But he says, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he that wins souls is wise. Why should we win souls? Well, because Jesus told us to do so. Matthew 28, 18. And Jesus came and spoke unto them saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and learn with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. So most Christians have never really personally led anyone to Christ. I mean, say for 38 years and we see it in the churches, it's like people don't, they might bring someone to church or to the cell group or something like that, but personally, people struggle with that. And this is probably because they don't know how to win the loss. But Jesus commanded us to preach the gospel and that's what we must do. So we must learn how to do it. I was exactly the same. I gave my life to Christ, was born again, radically born again. My life was transformed, but I really struggled to win the Lord. I was saved in 1985 in a maximum classification prison, and I got born again, Christ transformed my life, but I was unable to bring people to Christ. And it would always turn into an argument or a fight. If you can't win the argument, then you put the Bibles down and you fight it out. So I wasn't very popular in doing that. So how do we become effective soul winners? But before we even look at that, there are some important points we need to consider before going on an outreach or speaking to people and where we're going to be close personally, one-on-one. Number one, we need to dress appropriately. We need to dress neatly and wisely. In other words, if we're going to witness on a beach, we shouldn't wear suits. I was going to think you drove as witnesses, you go down the road there with that, you know? We need to fit in, you know, with the people around us, you know, dress accordingly. And that's quite important. We need to make people feel comfortable around us, and we should dress modestly. You know what I mean? So neatly, we need to be careful about that. You cannot lose a soul because of the way we dress. You understand what I'm saying? You know, these are important things we do. Sometimes you've got one chance to win somebody. God, the angels of the Lord, the Holy Spirit have organized this meeting for now and we mess it up. and you mess up a soul and that person, then the Lord has to look at it and maybe only five years time can he organ, will that person be in the right position to receive the gospel again? It's very important that we don't mess it up. We can do what we can do. We also need to make sure we wear deodorant and that our breath is minty fresh. I've been in ministry for years. I've seen church leaders offering, often ministering in a ministry line and they smell like a hound dog, you know, or their breath is so bad. And that's probably why so many people fall over in the prayer lines. I'm telling you, I've seen that, you know, quite recently too, you know, and I've had to go talk to the elder and say, listen, man, you know, really, you know, You got to do something about your body odor. Because you know, today, people don't wear deodorant. Some of them, they think that's unhealthy. And that's not doesn't work really. So we need to be careful that we number three, we also need to be prepared, be prepared for the area we are going to minister in. Okay, example, if you're ministering in a Muslim area, you need to be able to counter their doctrine. You know, for too long we've seen people trying to witness and being put to flight in battle. And that's just madness. You know, you've actually embarrassed the gospel. You know, you went out to witness and they actually won. And that's not how it works. So we need to sharpen our swords, you know, for the areas that we're going to. Number four, remember we are sharing good news and we don't need to look like we're sucking lemons. Be friendly, be kind. You're giving people the best news of their life, the good news. So we've got to look at those factors in going on an outreach. In personal evangelism, we need the supernatural power of God to do His will effectively on earth. Without the power of the Holy Spirit, you're going to win no one. Or if you do win someone, they're going to be as miserable as you are. We need the power of God to do this. I want to just tell you now you're not dealing with flesh and blood. Often you're dealing with demonic spirits that inhabit people or influencing them. You understand what I'm saying? We've got to have the power of God. Acts 1 verse 8, Jesus said to the disciples, you shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be what? Why would they receive that power? The disciples had already prayed for the sick, cast out devils. They'd done all those things, preached in the streets. But Jesus said to them, you're going to have to wait and receive power from the Holy Spirit that's still coming. They must have wondered what they were talking about. You know what I mean? You know, we we we can cast out devils. We heal the sick. You know, we we've preached what power and the scripture says that you shall receive power. And that word power is the Greek word dunamis, where we get our word dynamite from. You shall receive dynamite power, okay? After that, the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Why? And because you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. That's what the baptism of the Holy Spirit's for. It's dunamis power. You know what I mean? Dynamite power. That means all our enemies cannot stand before us. We can argue with anybody because we've got the Holy Spirit within us. We know what to say. God chose you. Always the right thing comes to your mind. It's actually quite crazy sometimes. Where did I get that from? You understand what I'm saying? God gives you dynamite power. Now there's lots of Christians that are born again, love God and that, but I can tell you something. I do not see that dynamite power in their life. They're unable to win souls to Christ. You know, so we need to be witnesses with power. I don't know what your theology is, and it, you know, differs from person to person, but for me, it was a secondary experience. You know, I was a Christian for a while, struggling to love God, reading my Bible, you know what I mean? I knew my life had changed, but I just couldn't win the battles and win people to Christ. Until I trusted God, I said, Lord, I need this baptism of the Holy Spirit. I don't have dunamis power. And trusted God for it. And in a couple of days later, I was talking to a couple of gangsters one day. You know what I mean? You know, from Mayfair, they're in the prison. And they were all standing in a half circle. And I was trying to witness to them. And suddenly I felt like there was a river of water running out of my belly while I'm talking to them. I'm thinking, wow, I feel weird. You know, but I could feel the power of God. And they stood there utterly transfixed and listening to me for the first time, not giving me a long argument. You know, and I walked away and they were still standing there when we had to go back to the main prison. You know, they were still standing there like shocked. I was shocked. I thought I've never spoken like that in my life. And then we started to insult. Then I had the power of God to be able to do it. You know, and so we need to, if you struggle in that area, you need to have a prayer session with the Lord and say, Lord, you need to equip me. We've seen, I've stopped calling people up in churches to do that. You know what I mean? To pray for them because everybody comes, but then no, nobody actually goes and does it. So if you're going to want the power of God in your life, you need to actually step out in faith and go and witness to people. Even though you don't feel any different, You're just going to go in faith and then God ignites you. There's no point in giving you the power of the Holy Spirit if you're not going to ever use it. You know what I mean? So, all right. So then I started to win souls. All right. Number one in winning souls to Timothy two 15 study to show yourself approved unto God at work when that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You've got to equip yourself, you know, even though you have the power of the baptism of Hades, but you need to sharpen your swords constantly, you know, constantly keep your sword sharpened, you know, study everything you can on different forms of evangelism. It helps. Every knowledge is part. They're great. We stand on the shoulders of giants, you know, and they can teach us a lot about witnessing. You know, they've been great giants have gone before us and we need to learn from them. And I did that, you know, and I read everything I could and I tried everything and this would work and then that wouldn't work. And then I try that again until I found out how to wield the weapons of our warfare. Which are not well. You know, because we have weapons. And so we need to study to show yourself approved. You just set your face to the things of God. So you can't always use one method. Situations and people are very different. You can't just use the same method with everybody that you're going to meet. In the army, there were boards that said train hard, fight easy. It's the same in Christianity. You know, you need to do your training. You need to read the word of God. You need to soak yourself in the word of God. You need to use it, be able to wield it like a sword, not like a butter knife. Some Christians only got a butter knife and they got a tiny little shield about that size and they're trying to fight the enemy because they don't study the word of God and they have no word, they don't know the word of God. And then when the enemy shoots arrows at you, he's trying to hold his little shield up like that and they just hit you. We need to train ourselves effectively. You know, you need to be a, you know, you're working for the king, the ambassador of the greatest kingdom that will smash all the kingdoms of this world. We are part of that kingdom. We have that army of God behind us, the resources of God behind us. We are, we represent the kingdom of God. We are warriors of Christ. We can help anybody in this world because of the power of the Holy Spirit within us. We can give people advice on the power of God from the Holy Spirit to them. We can change lives. We can change our areas. We in we will we will make a difference. If you allow God to use you like that, you know. All right, so. Moving on about personal evangelism. Many of you do street outreach. Often, you know, they'll stop people in the street and say, you know, I want to tell you Jesus loves you. Now, you know, in my old days, you know, I was in the military and that before I landed up in prison. But that was quite offensive to some men, you know, to tell another man that another man loves you. You know, we only understand that. You know what I mean? You're going to get punched now. You know, don't talk nonsense, I'm not that oak, you know what I mean? Don't insult me. So I don't think people realize that, you know? That it's quite offensive to men, you know, sometimes to say that. And especially in today's age, I can tell you that. Anyway, who is Jesus to them? You're telling them Jesus loves them and they're like, well, that's just weird, you know? And you know, the scripture actually says this, John 3, 36. He that believes in the sun is everlasting life, and he that believes not the sun shall not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. The extreme anger of God abides on him that does not know God. Why don't you tell him the truth? In the street, hi, do you know that the extreme wrath of God is abiding upon you? And if you don't repent and give your life to Christ, you're going to spend eternity screaming in the in the lake of fire. That's the truth. Now you're telling him the truth. Because you tell him Jesus loves him, some big biker, and he's like, no, I'm very nice about that, but I'm not leaving. And he gets on his bike, drives around the corner, has a head-on collision, lands up 57 kilometers below us in the place of torment, screaming now in pain and in fear, and then saying, but you told me Jesus loves me, why am I here? You actually lied to them. You know, God does want them to repent. But the wrath of God abides on him outside of Christ. The extreme anger of God is upon this world that does not know Christ. You see, we must stop preaching stuff that, you know, we're not telling the truth. And that's why we're getting these half lukewarm Christians that are joining the faith. You know, they're coming in, well, Jesus loves me, says, make my life much better now, and everything's going to go well. Slow motion in the cornfields now, you know, we're going to run through the cornfields, throwing up the things and, you know, my life's going to, and then he finds that's not true. And then he said, but you said, Jesus loves me. Why am I now? Why is my life such a mess? You know, if all that person was going to get was eternal life, that would be enough for all of us. If all we got from God was eternal life, that would be great. So we need to change the way we're preaching to this world. You know what I mean? Because we need to tell people the truth. And I think you have far more results like that, you know. One old pastor told me they used to show a film in the 60s called The Burning Fire or something like that. I don't remember what it's called either. And they said that, he said every Friday, you know, all the gangsters would come in that. And they were all so terrified after watching the film. They used to run forward and take out their drugs and put it down and repent. They got so frightened by that film. And isn't that so? Shouldn't we be frightened about it? We should. We should be extremely worried about our future and where we're going to land up. All right, so number three, we have found that when doing outreach, it's better to start the conversation with something like this. Frank and I often used to go out in our area in Parklands and we'd say, let's go see if the Lord will deliver the Philistines into our hands like Jonathan did. Then we go down the Parklands main road and we look for the worst block. Which is the worst block we can find? Okay, this one. Let's go in there. And then we get inside and we go to all these hundreds of little units and whatever and we go knock on the door. Hi, good morning. We from a local Christian church, we say local Christian church, so don't think we're Jehovah's Witnesses, otherwise we're going to close the door on our face. So we say we from a local Christian church and we praying for people. Can we come pray for you? And there's like this face peeping around the door like this. And I said, because I look dangerous places. And then we say, no, we just want to come and pray for you. Can we come pray for you? And nine out of 10, they say. Okay, you know, we Christian church are calming them down, you know, and then they let you in. Okay, so now we end and I say to them, are you guys Christians? And a lot of them are foreigners that have come from Africa in, you know, and almost always they say, yes, we are. But I mean, I just look around that room, I can see there's nothing of Christ there. It's just pain here and brokenness, you know, and they think they're Christians, they believe us, but the devil's a believer and he's not gonna have So they've been misled. They thought just by believing in Christ, now they're Christians. There's no repentance and Christ is not Lord of them. Because you can see it in the house. You can always see by people's books and what they have, who's Lord of this house. And then we say to them, let me explain to you exactly what a Christian is. And then we explain that to them. And you can ask, they give their lives to Christ. It's like a step they've missed in their faith. Jesus, they believe they've accepted Jesus as Savior, but not as Lord. And it's quite a small transition to explain that to them. And some of them have cried on the big pools of water on the floor. They give their lives to Christ, and then we pray for them. And then we pray miracles. We say, what can we ask God for you in your life? And they've got like, we're so in trouble. And we pray and we surprise what God does for them. So we found that that works, you know what I mean? People are very open to being prayed for, you know. Our teachers look at our McDonald's. When we're training people, sometimes we'll take them to Parkland's McDonald's and that, you know. And we just walk them out and say, can we pray for you guys? Whole crowds come. You know, girls that are on the beat there, they all come. They say, yummy, please, please, please. And then we share the gospel with them. Often they get on their knees in the road and we pray for them. It's fantastic. give them literature, invite them to church or whatever. Sometimes when we do the blocks that we go to, we'll say to the person that we've led to Christ, listen here, can we come and do a meeting here on Tuesday nights? What night are you available? Tuesday night. Can we come here and have a meeting? And they say, yes, please do come. I say, invite all your friends. So, you come there late Tuesday night, they're fighting there in the parking lots, there's people, it's madness. You know, you're stepping over the oaks, fighting and whatever, you go up to the house, they've got a few friends there, you know, and then you talk to them, you preach a gospel, you pray with them, and as you're talking, the door opens and a head comes and you say, come join us. They come join you. We win blocks like that. I want to tell you, the world is open to the gospel. There are a lot of people that are struggling, but there are no laborers. The laborers are few because people are scared. You know, I just we just have to take one person one time. One just show them how to do it. And then they say we can do it ourselves. You know what? OK. So, you know, so what I'm saying is that we can start wholesale groups like that. You can start whole churches like that in weeks. Because so many people fit in that room that you say, listen, can we go use somebody else? And you bring another guy in and they run another meeting. Now you've got two meetings running in their block. And then that fills up so quickly. You can't believe the hunger. and how people are dying out there. And then you've got four servers, and then the whole atmosphere of that block changes. All the, we go to the drug lords too. We always choose the worst one. We say, where's the worst drug lord? They say that one. We go to his door first. We go knock on the door. They let you in, you won't believe it. For prayer, you can't believe it. They let you in. You know, we go there, we talk to them. You can't believe their success. People are very open, you know, to the gospel. They're in trouble. People are in trouble. And when you say offer prayer from God, I want to tell you they accept it. So we can, it's a very effective way of doing street outreach and of doing outreaches in blocks and things like this, you know, and it's exciting. You'll start a whole church in a block very, very quickly. You know, it just takes fire. Big revival, you know, it's quite cool. All right, in doing personal outreach and talking to people that we know, you know, we got to understand that everybody has a chink in their armor. Every human being is affected by sin. There's no tough guy that's so tough that everybody's got an area in their life that's a weakness. You know, and all you have to do is find that weakness and then present the gospel to them according to it. Like the divorced woman at work, you know, you've never been able to witness her. She's going through a divorce and you go and you sit down, you say, can I come pray for you? I've never seen somebody say no. They say, yeah, I see you're going through a terrible time. Can I pray for you and your family? Yes, you can. And I'm telling you, you're talking to her for five minutes and she's crying like a baby and you're leading her into the kingdom. You know, we are we are the hands and feet of the Lord on the earth. You know what I mean? And look for that chink in people's armor, you know, like some tough soldiers who can't talk to them about it. I don't want to listen to this stuff, but but then he's scared of ghosts. So how am I coming at him? Hey, you know that Jesus Christ is actually Lord over the spiritual realm. Now he's listening to you because it's weakness. He wants to know now about this. He wants to know how to fix that. You know, or if somebody is a rugby star, you know, you can come and say, you know, that there are a lot of Christians in our Christian rugby team. And you say, yeah, you know, you're actually right, you know, and now you come in that door. Well, what about you? Beast, remember the beast, that big rugby player, he's a Christian and they're like, oh, they respect him, you know, and then you say, but what about you, you know? And so you go in on the platform where people wanted to listen. I remember we're doing some street work one day and this one lady, she was as hard as nails, you know, butter lips. And I just couldn't break through. And I said to the Lord, you know, you have to help me out with this lady because we're not getting anywhere with this. You know, she's having, we're not going anywhere. So then the thought came to me, ask her about the son. I said to her, and how's your son doing, ma'am? Oh, he's not quite. My son's a drug addict. He's broken. Ten minutes later, she's giving her life to the Lord. Nothing else worked. You need the Holy Spirit to show us how, okay, I've got 10 minutes. All right, that's, I have to move on. All right, so we need to have a sound bite on every religion that you may encounter. You need to be equipped for that to be able to, like as Jehovah's Witnesses, just give, sometimes you can't witness and you gotta give them a broadside and sink their ship very quickly in front of everybody, you know? You know, you've got to have that ability. You've got weapons of our warfare. Sometimes you can't deal with, I confess I deal with them roughly because I haven't got time for them calling Jesus our Lord, the Archangel Michael and all this nonsense. You know what I mean? So I don't treat them nicely. I treat them, I have to deal with them sometimes because they're interfering with your witnessing to people about Jesus Christ. So you need to be able to defeat gainsayers and have wisdom for religions going to come against every day. Okay, I told some of you that were here the last time about the atheist, you know, I've come to a cell group one Noticeable some cell group members one day. I'm visiting them and they said we so glad you here come inside You know, there's the atheist is taking us apart inside this house, you know So I went inside and here's this like sitting here like Lord Muck. We're in the room, you know He's just why I don't believe in God why there's no God in that and So I went and I said to him, so can I ask you a question? He said, yes. I said, how much of all knowledge do you have? If all of knowledge is 100%, like everything, I mean the whole knowledge of the universe, of all the creatures on the earth, of everything, how much knowledge do you have? So he was like, okay, maybe 2% or 3%. So I said, is it possible that God lives in the 97% you don't know about? Well, he just was fraud because he looked like a fool. Everybody laughed at him. Even his wife was like, you know, I know what you're going to say now, you know, because you can't say there's no God unless you've been to the end of the universe back again, east, west, north, gone everywhere and come back and said, now I know that there's no God. I mean, it's just stupid to say that. You know, so I'm saying you've got to be able to have a soundbite for religions that you're going to deal with to be able to sometimes just to stop the mouse. You know what I mean? Right there and then so that you can continue with your gospel presentation. All right. So ask God for love for the people that we're going to talk to. Always do that. You know, there's no greater power that God has given us than his agape love. God's love. You know, we can't we can't walk in that kind of love. It's not human for us to do it. But we can before we witness to someone, we can ask the Lord, love this person through me. You know, because we don't love the great unwashed, you know, and, you know, although it's hard, you know, sometimes, you know what I mean? And people are dark and evil sometimes, but God can love them through you if you will allow him to do it. You know, so before you stand and you allow the love of God to come through you, and then you speak as if God is speaking to him. And I want to tell you, it's very, very powerful because people sense that immediately. You know, and if you are presenting Christ to them and you are loving them in Christ and being kind to them and speaking to them like that, they catch a glimpse through you of Christ. You are not Christ, but you're acting in agape love, which is 1 Corinthians 13, you can go and study that on your own. But when you walk like that, and you're walking agape love, when the person looks at you and you behave like that to them, they see a glimpse of the robe of Christ through you. They have an encounter with God through you. And I want to tell you, that's more powerful than anything. They will never forget, even if they don't give their lives to Christ that day, they will never forget that encounter because through you speaking to them, they saw Christ. Got a glimpse, just a glimpse, like, wow, that's all you need of the Lord. You know, so we must be able to be those type of people. Okay, I've never gotten much time left. All right. So witness to the person's need. Isaiah 61 verse 3. Jesus said, The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the, who's first? The poor. Why the poor? Because the rich, you can't even knock on their doors. They don't want to hear anything. I've been 38 years in faith. Have I ever seen a really rich man give his life to Christ? Properly. I haven't. They come and they mentally ascend to it, but they don't give their money to God. You know what I mean? You know, so who are we to preach good tidings to the poor? So that's why we go into the back. It's open field for the poor. They all open for the gospel. You know, they, they, they, they'll listen. You send me to heal the broken hearted, that lady at work, you know, that's going through a terrible time. You pull alongside her. You know, to proclaim liberty to the captives, those drug addicts, those people that are broken in this world. You know what I mean? OK, you know, we proclaim liberty to them, you know, tell them they can be set free in Jesus name. And the opening of prison to those that are bound. You know, so that's where you should first go. Go to those who actually want to hear the gospel. you know, and give them the great news. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord in the day of vengeance on our God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beautiful ashes, the oil of joyful mourning, the garment of praise of the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. So look for those people, you know, they want to know God. Not that way. Sometimes we have to preach a thunder message to the rich, a rebuke, a warning, you know, and warn them that their lives are gonna end badly. It's gonna end badly for them. And all their money cannot save them. But for the poor in that, you know, often kindness is all that's necessary, you know, and the power of God, man. We are walking, we have the armor of God, we are the people of God, we have swords and shields. We can stick our shields over these poor people like that and stick the sword in the face of that demon and say, back off in Jesus' name. You know, we can drive demons out of whole households, which we do. I went to this one little house and the woman said, I've got a lady spirit that comes and sits on my bed every night. I said, we'll deal with her now, now, now. and lead her to Christ. You know, we could get ladies, put it right out there, you know, he's got that place here. Okay, so we need to be attentive to people who are poor, broken hearted, captives, bound, mourn, have a spirit of heaviness, and whose lives are in ashes. They are open for the gospel. How's my time doing? So the world needs powerful Christians who are not bound by sin, not afraid of the darkness and are fully equipped to defeat the enemy and drive him from the battlefield to fulfill God's will. I mean, what do you need? You know, sometimes I'm having arguments, some really bad characters, you know, and I've no idea what I'm going to say here, but. Yes, it's raging, but it's carrying on, you know, and I just I just clear my mind and allow the Lord to say, Lord, you just guide me in what I'm going to say next. And I have no idea, no idea what I'm going to say. And then when he stops, I speak in faith. And then I say something that I don't even know what the guys like hammered, you know, is like, how did you know that? You know, I didn't even know it. I didn't even know what I said. I'm like, where did it come from? You just flattened him and take the wind out of his sails and he stands there. Sometimes I even cry because you're so shocked and the Holy Spirit just gives you a word for that person and you know what to say to him. And then they either run or they stay. You know, then you start to see them looking, OK, now this is a bit uncomfortable and I'm going to go now. Or they listen and you lead them to Christ. But your job and my job is to organize a meeting with people here on earth with Christ. That's our job. You won't always win them then. Sometimes they get saved much later on or whatever. But we need to bring them into the presence of God. and we should drive the enemy from the battlefield of these these poor people's homes and that you know what i mean you know cast those demons out being forces of christ's victory on earth christ won the victory but demons are rebels and they take back whatever they can but we have the army of god and we need to drive them out again and say no more are you allowed in this area in jesus name the darkness should fear us and not us fear the darkness. All right, so I'm just gonna end with this now because my time's come up. James Hudson Taylor, the great missionary said, in many cases, what God wants is not a money contribution, but a personal consecration to his service abroad or the giving up of a son or a daughter more precious than silver or gold to his service. You know, God wants also you. He wants you to train and equip you to be a fully clad soldier of Christ, not a baby, not a toddler. We've got 20-year-old Christians who are toddlers. We've got 20-year-old Christians and we've got to give them bottles every now and again. They're crying like babies. We've got to feed them bottles. It's crazy. We're wasting time trying to fix the believers. You know what I mean? When the whole world is dying around us. You know, so we, you know, God will take your consecration to him very seriously. And why should we not do that? Our lives, we're soldiers for Christ. We will go anywhere. We're incorruptible. We cannot be bought or sold. We tell the truth everywhere we go. We are dangerous to the enemy. You know, we deployed. They know they've got trouble coming because we came to win the battles. Even if it costs us our lives, we don't care. We know where we're going. God happy to be going there too. Okay, so no amount of money can convert a single cell. So what is needed is that men and women feel that the Holy Ghost should give themselves to the work of God. Amen.