, it makes great sense.

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And I guess I would say there's other layers of struggle that come with this.

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I'm sure we're gonna get to them.

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But you're right, I think we have to be people who take risks.

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this week was an interesting week for me as a pastor because there was some disappointment

that came after having a great weekend.

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There was some disappointment that came.

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And the disappointment wasn't anybody's fault.

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just, you know, sometimes in the Christian life that happens.

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You feel like you took a risk, you took an opportunity, and there's a disappointment.

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And sometimes you're just left scratching your head going, man, what did I do wrong?

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I mean, here, like I work for the exchange.

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I am in this material thinking about this material.

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This is number 82 episode podcasts.

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I mean, we spent 40 hours talking about evangelism together on a microphone.

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sometimes in person, sometimes separate from each other.

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That's crazy to think about.

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And still, I kinda go sometimes, I feel lost because I'm looking at the result, and it's

not the result I want, but I'm trying to figure out what were the inputs that were wrong.

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How do you work through that kind of thing where you don't get in a predicament like that

where you feel like, man, it's not working?

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Well, let's back up and kind of get that 40,000 foot view first, get the big picture.

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And I think the biggest issue is to help us remember divine appointments emanate from

God's divine agenda.

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By that, I mean the meta narrative of history is redemption.

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God has been rescuing the souls of men from the time of Adam until now.

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And the fact is that uh

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it's God's agenda, not mine.

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And he's the one who drives the agenda.

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And the way he drives the agenda, many times is by putting us into these divine

appointments, a divine appointment, just simply stated, and this is just definition.

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There's there's the whole concept and word divine appointment, it's clearly in the Bible,

we see it everywhere.

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I was just thinking about the hundreds of illustrations we see in the Bible, but

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The word isn't in the Bible.

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It's it's kind of a uh made up word that we use to help us see what God is doing around

us.

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But here's my definition.

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A divine appointment is when God providentially empowers you to touch a life in which he's

already been working.

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And sometimes it is not until later that we actually see that it was a divine appointment.

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Does that make sense?

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we can actually be in divine appointments and not even know it.

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God's the one who sets them, God's the one who carries them out.

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And it's not until later.

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So if if this is the cat fact, I think in terms of, you know, God is in control of

everything, there's nothing that's really not a divine appointment, if we put the

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definition too broadly.

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So there are two key elements that if we have these two key elements, then

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were able to identify them a little easier.

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The first would be providence that God's in charge.

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God is doing something unusual.

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And the second is evidence.

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And that means I, I see it, I get it.

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Because God does things that I don't see.

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And I actually believe that when he does show me his hand, that it is an invitation from

him to get involved.

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It's kind of like Jesus says I am

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doing what God told me to do because he is showing me and and I join my father in his work

and that's that's I feel like that's my job as a Jesus follower is To see where God is at

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work and join him there.

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So these two elements are really really important in In our book.

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I've written it out this way You know, you're in a divine appointment when and it's kind

of like you just use that template and and so

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There are, I've got about nine of them here.

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I'm sure there are many, many, many others that we could have, but these are just common

divine appointments.

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You know you're in a divine appointment when you enter into a situation and it's obvious

that God was at work before you got there.

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This is just one of those clear indications.

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This is the one where sometimes it's not until later that you actually see it.

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In the book, I write a story that I've entitled she needed to know.

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And I didn't know she needed to know when I first met her.

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Her name was Chris.

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And when I went to Chris's home, she and her mother were sitting on the floor with stacks

of money around them.

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And I'd never met them before.

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There was a woman in our church who had called Chris and asked Chris if she wanted more

information about

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our church and then asked me to go by and visit with Chris.

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So I'd never seen Chris before.

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She'd never seen me before.

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We were complete strangers.

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When I knocked on the door, there was a young man that opened the door and kind of almost

prevented me from coming in.

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It was kind of like he was a barrier.

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But I told him the story that Sue from our church had asked me to come by and visit with

Chris.

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And he opened the door behind him just slightly and leaned over his shoulder and asked,

Hey, Chris, there are some people here from the church.

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Do you want to talk to them?

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And I had no idea what was going to happen because I didn't know Chris at the time.

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And Chris yelled from the inside.

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Yeah, bring them in.

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And so we went into this room.

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And there was really no furniture that you could sit on.

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And

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Chris and her mother were sitting on the floor.

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I didn't even know it was her mother at the time.

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I just knew that there was this 20 something and this 40 something sitting on the floor.

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And they had stacks of money around them.

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mean cash.

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And I'm thinking whoa, what has happened here?

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I didn't make a minute in a drug deal.

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And I I

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knew that if I'm standing up and they're sitting on enough ground, this is not going to be

a comfortable conversation.

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I wanted to be able to talk to them about the Lord.

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And so I got me and my team kind of sat down on the floor, this young man that was there.

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So there were there were several of us sitting on a floor around these stacks of money.

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And I started kind of just making small talk.

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And I have to tell you, George, I was in a hurry.

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And I

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I went a little faster than I probably should have.

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And I kind of cut to the chase.

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So I didn't get to know her very well.

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But I wanted to get to the gospel.

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And so I, I just said, are you guys interested in spiritual things?

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And we were there from the church.

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She had asked us to come in and said she wanted information about the church.

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I felt like it was a pretty safe question, but I was not ready for her answer.

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She said, yes, we want to know how to live forever.

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we've been studying the Bible every Monday night, they've been doing a Bible study every

Monday, and they were studying the Bible specifically to ask this question, what happens

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to people when they die?

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And so she told me this, and I was so excited, I just jumped right into the gospel.

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And I realized, you know, whenever I try to give the gospel, I try to ask a couple of

diagnostic questions, so that I can

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tailor the gospel to the specific needs of the person I'm talking to.

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And so I had realized about halfway through I had not asked those diagnostic questions

because I got too excited.

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And I stopped and I asked the diagnostic questions come to find out this uh woman who I

still didn't know was her mother was a believer, but neither of these two young people

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were were believers and recognize that that their need

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and continued the conversation.

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And I have to tell you, George, it was not a good night for me.

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I I kind of got off my game a little bit and was, I didn't do a very good job.

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And here's the great thing about the gospel is that we don't really have to be great at

it.

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We just have to be willing to share the truth.

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both Chris and that young man trusted Christ as savior that night.

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come to find out.

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Chris had a twin sister who was killed in an automobile accident.

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The money that was sitting on the floor was money that they had raised to give to the

organ donation program that they had given her twin sisters organs to in this sudden

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death.

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And, you know, Chris needed to know

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what happens to people when they die.

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It's one thing to lose a sibling, it's another to lose a twin.

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And that's, that's what had prompted all of this divine appointment.

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And it really wasn't you were asking the question, how do I know?

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Well, frankly, it really wasn't until looking back on it in hindsight that I realized, oh,

this, this was divine appointment, God set this all up for me.

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And if you think about it,

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I could never have made that happen.

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There's no way I could have timed my visit to her home in a timeframe in which she

desperately needed it.

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But God could and he did.

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And that's what a divine appointment is.

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I'm not in charge of it.

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God is.

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Yeah, I love that because ultimately what you're saying is, trust God.

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I not only trust God, bring the opportunities, I trust God in the opportunity.

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I trust God for the outcome of the opportunity.

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It is not about skill and aptitude.

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It's about willingness.

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And I think that's a big distinction you just made for everybody because so many people

feel like it's about performance.

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Like there are just some people

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who are good at this, like there are some people who are good at basketball, and then

there's some people that are five foot, and they're not gonna be good at basketball.

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And it's like, well that's not how the gospel works.

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It's about willingness.

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It's not about IQ, aptitude, personality, any of those things.

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Yeah, and in fact is a divine appointment recognizes that God is the one who is wooing

this person to himself.

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God is the one who is, is drawing them.

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And I we like to call them pre believers, you don't know them and you don't know them

until they're believers.

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But you, God is the one who's doing all of that.

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And all I do is just respond to the open doors that God gives me here.

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Here's just a

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really, really important thing for all of us to start doing.

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And that is constantly be asking God, God, give me open doors and then make this promise

to God.

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If you open a door, I'm going to walk through it.

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And if we just live like that, you're going to find lots of divine appointments because

God is really, I mean, he's in saving business.

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He hasn't quit and he's, he's out there rescuing people right now.

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He just wants us as his laborers to get involved.

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Yeah, that's such a phenomenal prayer.

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really believe that, you know, it's one of the things I'm going to change, you know, after

this podcast I'm going to commit to change is when I wake up in the morning and pray.

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I think I need to just start praying, Lord, open some doors.

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Give me opportunities and then give me the courage to walk through them.

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Yeah.

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And you know, what I find is when you're walking through doors, you have no idea how far

that open door is going to take you.

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uh It may just be for this time, opportunity to have a good conversation that later would

lead to a soul conversation.

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We just don't know.

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We're just going to walk through life expecting God to work and going as

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far into people's lives.

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So in other words, I want to have conversations with as people as I can.

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I want to take all those conversations as deeply as I can.

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And as God allows me to find soul needs and offer them an invitation to see Jesus, I go as

far as God will let me go with that particular moment.

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I think that's such an important piece of theology you're giving us right there is, you

know, the Kingdom of God is—the Kingdom of Jesus is big, and we are one soul in that

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Kingdom.

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And to think that we have to get all the opportunities and we have to be the one to do,

like Paul said, some water, some sow God gives the increase.

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We're not always going to be on the increase end of things.

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Sometimes they're gonna be on the water end and the sow end sometimes we might be in the

ground before the seed sprouts out of it.

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And it's okay because it's Jesus' kingdom.

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He can decide to shift things around wherever he wants.

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Absolutely.

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And I think that recognizing that I'm just a laborer, I mean, that's all I am.

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And I'm working under the control and the instruction of the boss.

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And all I have to do is just follow the boss.

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I mean, if he tells me to work somewhere, I go work there.

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Divine appointments are about the fact that God wants to use everybody.

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And uh there are people that he's going to bring into your life that he's not going to

bring into anybody else's life.

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And that's why it's important for everybody to see themselves as a laborer, because God,

God brings people into my life that my pastor is never going to meet.

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And I have to be ready.

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Yeah, I think that's an area where I really struggle if I'm being honest.

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As much as I know to trust God, as much as I talk about this stuff as a Christian, there

is still a struggle somewhere because we so zealously want to see that person come to

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Jesus.

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There is a struggle, there is a patience that comes with divine appointments, like any

appointment in life.

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Sometimes you're sitting in the waiting room

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and you're like, I just wanna make this happen, you know?

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And that's when we mess stuff up, because we push, we go faster than God, you know?

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how have you, how do you help people understand what is biblical pace in these kind of

divine appointments?

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How do you know when to go, stop, reverse, you know, all those kind of things?

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Yeah, I, I don't like this thought as trusting my gut.

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It is trusting the Holy Spirit, but he lives inside of me and he prompts me.

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And I just think you have to walk with God and listen for that prompting and then and then

be willing to follow prompting.

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I think that the question

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ah Is this the right time is really an unwise question.

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I think that what we need to be asking is, is God opening this door?

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And the best way to see if God's opening the door is just to jiggle the doorknob, you

know, and, and if if the door is open, you walk in it, if a door is not open, you you make

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plans to come back and, and visit that opportunity again in another timeframe.

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What's cool about that, Jeff, is this just happened this morning for me.

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This young person came and sat down in our living room.

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I got my GPS out, if you guys don't know what that is, it stands for Gospel Presentation

System.

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And this was a counseling situation.

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And let me tell you, by the way, if you think the gospel is so helpful to...

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every area of ministry.

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I mean, it is the foundation of every area of ministry.

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So I just started pre-marital counseling two weeks ago with a couple in Colorado, and I

start with the gospel.

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And even in counseling situations, other kind of counseling situations, the first time

I'll sit down, I'll listen to them, but then the first session, the first like, you know,

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actual session where I'm giving truth, it's the gospel because I mean, it's the foundation

of how you see everything.

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Well,

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I sat down, went through the whole GPS.

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At the end of it, I said, are you ready to trust Jesus alone?

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And she said, that is, I am really scared to do that.

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And I said, okay.

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And then boom, like providentially a thought, God put a thought in my mind, which is now

you need to show her from the Bible how to trust God.

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And I think sometimes what happens is we set ourselves up for failure in these divine

appointments because we think here's the expectation.

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This is what will happen the first time.

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And it's like we should stay away from those.

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We should just say, like you said, let's jiggle that doorknob and see what happens.

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yeah.

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And I think that we can expect the Holy Spirit to help us.

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And I mean, that's why he's here.

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He's the helper.

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And he not only helps me to be able to explain it well enough to where someone can get it,

he not only helps me to kind of have those gut instincts, and I don't really think it's

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good.

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I think it's him.

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um But

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but he also helps them.

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I mean, the Bible says he's in the world convicting them of sin and righteousness and

judgment.

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And so we can just depend on the Holy Spirit and literally, not just I'm trying to depend

on him, but just kind of most relax and believe that he's doing this.

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He's helping me he's helping them.

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You know what I love too is we've said this way in the past if you go back to the first 10

episodes More time more truth more time more truth If you have more time more truth as

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tools in your approach in your philosophy of evangelism Then divine appointments become

really pleasant for you Because you know that the appointment itself is not the end-all

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be-all um

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absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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And in fact, if we miss a divine appointment, that doesn't mean we can't go back to that

person and revisit the opportunity.

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Yep.

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Well, we covered one out of nine.

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So I'm dying for the audience's sake to know what the other eight are.

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Because I don't think we want this to be a nine-part series on Define Appointments, but

this is such good stuff.

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Yeah, it's it's kind of one of my favorite subjects.

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Because this is all about him and what he's doing.

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And I think that's one of the things we have to remember about evangelism.

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This is not me drumming up business.

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This is this is the Lord of the harvest, literally growing his crop, and doing his work.

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And we just get the privilege of being a laborer and joining him in his work.

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so much.

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Do we want to try to cover the other eight scenarios on divine appointments?

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I know there are some other evidences that I mean I've talked through this actually one

time and it's phenomenal.

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It's just a great way to spot something but and like you said there's probably lots of

other examples.

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Well, the reason that I felt like this would probably take us a while is because there are

so many good stories.

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And I, I actually believe stories are quite instructive.

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In other words, they're not just they're not just a motivate.

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They are they are sit there so that that was how he knew that was a divine appointment

because of the story.

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And so I don't have a go ahead.

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we want to make an executive decision right now to just, let's make this a couple more

episodes?

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I I love the stories.

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I I hear a story like that, my heart is lifted as a pastor because sometimes I'm

discouraged, you know, and it's like, that didn't go the way I thought, you know, and so

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it's really helpful to sit down and listen to these.

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Yeah, I think that'd be great.

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Next time, maybe we'll just kind of reiterate what we've talked about in terms of what a

divine appointment is, and then just go straight into you know, you're, in a divine

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appointment when maybe just focus on some stories next time.

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I that, I love that.

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Well, if you guys get anything out of this and you're wondering what is the next action

item, it's like Jeff said, pray.

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And when I end the episode, I'll be kind of encouraging you guys to pray a certain way,

but before I do that, let me just tell you about two things that are really important.

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Number one, this podcast, The Exchange Ministry, is not funded by the sales of books.

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We sell those books to pay the overhead of the books, pay the cost of shipping.

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those kind of things, the cost of storing, all those, the cost of printing and editing and

all the things that go into having all the technologies and media available on different

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platforms that we have.

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The primary way that we're funded as an exchange, what we're so thankful for is for our

donors.

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We have incredible donors, so generous.

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They make the exchange possible.

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The budget would be impossible.

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The whole ministry would be impossible if God did not give us the donors we have.

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And if you're wondering,

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Oh, do I got to be a billionaire to be an exchange donor?

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No.

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Most of our donors are very much normal Americans, financially speaking.

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And if you can think about it like this, a $10 donation, a $10 a month recurring donation

goes a long way.

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A lot of those.

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that's kind of what we see in terms of what is really, really critical to our ministry is

somebody like that faithfully and generously making

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this podcast making the whole ministry possible for $10 a month, that is so crucial to us.

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And we say that not because we're wanting money for money's sake, but we wanna make this

thing go even wider, help more churches, help more Christians all around the world.

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That money goes to fund when we help people internationally.

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Internationally, we give away the material for free.

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The reason we can do that is because donations like that one.

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And for those of you that are our donors, we thank you so much.

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your incredible, your generosity, it makes this ministry possible.

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And we're very excited about the things coming up.

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We're constantly working every week to go further and do more and expand what we can do

for Jesus Christ.

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The second thing I wanna talk about is if you're listening and you feel like you could

really use Jeff in your church, that a seminar, an in-person seminar, because let me tell

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you, me sitting across from Jeff having a conversation like this does a lot more for me in

some regards

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than it does just reading something Jeff writes because there's just something about being

in front of somebody and them encouraging you and you seeing this is real, like this

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happened.

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And so if a seminar like that interests you or you feel your church needs that kind of

boost and reorientation towards evangelism, please email us at george@exchangemessage.org

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and I'd love to help you guys set up a time to go on a call with Jeff and figure out how

we can help your church.

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With that, I'm gonna admonish you.

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Next step, pray to the Lord of the harvest that He would send forth laborers, that He

would open our eyes to the open doors, that He would give us open doors, and that He would

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give us the courage to walk through them and start jiggling doorknobs.

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We love you guys, and we will see you next week.