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

become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.

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My name is George Benoka and I'm uh one of your hosts and the other one is Jeff Musgrave,

the founder, author of The Exchange.

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And it is such a privilege to be able to do this every week, talk with you guys and just

give you some thoughts about what we're thinking about evangelism.

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We're both involved in ministry, both involved in the local church.

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both belong to two different local churches, Jeff in Denver, me here in the Phoenix area.

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And um so we see these principles played out in ministry and it is so important not just

to talk in theory, but to actually speak from the Bible about the things that work and

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don't work, the approach that is biblical and not biblical on the ground in a local

church, reaching people with the gospel.

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So the episode today, episode number 74, is about words and um maybe...

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when we should use them and how we should use them and how much we should use them versus

action.

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And Aquinas has a quote that stuck out to me in one of Jeff's seminars when I was

listening to him speak that I just couldn't, I couldn't shake, which is, preach Christ,

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use words when only necessary, which doesn't seem like they go together.

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So Jeff, you wanna explain a little bit where you got this quote and what it means.

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well, a phrase that you wrote on our notes here that I just think sums this up perfectly

is that the gospel should be visible long before it's verbal.

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And I, I love that thought.

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Um, the phrase that I have always used to try to carry that in my own brain is that it's

only when we know Christ intimately that we can show him effectively and then speak his

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gospel boldly into people's lives.

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And so I love that thought, no show and tell, and helping me that you know, the priority

of my life is to know him.

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The purpose of my life here on earth is to show him to demonstrate him.

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And then as people are impacted by Christ in me, I have the privilege to be able to tell

them

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where that comes from and who he is.

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that's effective ministry.

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That is the ministry God's called us to.

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And it sounds a lot like lifestyle evangelism, and I'm sure you've gotten that.

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How have you answered that question?

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Well, for one thing, I never use the word lifestyle evangelism to describe what we do.

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And just to clarify, having said that, if a person meant by lifestyle evangelism that my

lifestyle is that I am being evangelistic, uh, man, I'm, I'm all over that.

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But, what many people mean by lifestyle evangelism is I'm going to live a lifestyle.

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And if someone says something to me, ask me a question,

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then I'll speak into their lives.

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And really what we're saying is I love this.

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That is that, we, we want the life of Christ to be seen so that when we speak about Jesus,

when we tell people about Jesus, it's not foreign.

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It's, it's a natural flow out of what they've seen us living.

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And so it's the lifestyle is

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critical, but it is not enough.

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The words are critical.

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The words are necessary that the life is lived so that it sets the table for the words

that are going to come.

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That's right.

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Right.

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And when your words, when all you use is words, but your words are very divorced from how

you live, then I think your words just fall on deaf ears.

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Yeah, and I think that it's very possible to to genuinely live Christ.

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But if a person never gets a chance to see that if they don't know you, it's gonna be much

more difficult for them to be impacted by your words.

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And so living that life with people while we speak, Anna and I spent the morning in the

doctor's office and uh

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we had a nurse oh teaching me how to, how to do an infusion through a pick line.

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And so we spent a good bit of time with her and uh the, the, she was expecting.

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And so we immediately began to ask, is this your first?

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And find out she has two boys at home.

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So we started talking about uh raising this, the next one's going to be a little girl,

raising a little girl in the midst of little boys.

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And uh

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connecting with her relationally that's that's the first step toward being able to

recognize these people are real people who love me who see me and I want to listen to what

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they have to say.

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Does that make sense?

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mean, you connect with a person showing them Jesus so that we can speak him into their

lives.

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Yeah, I think, you know, it's um maybe laughed at a lot, but the phrase, what would Jesus

do?

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In that situation, the way you guys took interest in this nurse and where you could have

made it all about you and the trial you're going through in the moment, you actually made

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it all about somebody else and took interest and took it as an opportunity, knew the Lord

had put you there sovereignly and providentially.

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That's exactly how Jesus would have approached that situation.

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And so I love it.

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You're showing somebody.

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And what good does it do to have all this treasure inside but never show it?

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Yeah, I love the word treasure.

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It is so beautiful to think about the fact that I have Christ in me, the hope of glory,

and that I get to share that treasure with other people.

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But but people ought to be able to see that treasure.

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I mean, if it's it's not just that I tell them about it, they should be able to observe it

in my life.

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You were the one who kind of wrote out the specs of this particular

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episode.

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And I love this angle that you wrote, this is what we're trying to accomplish.

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We want the two of us to wrestle with the tension between living the gospel and

proclaiming the gospel.

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And my answer to that is we live the gospel so that we can proclaim the gospel.

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I mean, that's not that's not all of it.

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We live the gospel because we love Jesus.

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But, but the

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The life is what gives me the platform to be able to speak and proclaim.

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That's right.

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Yes, I think that God has given us, all of us, a platform.

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And the real question is, you know, do we take the opportunities that he gives us or do we

squander them?

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um I think we just wrote an email that went out yesterday and from last week's episode.

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And it's the real question.

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mean, wouldn't it just be a shame to go through 2026 and never use that platform?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I was just talking to a preacher about helping him connect his people to the people that

live around them.

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And I urge every single pastor to train his leaders.

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I don't want a year to go by without

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sitting down with someone and studying through, of course, we use the exchange Bible

study, the gospel with with an unbeliever.

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How in the world can I genuinely say I am zealous and burdened for souls and go a whole

year without ever really sitting down with an unbeliever and going through the gospel with

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Yes.

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Yeah, I think you're exactly right.

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You know, a lot of churches call it everybody win one, you know, one by one, that kind of

thing.

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And it's true.

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mean, why couldn't that happen?

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What biblical reason would we have to think that's unreasonable that every year you are

introducing one unbeliever to Jesus Christ?

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and God, and I mean, you're have to introduce multiple unbelievers to Jesus Christ to see

one, right?

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Come and actually accept him because, you know, unless the father draws them, they won't

come.

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But, you know, it's not of us to decide who is gonna accept who's not.

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Paul says, I'm all things to all men that have all means when some.

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And so, um as long as we're doing that, you know, the fine five, that kind of concept.

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Jesus is going to use that to draw somebody to Christ.

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think that I think that the key is not our in this conversation, not just our

effectiveness.

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And by that, I mean, seeing people actually trust Christ.

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I think the real effectiveness is am I living Christ in the world and then speaking him

into the

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And I guess that calls into question.

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So when do you have to use words?

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Why can't you avoid it?

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Yeah, I, I think, um if I, the passage that kind of jumps to me, when we talk about living

the gospel is that, when Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said, let your light, uh, shine

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before others so that they may be able to see your good works and give glory to your

father, which is in heaven.

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And I'm thinking to myself, there's the two pieces right there.

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Number one, we're living in such a way that people see God, the light of Jesus is shining

through our lives, and they see God.

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But number two, how did they know it was the Father who is in heaven, that is shining

through our lives that's making us this way unless they spoke it.

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So that that give glory to the Father.

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in my mind, you asked the question, you know, when do we have to speak?

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And that is that when, when someone uh is connecting with us, uh we're just going to speak

him in a normal daily life that we live.

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We're going to talk about the Lord, not to keep talking about myself, but Anna spent

several days in the hospital this week and we, we,

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got a chance to deal with a whole lot of people.

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And I guarantee you everyone that came in our room knew that she was a believer.

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It's amazing to me to watch people attracted to that.

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had two different CNAs.

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These are the, the, the nurse practitioners or that not to practitioner, the one that

helps the nurses and uh two different ones before Anna was released from the doc.

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the hospital wanted to come over and sit down and just chat with her a little bit before

she goes.

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And that she she was demonstrating Jesus just by the way she connected with people.

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And they knew it was the Lord, she would tell them, you know, the Lord bless you will be

praying with you about that.

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Encouraging people to find the church that's preaching the Word of God.

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It's amazing to me how easy it is to be talking about Jesus.

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when the life is clearly connecting with people because you love them and you love Jesus.

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Yeah, one of the things that our friend Lisa Reddick taught me was when you when when you

pray and you tell an unbeliever or somebody that doesn't know Jesus That you're gonna pray

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for them.

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Make sure they know that you're praying in Jesus's name ah because

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when God answers that prayer, however he answers it, they'll know Jesus worked.

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And if it comes out in their favor, then you can say, hey, hey, just remember one thing,

prayed in Jesus' name.

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And I love that because it comes back to this, you know, it's not just saying with words,

it's a demonstration of I'm living on what I believe.

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That's real faith.

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Yeah.

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If it's okay with you, I'd, I'd love to just walk through a passage that has, that helped

me as I wrestle with this.

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Um, second Corinthians chapter four.

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Um, I think, uh, this is one of my favorite passages and I don't necessarily mean just

chapter four, um, between chapter two and verse 14 and chapter seven and about verse three

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or four.

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Paul here is just literally opening up his heart.

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It's a this is kind of a parenthesis in the book of of 2nd Corinthians and he's showing it

how I'm living Christ in the world and in verse chapter 2 or assuming chapter 4, excuse me

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he begins uh pointing back to chapter 3 so chapter 3 verse 18 all of us are familiar with

this passage

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And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into

the same image from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the

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Spirit and he's just simply talking about the the ministry of Gazing at him.

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That's that knowing him with my life and Paul starts chapter 4 of

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2 Corinthians with therefore having this ministry, meaning I'm spending my life.

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This is ministry gazing at him and letting him change me.

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He says as a result of that, we don't lose heart.

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It's the even in difficult circumstances, we're, we're going to be encouraged.

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We're going to be joyful in the way we connect with people.

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And then the very next verse he begins to help us to recognize

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the importance of showing that to the world around us.

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And he says in verses three and four, and even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to

those who are perishing in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of

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unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

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I think it's important for us to recognize that living life

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so that people see Jesus is critical.

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But because the evil one is so uh

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active in helping people stay blind.

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That that that isn't enough.

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It is necessary, but it's not enough.

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The next words say, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.

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And you were just talking about the fact that we always make sure that we let people know

this is Jesus that speaking and doing the work.

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It's

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we have to proclaim it.

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It's part of the speech that we are.

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I love that phrase that we often use.

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It's a phrase that I learned from a friend of mine named Mitch.

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He said, we need to learn to live uh wearing our Christianity comfortably on our shirt

sleeve so that people see him in our lives.

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But at the same time, we are constantly and consistently speaking him into our lives,

talking about who the Lord is.

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Yeah, yeah, you know, in theology books, they talk about general revelation and specific

revelation.

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The Bible says you can look at the night sky and know there's a God, but you couldn't look

at the night sky and know the gospel.

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And so words are very, very important.

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You can't know that you can't know the gospel.

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Paul says, how will you how will they know without a preacher?

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Yeah, yeah.

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The speaking to him or of him is is critical.

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Faith comes by hearing it's in the same passage you were just quoting.

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It's it's it's the word of God that does the work in people's hearts.

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The gospel itself is what creates faith in people's lives.

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Romans chapter six or one in verse 16.

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The gospel is the spoken truth.

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of the good news of Jesus Christ.

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And uh you had mentioned earlier, that unless God does the work, it's not going to happen.

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This is in the passage as well.

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So verse five says we proclaim not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and we are his uh

servants.

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And then in verse six, he says, for God has said, let light shine out of the darkness, and

he has shown

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in our lives to give the light of the gospel, the glorious gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ

in the face of Jesus Christ.

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So he's the one who has to actually reveal it to people.

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We speak it, he reveals it.

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uh But but he uses our words to communicate into the hearts of our friends.

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That's just the way he does that work.

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You know what's interesting is the way people think about, I'm sorry to use the word

again, the way people think about lifestyle evangelism of you don't say anything unless

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they ask.

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Well, the Corinthians would have been living in a place where they're, if they were living

like Jesus wanted them to live, they would have really stood out because Corinth was such

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a dark place.

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There was a Parthenon there to Aphrodite's.

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had a thousand religious prostitutes that would come down every night and visit the men.

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And you had a society where the nickname of the town to Corinthianize somebody meant

basically to corrupt them thoroughly to a point that even pagans would be ah

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uncomfortable.

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We know there was a young man in the church sleeping with his father's wife.

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um Paul has this list in chapter six of the first book of Corinthians about all these,

this big long list of types of people that are basically

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living contrary to Scripture, says, such were some of you.

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And yet Paul has this chapter in the second book to them of you gotta use the words, you

gotta say something.

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And so it would probably have been a temptation not to use the words in such a dark place.

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But we have to remember is even in the darkest of places, living your lifestyle alone

isn't enough for people to know Jesus.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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If you love people, how can you not want to see them rescued?

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Sin is so corrupt and it is so invasive.

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No one is going to be able to escape the, the tentacles of, and the fangs of sin and the

destruction of it apart from a savior.

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When Jesus came to save us, he didn't just come to save us from the penalty of sin.

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He came to save us from the power of sin.

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And how could you see a world walking in darkness and seeing the devastation that it

brings to them without a desire to help them and to speak the truth that's going to set

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them free?

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I'll tell you why sometimes I don't and why I'm often tempted not to is because I'm

selfish and you know, I don't why bother myself?

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um Man, you think I would be more selfless the more I get to know Christ, right?

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And I think we do, God does work does do a work in us to become selfless, but we got to

share this.

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got to share this.

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Right?

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Yeah.

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I think, I think all of us go in and out of selfishness.

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um The greatest um weapon against selfishness is service.

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As we give ourselves to other people, selfishness goes away because number one, we all

enjoy serving.

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God made us that way.

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Jesus came to seek and to save.

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He came to serve.

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came to be a servant.

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um The fact is that

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we enjoy it.

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God made us that way.

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But secondly, we kind of lose ourselves in what we're accomplishing, what we're doing.

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And when we get done with the day, it's like, wow, that was a great day.

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And I don't know about you, but if I spend a day on myself, selfishly, I always end up at

the end of the day with like, wow, I know I got to do better.

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Well, and if the day is about what we want to get done and not about what God puts in

front of us, we can really have a bad attitude.

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There are days my wife has a chronic illness and there are days she has a bad day.

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And I learned something just a couple months ago actually, it dawned on me.

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You know, every time she has a bad day and then Satan gets me by myself and I start

feeling bad for myself, you know what I should do?

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Is call somebody that needs a phone call, needs to be encouraged and say, hey, how you

doing?

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Think about somebody else.

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But that's what happens.

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He pins us down in self-pity and then he kind of wants us to get stuck there.

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And the gospel, I mean, the gospel pulls us out of all that stuff when we share the gospel

with people because it's like, you know what?

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My life is so much bigger than this one bad moment, this one bad day.

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our lives are impacting eternity.

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I think one of the things that hits me often in seminars is people will say to me, well,

you know, people just won't listen.

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They just don't care.

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They did that.

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And, and I think what they're asking is how, do I actually do this?

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And if we're constantly thinking on a human plane in which, you know, what do I say to

convince someone?

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I, I really think we might as well give up.

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It's not going to happen.

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Mmm.

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So when we're when Aquinas was saying, when necessary, speak words, what he was saying is,

I know God well enough to know that if you're a genuine believer, you have this treasure

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in your life.

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And as you live your life around people, you're going to be able to serve them, you're

going to be able to give your life to them.

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And

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uh verse uh seven of chapter uh four.

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That's that classic.

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uh We have this treasure in uh jars of clay.

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What a great phrase that is in clay vessels.

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And the reason God gave us these, these bodies that are frail, you and I both deal with

that a good bit.

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The fact is that he wants us to remember that the

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power belongs to God, not to us.

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uh The verse 10 summarizes what that actually looks like.

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He says, always carrying in the body, the death of the Lord Jesus.

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So we, we have these difficulties, we have these dying to self moments that we have to

live all the time.

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And then he goes on and he says, so that the life of the Lord Jesus may be manifest in our

bodies.

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And

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just like Jesus Christ manifested the Father to the world in his, when he lived his

earthly life.

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That's the word he used.

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I'm going to, I'm going to show you the Father.

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I'm going to, I'm going to manifest him to you.

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That's the same word he uses that we are to be manifesting Jesus.

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It's a supernatural thing.

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You and I don't have the ability to rescue anybody.

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but Jesus does.

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And if we will live our lives dead to ourselves, like you were talking about, not, not

pity party, but serving then, then Jesus is going to be manifested.

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And, um, verse 15 or 13 says, uh, um, I love this since we have the same spirit of faith

according as it has been written.

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So he's quoting from an old Testament Psalm.

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I believe

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And so I spoke.

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And I just think to myself, if we're in a world that is hurting and dying, and we have

this treasure, and we have the capacity to literally live the life of Christ in front of

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them, how if we really believe that, how can we be silent?

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How can we not speak Jesus into their lives?

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You know, um

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I think that...

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One of the things that um is the reason that our world sometimes is as dark as it is, is

because we won't share this.

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And sometimes we kind of look for solutions to the problems around us in government or

policy or this person or that person or this program or that program.

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And that's really not the base solution.

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any of these things.

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It's not the root problem.

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uh know, the real problem and it may sound cliche, but man, it's true.

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People need to know Jesus.

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uh Man, our world would be different if we did this.

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Well, it's interesting that this the the title in my Bible for this passage is the light

of the gospel.

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And you were just talking about the darkness in the world around us.

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Of course, the real answer is Jesus.

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I mean, that's it.

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The question is not.

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Is he the answer?

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The question is, how do we get the answer to them?

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uh You know, we wanted in this episode to kind of wrestle with the tension between

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knowing that it's necessary to live a certain way, but recognizing that wordless

Christianity is not going to be helpful.

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We want to wrestle between that tension.

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And I don't know how many seminars I've been in, in which I hear people say, I just live

my life in front of people.

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And when they ask, da da da da da.

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And I think to myself, yeah,

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um Even you can talk about God, you can talk about church, but it's not until you start

helping them see what Jesus can do for their lives that you're actually going to make an

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impact.

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I heard one story about a uh man who had been living this kind of life in his office and

his friend called him.

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said, I just want you to know I've, uh, I've

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gotten back into church and I it you know, part of what made me want to do it is your

influence in my life.

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And he was just super excited.

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Come find out he was actually talking about the Mormon Church.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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It's not enough to be good to be friendly to be kind.

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We have to speak.

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Yep.

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Yeah, I agree.

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That's that truth and love combination.

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And here's the thing with the people who say, and when they ask a question, um you're

assuming they already haven't asked a question in their head, you know, and so you should,

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I think we should assume that as soon as people meet us, they're asking questions, because

we all ask questions about each other when we first meet.

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So I think the questions have already been asked.

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You just, they haven't told you.

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um So you,

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You know, we ought to assume that it's ready.

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that's what I love about you.

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I was talking to Joel, our friend, one of our exchange trainers.

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uh And uh Joel was telling me that the way he asked the hundred the, uh how would you

describe your relationship with God question is a hill, he'll just say to them, you know,

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in a, in a scale from one to 10, you know, where would you, where would you put your

relationship with God, and it just is so natural to him just so

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uh easy for him to bring that up in conversation because he knows that's what people are

that's what people are looking for.

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They want to know God.

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were most the average person out there wants some kind of uh spiritual life that's going

to be satisfying to them.

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They just don't recognize always that it's God that they're looking for.

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And the Bible says that much about people.

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So we have inside info.

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We know how they're taken on the inside.

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God made them and He says this is how they work.

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They've already asked the question.

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You know?

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Yeah, that's kind of, um that's what it is.

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we have inside information.

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God's given us a picture into their heart and we just have to remember it when we're

talking to them.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And I put this here, just the takeaway that I'd love for our listeners.

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yeah.

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Go ahead.

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Go ahead.

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I do want to recognize that, you, it's some, you asked the question, you know, why

actions, uh, authenticate the message, but words explain it.

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And I just have observed George that in our seminars, sometimes the most zealous gospel

givers

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talk so much, they don't ever listen to people.

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And they haven't, they haven't learned the gift of seeing people and listening to people

and learning of those needs so that they can speak Christ into that life.

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And so I think the balance here is critical.

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It's not enough to um just live it.

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But frankly, friends,

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I'm not saying it's not enough to speak it because the gospel is powerful.

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But when you combined the gospel message with a gospel life, that is the power.

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And I can almost guarantee you everyone is listening to us this right now.

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Here it is in January of 2026.

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If, if you will live that gospel life,

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and speak the gospel into people's lives asking and looking for someone to do a gospel

Bible study with that you're going to get a chance to lead someone to Christ this year.

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That would be my prayer is Lord, not just give me someone to do a Bible study with, but

Lord, would you give me someone this year that I could lead to Christ and begin to

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disciple them for Jesus?

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Yep.

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Yep.

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I think that's that's exactly it.

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think that's a great call to action.

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um You know.

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want to take away your listener takeaway, so go ahead.

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Well, um it's just, guess, maybe a summary of all this is faith that never speaks isn't

faithful.

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You know, it's not.

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That's not a way to be faithful to your fellow humans that God has called you to reach.

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But faith that speaks without love isn't either.

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And so there is this both and, and last week's episode about kindness and this week's

episode about words put together.

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That's an incredibly powerful formula.

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That God, that's how he tells us to do it.

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That's how he tells us.

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The problem with being

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With it just being about your distinctions is the same problem that people in Corinthians

had in the Church of Corinth had with saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Peter,

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I'm of Jesus.

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those were the really spiritual ones, the I'm of Jesus crowd.

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um But the problem is none of the names, the proper names in that sentence, the operative

word is I, I, I, I, I.

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And we have to remember is it's not, when we witness, it's not about us.

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It's about Jesus.

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It's about Jesus and Jesus is for every man.

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He says, come, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, come, you'll find rest in me.

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And um so we love that about Jesus and we're thankful and we're privileged and that's the

privilege of the gospel.

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Well, we pray for you guys as you're in the harvest and laboring that he would send you

forth and multiply laborers and be praying with us to the Lord of harvest that he would do

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just that.

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

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Thank you.