Witnessing: A Conversation, Not a Presentation

What would be their focus as they walked the streets of our world? Would they want to go to the Super Bowl, the Final Four, or a World Series game? Would they want to go on a cruise? Would they want to spend hours watching television since they have never seen one? Would they want to take vacations and travel by plane since that was not part of their lives?

There is really only one thing that they would want to do, because there is definitely one thing that you can’t do in Heaven. You cannot share your faith with a lost person. Why? There are none there. Zero. Heaven is a place for God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and saved people. No one else is allowed. It is an exclusive club, and you must have the right ticket stamped in the blood of Jesus Christ to get in. Those servants of the Most High God would come back here and hand out all of the tickets they could. They would want to guarantee that everyone they encountered could experience the pleasure of being with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Forgiver of our sins, the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, forever and ever.

Are you, parents, training up your children to be soul-winners for the Most High God?

Are you, parents, training up your children to be soul-winners for the Most High God? A father recently approached me at a conference with his two teenage sons. He told me that his boys had never seen their dad share his faith before, but that they were walking over to a mall that afternoon and, for the first time, they were going to watch their dad share his faith. He had tears in his eyes because he knew it would be a life-changing event for his whole family.

Recently, I met a family where the 17-year-old son wanted to go out witnessing with his father for his birthday. Now that is a birthday that he will never forget.

A medical doctor once told me that when his boys started witnessing, he noticed three changes in them. He noticed they wanted to read their Bibles more to become better equipped to answer the questions they heard while out witnessing. They wanted to pray more because you don’t want to be alone when out reaching the lost. And lastly, he noticed that evangelism drove his sons away from the sins that so easily entangled them. The sins just didn’t satisfy anymore.

Adults, I challenge you—don’t simply gain knowledge from Answers in Genesis and then keep it to yourselves. Don’t learn all of this information and only share it with other Christians. Take these truths and go out with your family and friends and have a conversation, not a presentation, with a lost person today.

In the book of Luke, in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, there is a very interesting statement made in verses 27 and 28 of chapter 16: “Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” Do you see what the rich man said? He wanted someone to warn his five brothers to go nowhere near Hell when they left their world. How can it be that people in Hell believe in personal evangelism, but there are people reading this article that do not? The rich man wanted conversations to happen with his lost family members. Do you?

Ray Comfort said about my first book, One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven, “If you want to serve God with more passion, open the pages of this book and warm yourself on its hot coals.” We do not have the right to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and not be zealously passionate about reaching the lost individuals around us.

Jesus Christ came to seek and save that which is lost. If it was good enough for Him, it ought to be good enough for you and me. If it was good enough for Jesus to have conversations with the rich young ruler and the woman at the well about eternal matters, it ought to be good enough for us to strike up a conversation with a lost person today. A teenager emailed me and said that we are not on a pleasure cruise going to Heaven, but on a battleship at the gates of Hell trying to prevent anyone from going there. That teenager has it figured out. Do you?

Pope John Paul II. Peter Jennings. Johnny Carson. All dead. The world is trying to tell you that they no longer exist. Not true. Those men are either alive and well, or alive in Hell. One or the other. There are no other options. Your family members, friends, and even strangers are all going to be alive 300 million years from now in Heaven or Hell. Do you care? Do you care enough to do something about it? Be one of those followers of Jesus that no one can mistake as someone who did not care about their eternal destiny. Time is very precious. Use it wisely in the days to come.