For example, in Acts 16 we see Paul and Barnabas placed in prison. Notice, in verses 20b - 21, what they were charged with - "...These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans." Paul and Barnabas were not what was troubling them.
Illus: One man got troubled because his wife and children were getting too involved in church. Instead of joining them, and setting a good example as a dad, he told them they could go to one service a week, but no more. He said the reason he limited them like that was because when he was growing up his parents made him go. As a result of their making him go he got so he had no use for the church and he didn't want his children to have that same thing happen. Our question is, why single out church attendance? Why doesn't he practice that same thinking about being made to go to school five days a week, etc.
When men hear the gospel, they get troubled. When they get troubled, you'd better watch out because unless they repent of their sins they will trouble others. In verses 21 - 24 we are told that Paul and Silas were beaten and thrown in jail. But look at those great soul winners. Even after they were beaten and placed in stocks, verse 25 says, "And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them." What did they do? They sang praises unto God! They were thankful to be able to suffer for the Savior who had suffered so much for them. But notice the Bible says that as they sang praises unto the Lord, the "...prisoners heard them." What a tremendous witness those men were for the Lord. Notice, in that situation, it was life-style evangelism that God used.
There are two kinds of witnessing that we Christians can do.
1. We can speak to someone about Christ who does not know a thing about us.
Many times this has been done and someone was ready to receive Christ and someone they did not know led them to the Lord.
2. We can speak to someone about Christ who has observed how we live our lives.
It is not necessarily what we say with our mouths that leads them to Christ as it is what we say by the way we live. Paul and Barnabas were witnessing in that prison for the Lord by singing praises unto the Lord, and God used their lives. Then God shook that place with an earthquake and Paul was able to lead the jailor unto the Lord. The reason that happened was because those men allowed Christ to work IN THEM and THROUGH THEM! We want the Lord to do the same for us, but before He can, let us look at some things that will help us be soul winners.
I. PREPARATION OF A SOUL WINNER.
One of the reasons that many have never won anyone to Christ is because they never had a plan to win anyone to Christ. That is, many have had a desire to be soul winners. They have the idea that one day a sinner will just walk up and ask what he must do to be saved and they will tell him. No way! The devil will see to it that will never accidently happen. To be a soul winner you must have:
A. A developed plan.
That is, you have already thought through what God's Word says and you are deliberately going to make opportunities.
Illus: Many believe that D. L. Moody was one of the greatest soul winners that ever lived. Do you think that was an accident? No. He developed different plans. He made a covenant with God that not a single day in his life would go by without his talking to someone about the Lord Jesus Christ. One of his favorite plans was his horse and buggy plan. Remember, that was the mode of transportation in that day. When he met someone he felt he could win to the Lord he would go by to see that person on a pretty day and take that person for a ride in the afternoon, in the cool of the day. They would be enjoying a relaxing ride and he would pull over and park under the shade of a large tree, drop the reins, and tell that individual about the Lord Jesus, Who came and died for his sins. Only God knows how many people he won to Christ because he was always developing plans for winning the lost to Christ.
Illus: A Christian couple, in Columbia, S. C., have developed a plan. They invite lost people to their home for an excellent supper. At the conclusion of the meal they give their testimony of how Christ saved them and how He has blessed them. They then invite the unsaved guests to accept the Savior Who died for their sins. Many couples have been won to the Lord because this couple not only desires to win people to Christ, they plan to win people to Christ!
Illus: A man who lived in Missouri was called "Shorty." He lived as if he had no need of God whatsoever. But, one day he did become greatly concerned about the fact that he did not have any life insurance. He called a lady and told her to write a policy up for him and he would pay her. She did as he requested so he went by to settle up with her. The woman was a Christian lady. She knew that Shorty had always lived as if he had no need of God. When he was settling up, she said, "Shorty, now that you've got your body taken care of for death, what about your soul?" He left her office, but he was not able to get away from her question! He later was so convicted that he called a pastor and the pastor was able to lead him to the Lord.
Illus: Many Christian doctors, lawyers, and marriage counselors have discovered that they have the ideal situation when it comes to winning people to Christ. People come to them with all kinds of physical and emotional needs and they use their training to help them, and when they have done all they can, they point the needy people to the loving Savior, Who died for their sins. What an excellent opportunity they are taking advantage of!
It doesn't matter what you do for a living, God can help you develop a plan to reach the souls of mankind. God's Word says, "He that winneth souls is wise." Sometimes that plan will be to voluntarily give your time and talents to someone who is lost. You might be a carpenter, plumber, electrician, painter, etc., but God can make you a "fisher of men" if you are willing to let Him help you develop a plan. I Corin. 15:57-58, "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."
Illus: Do you know why some are successful in this life and others are not? Some sit back and think that one day they are going to win the Reader's Digest sweepstakes, while others get up from their wishing chair and initiate a plan for accomplishing their goals.
• They recognize that no one is going to do it for them.
• They recognize that no one is going to give it to them.
• They recognize it is not going to happen through some kind of accident.
• They recognize that through good planning and hard work they can be successful.
It is the same for all successful soul winners across our nation; they developed a plan and they stuck to the plan and labored toward it and God has given them success. If we are going to be successful as soul winners it will be because we are wise enough to have A DEVELOPED PLAN to reach the lost and we stick with that plan.
Look at Galatians 6:9 We read, "And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."
Also, in Eccl. 11:1 We read, "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days."
We also have to have -
B. A directed plan.
Illus: Someone said, "Some fellows dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and design a plan to do them." Someone else said, "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low and we reach it."
You see, according to statistics, many of you who are sitting here today have never won anyone to Christ in your life. It is not because you do not want to share your faith with someone, but because you have not A DEVELOPED PLAN which means that you do not have A DIRECTED PLAN. Someone you know is lost and could possibly be reached for Christ. A DIRECTED PLAN is choosing that particular target. Once you have chosen the person, or your "target," you need to move into action.
Illus: Once you feel a burden for that certain lost person, you direct as much of your energy as you can toward winning that one for Christ. Draw a bead on that individual the same way a bear hunter would sight a bear through the cross-hairs of his gun. Strategically approach that lost soul the same way the best salesman in the world would approach a client he wanted to make a million dollar sale to.
Many Christians have never won a soul to Christ, and it could be because they were shooting, but did not even have a target to shoot at.
Illus: You can ask any of these deer hunters and they will tell you that the ones who bring home the meat are the ones who find the target and pull the trigger. You seldom hit anything unless you aim at something.
But, something else we need to consider is that there is no sense in aiming a gun if we do not have any ammunition in it. You can have a great goal or target you are aiming at, but you are wasting your time if your gun is full of blanks. You can make a lot of noise, and all you are going to do is scare some lost soul away from Christ.
Illus: Every now and then we see a football game where one of the players gets mixed up and runs the wrong direction when he gets the ball. There is no use carrying the ball unless you know what direction you should go.
God wants to place a burden upon our hearts for someone today. This is the first step in soul winning. The individual that God lays on your heart becomes the target (direction) toward which you can start developing plans to reach for Christ. Once we do this, we, as soul winners, need to consider the-
II. PRAYERFULNESS OF A SOUL WINNER.
Winning souls to Christ is the greatest thing a person can do with his life. A man would be foolish to go out and start a business without praying and seeking God's will in the matter. How much more foolish it would be for a person to think he could go out and win souls to Christ without God's assistance
Illus: Dr. J. P. Brushingham, years ago, said this about prayer: "To speak effectually with men on behalf of God, we must - first and last and always - speak effectually with God in behalf of men. Let our work be preceded, accompanied, saturated with prayer...Prayer puts us on the fighting line, and the fighting line compels us to take refuge in God. Prayer is combining with the Almighty against the adversary of God and man..."
A soul winner has two things in mind when he prays. He prays-
A. A specific prayer.
How often is it that we pray prayers that are so general that we do not get answers for?
Illus: We Christians sometimes operate like the astrologers who claim to have psychic ability to tell what the future holds for others. Have you noticed that the answers they give are so general that they could apply to 99% of the people in 99% of the situations they would be in? A Christian man and his wife were listening to a radio call-in program. They brought in an astrologer and let the callers ask her questions and she would answer. It was interesting to note that even though her answers were so general that they could apply to most everyone, she still only had a 85% accuracy record. The man who had tuned in decided the answers were so general anyone could give them. When callers would call in, he would guess at an answer while the astrologer was finding out the birthdates of the callers. Guess what? She gave the same answers that listener gave.
One man called and asked, "Can you tell me if I am going to change to another job in the future." She asked him when his birthday was and after a few minutes she answered, "Yes, sometime in the future you are going to change jobs." Now anyone would know that if someone was so insecure in his job that he felt he had to call some nut like this astrologer, that more than likely they would be changing to another job sometime in the future.
The point is, we Christians should not be that way in our prayers. We should not pray in such a general way that God cannot answer the prayer. So often we pray:
• "God, save souls." What souls?
• "God, feed the hungry." What hungry?
• "God, bless our church." In what way?
• "God, send a revival." Why?
• "God, help our young people." In what way?
• "God, help the elderly of our church." In what way?
You see, we pray these prayers with such open ends, and then we wonder why God does not answer prayer. Listen, God answers prayers! God can only get the glory when we know what we have asked for and know that He has definately undertaken.
Illus: The story is told of a navy man who was a Christian. He always prayed general prayers and could not understand why he did not see any specific answers. One day he was up on deck when he saw that a missle had been fired at his ship and it was going to be a dead hit and he knew it. He knew that God had never answered his general prayers, and he thought he'd better be specific. He fell on his knees and cried out, "Oh God, stop that missle that is headed due west at forty knots for this ship. Oh Lord, do it and do it right now!"
Prayers like that are the ones He can answer and when He intervenes the glory goes to him because there is no doubt about who intervened.
Illus: Some Christians are so vague they are like a child that goes to the ice cream counter where they have 48 flavors when he is asked, "May I help you," and he answers, "Yes, I would like some ice cream..." Of course he wants ice cream - the vender wants to know what kind!
If we are going to be effective as soul winners we are going to have to recognize the need for prayer and the need to be specific in our prayers.
Illus: Great men of the past have won multitudes to Christ because they understood they could not do it without God.
• Hudson Taylor called prayer, "Transacting business with God."
• Jonathan Edwards spoke of prayer as, "Storming Heaven by prayer."
• John Knox said in a prayer, "Oh, God, give me Scotland or I die!"
• L. Moody, it was said of his praying, "He never made long prayers, but he was never long without prayer."
• Andrew A. Bonar said, "I see that unless I keep up short prayers every day, throughout the whole day, at intervals, I lose the spirit of prayer."
Every soul winner knows that he cannot win people to Christ without God's help. If God has burdened your heart for some lost soul, ask God to help you win that soul to Christ. Call that individual's name out before God. Ask God to give you a plan for how to do that and be sensitive to His Spirit as He directs you.
B. A saving prayer.
Did you know that we can pray SPECIFIC prayers and still not pray SAVING prayers? That is, if we desire to see God deliver someone from the sin in his life, we have to BELIEVE God is able to do it, before He will do it.
Illus: Jesus went to Nazareth and the Bible tells us He could not do anything there because the people tied His blessed hands with their unbelief. It is the same today. Some of us have tied the hands of God with our unbelief. How often we hear professing Christians say, "I wish that ___________ would get saved, but I do not know if it will ever happen!" It probably won't because you have tied the hands of God with your unbelief. Jesus said in Mark 11:24, "...What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." When we obey this, our prayers will shatter the strongholds of Satan. God told us in Jeremiah 33:3, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." Also, in Ephesians 3:20, we read of God, "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us."
Conclusion/Summary: May our prayers be powerful like those of the great prayer warriors before us:
• John Nelson Hyde, who earned the name of "praying Hyde," after graduating from McCormick Seminary in 1892, felt a burden for the country of India and was sent there by the Presbyterian Mission board.
• Moody made a covenant with God that a day would not go by that he would not talk to someone about the Lord Jesus Christ!
• John Hyde went beyond that point. He was so burdened for the people of India that he made a covenant with God for one soul a day. He would not count that conversion unless that person was willing to make a public profession, be baptized and unite with the church. The Lord honored his request. The first year he won 400 people to the Lord Jesus Christ. The second year his burden for the lost increased and he asked the Lord for two souls a day. That year he won 800 to Christ. The next year he reasoned that since God had caused him to double his goal, he could believe the lord for four souls a day. That third year he won 1,600 souls to the Lord! This man literally burned himself out winning souls to Christ. His biography states that sometimes he would be working in the late hours of the night trying to win four souls a day. We can add it up, in those three years alone he won over 3,000 people to Christ. They all made a public profession, were baptized, and were added to the church. Those who knew him well, estimate that during his lifetime he cheated hell out of a million souls.
These, and other great men like them are no longer here. God is trying to find some men who will take their places. What about you? Do you have the courage to step up and say, "Lord, here am I, send me"?
We have seen:
I. THE PREPARATION OF A SOUL WINNER.
A. A developed plan.
B. A directed plan.
II. THE PRAYERFULNESS OF A SOUL WINNER.
A. Specific prayer.
B. A saving prayer.
