[0:00] scriptures. In some cases, you just have to know where the verses are. By all means, memorize some verses, but the more familiar you are with the book, the book that opened your eyes, the more effective you're going to be. And people make excuses with that one all the time, is, well, I'm just not a pastor. Yeah, there's a lot of people that aren't pastors that can lead a soul to Christ very quickly, because they know the scriptures. And this book is not for pastors.
[0:29] It's for you. It's for us. So let's not be afraid to learn it and use it. One way you can learn and know the scriptures, it's pretty easy, just attending church regularly and faithfully, week after week, service after service, you just get more of the Bible, more of the Bible. It just gets in, gets in, gets in, gets in. Before you know it, it starts coming out.
[0:50] I'm, I'm not the only one that's done this, I'm sure, that has been talking to somebody, and a verse just is right there. And I did not plan it. I did not say, now when they say that, I'm going to say this. But it was ready, because I was in my Bible, because I'd been around my Bible.
[1:08] Reading and studying your Bible will definitely help you in knowing the scriptures, staying in that book. When it comes to knowing the scriptures, I'd also say this is, don't be afraid to mark up your Bible. Don't be afraid to put notes in it. Don't be afraid to, to put beside a verse that talks about Christ's death in the gospel, that another verse, a cross reference to another verse that you can quickly find and turn to, and then it takes the pressure off of you to have to memorize and have this little order in your mind. You could just write that thing right out, one to two to three to four to five, and be familiar with it. If that's the, the way you are able to use it from some kind of a, like a Romans road idea, you can mark up your Bible.
[1:53] I have a Bible that's all marked up with stuff like that. It's in my office. It's one that I like to take out. If going out visiting or going to make a visit, I'll take that Bible. I hope I can make a visit here this week. I got a phone call from a lady. She's from Montana, but she's actually in Ohio.
[2:09] Ohio, her brother lives in Silmar, and he just lost his wife a week ago, and she said he's devastated, and she has no way of getting to him, and nobody in the family is able to come to see him right now.
[2:22] She's dealing with other things. That's why she's in Ohio, and so she called the church. I called her back, and she asked me, so I called the man. He didn't answer his phone. I just left him a message, and then she said, well, he's got a gate around his home, and he's really paranoid, and he probably said I'll try to come by sometime this week, but if I do, I'm going to take that Bible with me because that Bible's all marked up, and if we get into something, and if I can open that Bible and talk to him, I don't have to in my mind have everything memorized. I can rely on some of the notes. I did that on purpose, and you can get more and more comfortable to where you don't have to rely on that, but to start off, don't be afraid to make notes in your Bible. It'll give you confidence, and confidence is a great thing when you're trying to win a soul to Christ.
[3:06] One more thought on that, on knowing your Bible. This is something I did back in Bible school. We would have these different scenarios presented to us of who you might meet, and then in doing that, scriptures were provided on how to handle this kind of person or how to deal with somebody this way, and so after taking all these notes, I went home, and I remember sitting my wife in sound asleep, but I remember sitting there and just in my mind going over, pretending that that person is right in front of me, and I'm just going through this verse, and it led to that verse, and I was just practicing, just practicing. What do you do when you want to get good at shooting your bow and arrow, or shooting a gun, or shooting a basketball, or getting better at your job? What do you do?
[4:03] You practice. You practice. You don't just say, well, I hope I'm good enough when it happens. If you want to go on a hunt, and you want to pay a couple thousand dollars to go hunt some big game, and you're going to get one shot, if you're lucky, at this game, and you just say, well, you know, I hope I'm ready when I get there. No. The guys that do that, they practice 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 yards with their bow until they're dead on. Guys with the rifles are shooting long range, 500, 600 yards just to get dead on. They don't want to take chances. They want to practice. Well, you want to win a soul? You want to get out there and serve the Lord and find yourself in a scenario that you're not prepared for? Practice. I'm only saying that because that's something that helped me, and I did it on my own, and I can picture myself where I was in different places. Once on the couch in a living room, late at night, well after class was gone, and it's probably 11, 11 30, and I'm just sitting there with my Bible and just running through these references, just getting them in my head, just getting more familiar with the book because I wanted to use it. I wanted to use it and point somebody to Jesus Christ. So know the scriptures. That's the most powerful thing there is to winning a soul to Christ is being able to know what the Bible says and show somebody. All right, another thought here, this will be number two, and this is a good key and effective in witnessing is to use gospel tracks. We have some here in the church. They're amazing tools. Whoever, whenever the body of
[5:41] Christ came up with that as a tool, good for them, that's been incredible, and other, there's companies all over the place, a real big one here in Ontario, Chick Publications, that put out, they put them out by the millions. Most of them do that anymore, but use those things because they can do so much more than you can by yourself. You have to have them on you. I'd have to slap myself for that one. Keep them in your car. Keep them in your wallet. Keep them, my wife keeps some in her purse, but have tracks on you.
[6:19] Tracks can do things that you can't do. Tracks can witness when you can't witness. Tracks, a gospel track that contains the message and the scriptures of the gospel of Jesus Christ, those things are never, they never get embarrassed, and those gospel tracks never, they never get scared. They never get intimidated. They have the message every time, so turn them loose. They can go places that you can't go.
[6:49] I know a family that used to go into shoe stores, and they say, we put tracks in all the shoes. We put tracks inside all the shoes because we're not going to meet the person that's going to come and try that shoe on, but they're going to get a gospel track. I said, amen. I know a couple, they were an older couple, and as they got older in life, they didn't do a whole lot of other things, but one thing they said they did, they went to Walmart as a couple on a date with a stack of gospel tracks and went around slipping them into garments, articles of clothing, just because it was thrilled to them to be like undercover, on camera, whatever it was. They were having a blast, and an older couple doing that, I was like, that's such a blessing. That's so good. I know somebody's going to say, well, that's just not right. They shouldn't be doing that. Whatever. They're trying to do something for Christ. That's what they're trying to do. Praise the Lord for them. The person that complains is the person you know. They don't do anything, but gospel tracks can do things, and they can get places you can't. You can leave them behind when you have to leave. You can leave it on the bench, and somebody's going to come and find it, and there's countless stories and illustrations of how you can get gospel tracks to people. I was just watching a church, maybe it was last weekend. I caught a little bit of a service of a church that I know, and I was watching.
[8:16] They had a man who was giving a report during the announcements of a ministry they have, which was about getting out gospel tracks, and it was a ministry of mailing them. They're a pretty big church, and they have some abilities and a lot of people, and they were just able to kind of put a force together, and they just, I'm sure you've seen this, just address out of a list of addresses, just handwrite it, and then put a stamp on it, and put the track in there, and send it off, and the Jehovah's Witnesses are doing it. I don't know how many times, even just since I've lived here, I've gotten letters at the church or letters at my house from the Jehovah's Witnesses trying to get me to buy their stuff, you know, believe what they're saying, so they're trying to use that same thought of getting their material out, but gospel tracks can be effective, and I don't think you'll ever, ever, ever run out of an opportunity to get out a gospel track. If you're looking for opportunities to get them out, you'll find them, especially in an urban environment like this, but speaking of how this can be effective in witnessing, I think far better than just laying them around behind the scenes is to actually hand them out. What I believe about gospel tracks,
[9:29] I know this to be true, is that they make the first step easy in trying to get your foot in the door and trying to get a conversation open about the gospel and Christ. Without a gospel track, sometimes you, I mean, you can't just walk up and say, are you going to hell? That's just, you know, it's not going to be received, or walk up to them and say, do you know Jesus Christ? He died for your sin? I mean, you're going to be the weirdo, but there's ways of breaking that ice, and there's certainly ways that people teach and instruct on how to comment on their shoes, on something, find something in common, and then work the conversation to Christ, and I'm for that, too, and people that are good, that's just friendly and can talk circles around everybody else, they can find a way to get it in, but the trouble, if there's trouble in that, is that you have to, once you get them talking, then you have to work it in, whereas the gospel track opens the door right away and just says, can I give you this, and then you just start by explaining what it is, and it's kind of like that Bible thing where it's not me against you, it's like, I have this thing here, and it's going to tell you about Jesus Christ, that he died for your sin, and you can already be right into the gospel, and even use that as a means to witness to them, so I think gospel tracks are incredibly effective. I can tell you some stories, I'll tell you one story, but there's thousands, and probably much more than that, but I know a man, I know him personally, that was a rough guy, he grew up and was in a biker gang for a while, he was just, he was a tough dude, but just a mess, just a drunk, just a total mess, and things were falling apart in his life, his health was shot, he was sitting at his dining room table on a Saturday morning, still half buzzed from the night before, and he said, I was sitting there thinking, I'm going to kill myself, I can't stand living this life anymore, and that's what was on his mind, he just was, he's about to get a revolver, he didn't know if he had the guts to do it, but that was what he was thinking, and a knock came at his door, and so he went and answered the door, and here's two teenage girls from a local Baptist church going on visitation Saturday morning with their youth group, and they just, he didn't have anything for these girls, get lost, but they were able to get their material in his hand, he just took it, shoved it in his pocket, his leather jacket, and so those girls are all scared, and oh, he just slammed the door in her face, and they just went away, you know, that's how you feel, you think, what a terrible thing, that's why we don't come out here and do this, you know, so the man goes back, and he just goes back to his mess, but he got distracted from what he was thinking about doing, and he didn't do anything, and I think he, I want to say it was weeks, I don't know that it was months, but he tells the story that he came to that same place, that same spot at the table, and the same thoughts of, I can't keep doing this anymore, I'm going to kill myself, and he said he reached his hand into his pocket, and there was that piece of paper that these two girls handed him a few weeks before, he pulled it out, and he looked at it, and it said some church, and he's like, it's either the revolver or this church, and he really wasn't committed to the revolver, so he went to the church on Sunday, he said he lasted about 15 minutes, he couldn't stand it, that preacher, as soon as he started preaching, he's just like, forget this,
[13:12] I'm out of here, he's trying to yell at me, and tell me I'm this and that, he took off, and so he left, and he tells the story that that whole week, it was just ripping him up, because his life was pathetic, it was such an empty mess, he knew he needed something, and he, that preacher made him mad, he didn't want anything to do with that, but it was drawing him back, and he said he came, I think maybe two weeks went by, and he went back, and long story short, the guy walked the aisle, trusted Christ as his savior, and God used two teenage girls, and a little piece of paper, which was a track, with a church address on it, and that's just one, they're good stories, you know, there's books on this stuff, they're phenomenal reads, Chick Publications, they put out their newsletter all the time, with these little, little blurbs of these kind of things, of soul winners that have used tracks, and people that have gotten saved, and somebody says, I got saved by reading, this was your life, I was such and such, and they tell the story, it's incredible, it'll fire you up, just reading that, these things work, and God uses them to get the gospel to the lost sinners, so use gospel tracks, use them, you can't make somebody get saved, you can't make somebody read them, and sometimes you can't even open a Bible in front of them, but you might be able to get a track in their hand, or you might be able to get a track to a place that somebody will come upon it, and the Lord could use it, I think it's a, it's a great approach to witnessing, and there's no shortage of ways to use them, I'll give you a quick example, we'll run out of time quick here, there was the 4th of July, and in our town, and I just was sitting there thinking, I kind of was in charge of the track ministry, and I was sitting there thinking of just how could we, what could we do, the 4th is coming up here, it was just about a few weeks away, and I thought, there's going to be people all over our county, at these specific, you know, in our town, there's specific spots where people sit and watch fireworks, now fireworks in other places of the country, they have it on a specific day, on a time, and they light them off as a community, not, not like here, where everybody in their backyards are lighting them off whenever they want to, it's a little different, but it's legal, and the community puts them on, so I thought, there's going to be people just sitting all over these parking lots, these, these specific areas, one was a school, one was a groceries, there's, there's going to be hundreds and hundreds of people that just come out there, they hang out when the sun's going down, the kids are playing, guys are going around selling glow sticks, and I was like, why couldn't we just get some, some red, white, and blue, patriot, patriotic kind of looking gospel tracks, and assemble a team, and we'll just split up, and we'll just canvas all of this stuff, and so we did, we ordered them, and we got the tracks in, and we got the people together, and we all prayed, and we all went out, and we just, we just went through, people sitting in the back of their pickups, people sitting on their lawn chairs, just, it was so easy, because everybody's in a good mood, everybody's happy, everybody's can't wait for, they're excited for the fireworks, you just go through and have a smile on your face, and say, can I give you something to read, can I give you something to tell you about Jesus Christ, it's, it's the greatest story ever, the gospel, it just, anything, you're just flying through, and they're all taking them, and they're not, I don't even know if anybody said no, I don't know, it was just that kind of perfect environment, perfect event, for a good track blitz, and I don't know what came of that, I don't know if anybody trusted Christ from that, I don't know if anybody came to church because of that, I don't know, but I know that we sought some souls, and it was an effective way to get it in their hand, and from then, who knows how many people sat with that track in one pocket, and a revolver in the other hand, who knows how many of those stories come about, I'll tell you one thing, I am excited that I have something, I have a real hope in this one, in tracks,
[17:12] I have a real hope that there's some rewards, some treasures laid up in heaven for me, because of handing out gospel tracks to strangers, because of going out in these events, and these blitzes, and just, and dumping them out, and not being able to follow up, not being able to see results, but just leaving it in the Lord's hands, and trusting that somewhere along the way, something, maybe, maybe I'll just be like, anything Lord, and he says, nope, I'll say, okay, but I did it anyway, for you, but I do have this hope that there's something for that, maybe there's some lost soul that got saved, you, oh man, the stories go, they go on and on and on, how, how one man trusts Christ, and then what takes place in his family's life, and then in getting called to a field, into a ministry, and then just, it goes, but it all goes back to one man, and one person that led him to the Lord, and there's countless stories, so know the scriptures, Christian, have a desire to be a soul winner, and get into your Bible, and look at those passages, and look at those verses, and if it takes just picking up a track, and reading through it, the verses, and getting familiar with it, then start there, but don't be ashamed to do it, don't be afraid to do it, you can do it, you can do all things through Christ, which strengthens you, and in this area, I'm pretty sure he'll be on board with it, if you want to win a soul to Christ, and you commit to that, then know the scriptures, and secondly, use gospel tracks, and we'll probably, I guess we'll stop there, there's six more to go, you