The following program, Sharing Your Faith, has been pre-recorded. This guy that had prayed to receive power from the Holy Spirit, now he's witness into this guy, this hitchhiker that we pick up. And I'm just listening. And I was really taken back because I was marveling this guy's boldness. It was so hard to put into two words to explain it. You had to have been there, but it was he was bold and yet he didn't come across as obnoxious or it was just so convincing that that I says now that's an answer to the prayer. That is an evidence to me. He is filled with the Spirit, because he's just like those guys in Acts. He was speaking with boldness. Hello and welcome to Sharing Your Faith with Larry Dubois. Larry is an evangelist who has been sharing his faith in Jesus for over 30 years. As a street preacher, he's traveled the entire continental U.S., preaching the gospel in over 200 cities. Taking from his experience and the Word of God, Larry hopes to encourage you in sharing your faith. And now, here's your host, Larry DuBois. Hello everyone and welcome to this program on Evangelism, Sharing Your Faith. I'm Larry, your host. This is episode number 62 in a long time series now, programs that we do. Initially we did them first once a week, then we went to doing one about once a month. We had a lot of reruns here. A few months back we've done some different things and even now we're in the middle of some changes. I'm starting to do a half hour program slots and so this show here will be a half hour long for various reasons. We're trying to experiment with some of those other things as well. Well welcome. This week we are going to look at something that had been perplexing me. And I found the verse as I was doing a Bible study in the book of Acts, and the verse is found in Acts chapter 4, verse 23 there. And we'll read the little portion of the whole context here shortly. Basically, it is the apostles who, after had been arrested, they had been threatened not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. and yet they were compelled. What compelled them? Well, they had been eyewitnesses of the resurrection, that's for sure. They had personally spent three and a half some years there with Jesus in the ministry, and they saw His death. They saw Him after He had risen from the dead. And then, probably more key than all of that, as the day of Pentecost came, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Now, Jesus was the one who told them that, wait in the city of Jerusalem, promise of the Father that you will receive power from on high. endued with power. The Holy Spirit came in a particular way in a new ministry that the Holy Spirit did not have prior to the day of Pentecost, and that was to indwell believers and give them power to be the witnesses. Peter, of course, being sort of a semi-coward there and The others as well, they turned into powerful witnesses. And this is what brings us to Acts 4 when they said, we cannot help but speak the things that we've seen and heard. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, how does that compare to nowadays? Nowadays, we have to have all this coaching and coaxing to the point where we've got gimmicks to try to get the body of Christ mobile out there witnessing collectively than more than just a few people here and there. We are, as evangelists, some more than others, have a ministry to equip the body of believers to do the work of the service of the ministry per Ephesians chapter 4. And in that equipping, we've come to realize that we've got to seem to go beyond, I believe, what God would have us do in the scope of recruiting people. One fellow suggested that When he saw the decline in enthusiasm for evangelism and the people's willingness to go out and witness was that he said we should pay them. Of course he was being facetious but he said look if you paid him a hundred bucks a crack to witness that you could get people out there and that that's sort of a shame isn't it that it would take that to motivate people. to go out and witness for Christ. Somehow there's a breakdown. I don't know all the answers. I do know we need the Holy Spirit. We perhaps are looking at part of the problem being that we're not filled with the Spirit. Maybe we're trusting in other things. Maybe we are trusting in programs or man-made solutions or this sort of thing. And so we don't want to do that. We want to trust in God and the Holy Spirit to give us that boldness. Well, later on in the program, I got a couple of testimonies concerning this subject. We also have for you today, the sharing of the gospel by my good friend, Jerry Benson. And this was down in san diego a few months back during the christmas time when we do a an annual outreach down there called december nights it's where. In balboa park they have literally thousands of people come through there for this two day event and we set up in the perimeters as the one of the main entrances as they come in. And there's other Christians down there, praise the Lord, also in different locations witnessing as well. We set up, and we usually set up with a sign. We had a lidded cross that we displayed last time we preach. Of course, we have brochures to hand out, tracts. We talk to people, that sort of thing. It's a very simple way to go out and share the gospel to the masses, planting a lot of seeds. But I got Jerry on the recorded there. It gives a good gospel presentation. We also have today, besides the testimonies I said I had about our subject about being bold witnesses, I also have a question posed to us. Why do you think we lack the boldness in our witness today? So we're gonna be looking at that later on. And of course, that ties right in with our subject today on the show. So stay tuned, coming up and we'll be right back. Thank you for listening to this, the Sharing Your Faith Radio on First Love Radio. God bless you. Greetings in the name of Him who does all things well. This is Pastor Austin, the Vice President of First Love Ministries, and it is a joy to have you tuning in with us here at First Love Radio. You may not know some of our other ministries, so I would like to take a moment and share the ministry of First Love Missions with you. And yes, that's correct. We have an active and thriving foreign mission work. If you haven't already, please check out our website at missionsfirstlove.org. Again, that address is missionsfirstlove.org where you will find our latest field updates and mission reports in the areas we operate in such as the Philippines, Nigeria, Nepal, Kenya and more. We are following the Lord's Great Commission to take the gospel towards the end of the world. We preach biblically sound messages and host overseas conferences. We conduct missionary radio and do live Q&A and disperse thousands of our quality books booklets and tracts from First Love publications absolutely free to the pastors and churches fighting the good fight of faith with few resources in the third world. If you would like to explore ways how you might get involved, again, please visit our website at missionsfirstlove.org. On behalf of First Love Missions, we would like to thank you for listening to First Love Radio. Stay tuned and God bless. starting on the teaching section. So I just want to go ahead and read our text. We'll be using Acts 4, starting at verse 17. But so that it spreads no further among the people, let us severely threaten them that from now on they speak to no man in this name. So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done." Well, I wanted to focus in on verse 20. I might've said verse 23 earlier, but I meant verse 20. we cannot speak the things which we have seen and heard. We can't help it. It just is very frustrating to look out and see across the scope of, at least here in America, of the churches that would call themselves evangelical, those that name the name of Christ, those that would think that we are to follow the Great Commission. So we now live in a day when we're not necessarily out there actively witnessing. In fact, it's frowned upon. those of us that go out and open-air preach, it has become a criticism. This is somehow a wrong way to do it. It's too archaic, or it's somehow not relevant to the times. People won't accept it because it's too bizarre, whatever it might be, whatever excuses. But we have to look to the Bible, my friends. We have to look to what Scripture says and put our trust in the method that God has ordained to get out the message of the gospel. And it is preaching. Now that doesn't mean you have to be a preacher per se, but it's a verbal, spoken, factual words to communicate the message of the kingdom. We somehow get tongue-tied, we get cowardly, whatever it might be. I think a lot of the times, I know myself, I suffer from intimidation, or I might suffer from just pure laziness. Well, I got too many important things to do here on my own agenda. You know, I got to go to the store and get my groceries and this and that and the other thing, and I don't want to be bothered. to take time out for this poor soul that is on his way to hell, that I might take a moment to share faith in Christ. So we need a attitude adjustment and we need revival. We need a lot of things, but this is some of the things I can see. I think part of our problem really started in the 90s when pragmatism took over in the body of Christ regarding a lot of things. They had the church growth movement, but as it affected evangelism back then, It sort of took a paradigm shift where instead of going out into all the world and preaching the gospel, we would go out into all the world and invite them back to church. Now, I should mention there's nothing wrong with inviting people to church. I think we should do that. But that should not be our primary thrust of evangelism to where we're trying to get them to come back to a church event. I've seen this happen over the years and I've been involved in it as well. They'd put on a Christian concert, so we'd go out to the community, put up posters, talk to people, invite people to come to this. And I found it was not very successful. Not that many people would end up coming to those things. And when you go door-to-door, you go out in the public and you start inviting people to church that way, like I said, and generally, they're not going to come anyway, so you might as well just tell them about Jesus while you got them there in front of you at the time. We're going to have a limited success because Jesus didn't tell us to do that. I mean, if you look at Paul, they didn't go out and invite people back to the church in Antioch. They went out and started churches right there where they're at. They preach the gospel. And I think we've gotten away from that pattern. We can make a difference by going in prayer to God, asking the Lord to fill us and to equip us. And then we go in faith, tell people about the living Savior and salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, coming up, I have a couple of testimonies here that regarding one gentleman being filled with the Spirit is an experience I had out on the streets years ago. I hope you enjoy the testimonies and the rest of the program. Thank you for listening and sharing your faith. We were ministering on the streets, and again, this goes back to the late 1980s in the hometown of Everett, Washington, and we were ministering on the streets. We met this one man a young man, he was actually just passing through, interesting enough. He had just come from the rescue mission. He didn't have anywhere to stay. They've got him a bus ticket somehow to go back to his hometown. And he was in the process of turning his life back over to the Lord. He had believed in the Lord. He had had some struggles, but he was now in the full commitment of the Lord. And he just asked for prayer. And really he wasn't asking He wanted God's Spirit to endow him in a more powerful way, basically to help him get victory over his sinful tendencies. That was his request. He had no idea of anything other than that. That was his motivation. Wanting the Spirit was he knew that he needed the Spirit's power to give him victory. And so we just prayed a simple prayer with him that God would give him, as he requested, the Holy Spirit, receive the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, His power. We left it at that, and it turned out he went out to coffee with us. I ended up taking him to the house because he was leaving the next day, and I ended up giving him a ride to the bus station. But anyway, so here we are on my way home with him, and we'd prayed this prayer several hours before. And we pick up a hitchhiker, and now this guy that had prayed to receive power from the Holy Spirit, now he's witness into this guy, this hitchhiker that we pick up. And I'm just listening. And I was really taken back because I was marveling this guy's boldness. It was so hard to put into words to explain it. You had to have been there, but he was bold and yet he didn't come across as obnoxious. It was just so convincing that I said, now that's an answer to the prayer. That is an evidence to me. he is filled with the Spirit, because he's just like those guys in Acts. He was speaking with boldness and the things of God and shared the gospel with the guy. It was just wonderful to and we get home and I asked him about it and I said you know and he goes yeah I don't know what happened come over me so to speak type thing and we discussed it we prayed some more and I saw him on his way the next morning but that's one example as we use that term anointing it's just a special endowment of where God is really, you're under the control of the Spirit, and He's just speaking through you. Oh, it was an awesome thing, but that's what we need today. I remember, again, during the same timeframe, I call it organically grown. It was nothing that we orchestrated. There's a lot of ministries that are orchestrated, and I'm not saying that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. I'm saying, why do we need to do that? What happened was it started off with me and a guy just wanting to go out and witness on the streets. And i never gone before he had little experience but i said well look you had more experience you take me out there you know he was a friend of mine i could speak frankly to him we joked around about it but we went out there and it just started the same people her testimonies. It kind of caught like wildfire. And there was an excitement in the air about that. And so on Friday nights, pretty soon we'd meet at the church first, we'd pray, and then we'd go out and then we'd have a little time afterwards to share about what happened, go out for coffee or something. And over the next several weeks, more and more people wanted to join us. And next thing you know, we got about 10 or 12 people showing up there on Friday night. to go out. So then that's when we started, and some of them were gals, we had to mix in the groups that were suitable for everybody. So we went out and we did that. Well, we caught flack from the pastor came and said something because the other ministries in the church were complaining that the one visitation ministry where I went out on that ministry myself, where we get names from people that visited the church, and then we'd go and call on them. And the guy that led that ministry up was always having great difficulty getting people to go on that ministry. And the people to visit were getting behind, we couldn't see them all because we didn't have the manpower. so on and so forth. So he was upset that here we're starting this other ministry and all of us, there's 10 or 12 of us, and yet no one's coming to his ministry. Well, first of all, we didn't start anything. God started it. Well, the pastor came to me because I was a perceived leader of it, but there was really no leader. We just sort of showed up, like I said, on a Friday night, prayed, then we went out. It wasn't rocket science. It wasn't But it did get a lot of flack from in-house. I think it was organic. I think it was led by the Spirit. But since then, my friends, it's been hard going. You have to sell a ministry in the church. It seems like there's politics involved. You have to recruit in all these man-made terms, and it shouldn't have to be necessary, I'm thinking. Anyway, moving on. We'll be back with some more after this. Thank you for joining us today, sharing your faith. Coming up next, we have Jerry Benson, a good friend of mine, sharing the gospel. And I recorded this back in December of this last Christmas time where we were doing an outreach to December Nights down there. There's going to be a little bit of background noise, as there always is, and a live recording of gospel preaching on the street. You'll hear some whistles. I think it's the cops directing traffic. We had a prime location there as thousands of people came into this event over a two-day weekend. And we were there with gospel sign across that lit up that said, Are you ready? And of course, we took turns preaching and we had tracks and conversations about the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a great time. But I want you to take careful listen to this gospel presentation, because one of the things I noticed with Jerry very gentle man he didn't come across as condemning and yet I was very excited to Listen to this as he presented the gospel Not like we're victims, but that we are rebels against God that we have offended a holy God and we live in a day and age when that aspect of the gospel has been neglected in many arenas. We have this gospel that focuses on the fact that God loves you, He has a wonderful plan for your life, and it's sort of trying to appeal to man's need of life in this world, and a lot of things like that, when in actuality We need a reconciliation before God. And I think Jerry does a great job in presenting this. And of course, this is just part of his message. His full message was too long to put on this show, but take careful listen. Coming up, let's take a listen now. The Bible says there is none righteous, not even one. None seek God. That's what the scripture teaches. None are good. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It's an incredible indictment against the entire human race and we don't like it. So we just should not think about it. Or perhaps we just created God in our image that God is love and so he could never punish me because he's nothing but love. And we lose sight of the fact that not only God is holy, but he must and he will punish sin. But I'm a sinner. My dear, a sinner. We deserve the wrath of God. It's a serious offense against the Holy God. We've committed treason against God, you and I. We're rebels. We deserve the wrath of God. And if God doesn't punish me, he's not a just God. So what do we do about this terrible situation that we're in? Of course you should be sorry, but it's not enough. There's a penalty that's due you, it's due me. I've offended God, you know within your conscience. If we went through the commandments, you'd break them all as well as I. And we stand before a holy God guilty. So what is the solution? I'm in this terrible hopeless situation. I'm troubled over it. I want to be right before God. I'm broken about my sins. and I cry out to God, is there a way? Is there a way where I can be right before a holy God and yet a sinner? Both? Is it possible? Ladies and gentlemen, all we have to do is look at the Word of God. This loving, gracious God, who is holy and will punish sin and will cast people to hell, has provided one way. God has provided one way. And it's going to come at a great price. An incredible price. It will take the suffering and the wrath of Almighty God on the Son of God. God's wrath on God. God absorbing and taking the wrath that his people deserve, and I said his people, but Jesus Christ died for the sins of his people the one way. And it's going to take someone of infinite value and infinite worth, not just a great prophet or a great teacher or an enlightened one. It's going to take the second person of the triune God to become a man. The eternal God, the Son, became a man who claimed to be the Son of God. The claim to be able to give life. Who would raise the dead? A man had been dead four days. He would raise him from the dead. No one's ever done that. He would give sight to the blind. A man had been blind 40 years. And he gave him sight. Another man was born blind, and he gave him sight. He would heal all types of infirmities. It even confuses disciples. What kind of man is this that can speak to the weather and the weather would obey him? Ladies and gentlemen, only God. Only eternal God could speak to the weather and it would obey him. He would cast out demons. He would heal the sick. He would feed thousands. This was God in the flesh, the very plan of God. He would live a holy, moral, righteous, and pure life. Be born of a virgin. And no one convicted of sin. He would claim to be God in the flesh. He would claim to be equal with the Father. The second person of the Triune God became man. And this is who it would be that would hang on a cross. Can you imagine God Himself hanging on the cross? The Bible says this Jesus is the one that spoke the universe into existence, becoming a man on a cross. What kind of God is that? What kind of God would be that? What kind of God would display his very nature and character on a cross? And the Bible says he would become sin for me, a curse for me, for his people. A substitute is the heart of the gospel, the cross. But the gospel is based on a person named Jesus. And Jesus took that wrath for his people. A curse for me. the wrath of God was poured out on Jesus. So we see the majesty of God on the cross that can only be displayed through the shedding of blood and the suffering of the Son of God. And this message is the heart of the gospel. But ladies and gentlemen, as he said, you're going to destroy this temple, this body in three days, I will raise it up. What kind of man had the power to predict his death and to say he had the power within himself to rise from the dead? And the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit were all involved, the triune God, in the resurrection of Jesus, and he's alive today. He lives today. It radically changed all the disciples and apostles of Jesus. Well, my friends, we have one last portion of our show today, and that is our question. And the question is, what hinders us in being a bold witness for Christ? This is a good time to ask this since our theme has been discussing this. So first and foremost, I would answer this in general. As we have been discussing, it is a lack of the Holy Spirit. the element of the Holy Spirit empowering us to be a witness? Probably the most obvious answer. After that, oh, I should mention here that be careful that we don't try to compensate for the lack of the Holy Spirit and witness in the flesh. And what do I mean by that? Well, a lot of times we know we should be a witness and we can be driven by guilt. And what happens is we're doing our witnessing out of compulsion. I've done this and It's hard to recognize, but you do know when you're doing it yourself. It's hard to try to teach on this. The idea is that in compulsion, it comes across very awkward. Your audience will sense something's out of whack when you do this. What happens is it's kind of an inappropriate time or juncture or something. You'll just sort of blurt something out, and even though it might be truth, Even though God could use that, we need to go back and pray up and ask the Holy Spirit to do that. After that, I say specifically would be the other thing that prevents us from being a bold witness is fear. The Bible addresses this in several places. Jesus addresses it. Paul addressed it. In fact, I've done a sharing moment on this topic called Overcoming Fear in Evangelism. and that is played during the airtime here in First Love. It's a two-minute section on a little tidbit of how to witness and things pertaining to witnessing, but I did that because fear is such a great obstacle. Another thing after that I would say is being ashamed of the Lord. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with fear of being ashamed of the Lord, and this is, of course, something that is very difficult to look at in ourselves because it's something that we think, why would I be ashamed of the Lord? Well, this also is addressed in the scripture. Specifically, Paul tells Timothy, God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, his prisoner. Timothy had a fear problem, or timidity. Some versions say a spirit of timidity. He was shy. He was timid. It also mentions that in other portions of the scripture, as you get kind of a do a personal profile on Timothy, is that he was a timid guy. And so that was the exhortation to him is, hey, don't be ashamed of the Lord. And that's how I was for several years, too, in my witness. And the Lord delivered me, gave me victory over that. Then after that, finally, I would say the last thing is if you're living in a sinful lifestyle, besetting sin that is keeping you from sharing, I think this is, of course, a good safeguard by the Holy Spirit because You know, there's a reason why you don't feel compelled to be a bold witness if you're living in sin. Your conscience being defiled, put on the bench, as it were. Of course, the thing would be to repent, get right with God, and then think about witnessing. Generally speaking, this is something that people living in sin, that's the farthest thing from their mind is witnessing for Christ. But we can get into that and we don't want to be a hypocrite. We don't want to be, I've seen it happen, where for whatever reason people don't understand that that's part of the witness is our lifestyle. And if we're living in sin and we're witnessing and the people are witnessing to find out, then it just really spoils that witness. Guard against that too is we don't want to have a false sense of conviction. I mean none of us are perfect So we don't want to be under this condemnation that all I can now I haven't arrived I can't witness because of this or that so don't let the enemy beat up on you either I think you know if you're living in sin that of course would spoil your witness of being bold witness for Christ So I hope that answers a question till we meet again. I And this has been Sharing Your Faith with Larry Dubois. If you would like to listen to a past broadcast or ask a question that would be aired on a future show, simply go to sharingyourfaithradio.com. And then we trust you'll join us again next time for Sharing Your Faith on First Love Radio, your Christian Internet station.