Ouch...Nuff said

Keith Green - Asleep In The Light

Quote of the week

The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become. -- Henry Martyn

This Guy Gets It!

Watch this video all the way through. The last four words of this video are shocking!

Quote of the Week

“Evangelism is not salesmanship It is not urging people, pressing them, coercing them, overwhelming them, or subduing them. Evangelism is telling a message. Evangelism is reporting good news.” - Richard C. Halverson

Witnessing Tip #1

Always, always, always carry tracts where ever you go. As Charles Spurgeon said, “Get good striking tracts, or none at all.” First and foremost, get tracts that thoroughly explain the Gospel. Don’t get ones that are vague or water down the Gospel. I steer away from booklet tracts; they are too long. I personally like money tracts. The $3, million, $0, and billion dollar bills are my personal favorites. They are a joy to hand out. People gladly take them and have even asked for more to give to their friends. I always have them with me and give them to cashiers, waitresses, tellers, and anyone else who serves me.

Tracts are also good ice breakers when you want to swing a conversation to the spiritual. Often I will strike up a conversation with someone, talk briefly, then hand them a tract, and say, “Did you get one of these?” I will let them look it over a second and then say, “That is actually a Gospel tract. If you flip it over, it tells you how to get right with God…Do you ever give that any thought?” Now the Gospel is the subject of the conversation! It works every time.

Tracts are also essential tools for the shy Christian. If you can’t bring yourself to talk to a stranger about the Gospel, hand them a tract. If you can’t get up the nerve to give a stranger a tract, leave them in place where people can find them, bathrooms, ATMs, benches in the mall, under windshield wipers, inside books at bookstores, in pockets of new clothes, ect.

I strongly believe that every Christian’s duty is to share the Gospel, and we all need to do something. Distributing tracts is the least a Christian can do. People are lost in their sins and need to hear the Gospel. Tracts are a valid and effect way to get the Gospel to the lost. Charles Spurgeon said, “But a touching gospel tract may be the seed of eternal life. Therefore, do not go out without your tracts.”

Click here to see my favorite tracts.

Quote of the Week

Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms. Confusion here is fatal. -J. I. Packer

The Christian's #1 Priority

What should be the top priority of each and every Christian? In what part of the Christian life should we be put most of our energy? A way to answer this would be to investigate what is most important to God. I submit to you that, when you scan the scriptures, the most important thing to God is His own glory, so revealing God’s glory should be the foremost Christian activity in our lives. How do we reveal God’s glory? What does this look like? Luckily, this is not a hard question to answer. The glory of God is best expressed through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It reveals His kindness, love, holiness, justice, wrath, and sovereignty. This is why the whole theme of the Bible is God’s redemption of man. The whole reason God took on human flesh was the redemption of man. Nothing brings more glory to God than the Gospel.

So, back to our original question: What should be the top priority of each and every Christian? The answer is: sharing the Gospel. We should be about sharing the Gospel more than anything else. Sharing the Gospel should take precedence over all other activities in our lives. The Gospel should be on the tip of our tongues at all times. We should never feed a hungry person without sharing the Gospel. We should never give a cup of cold water to someone without sharing the Gospel. If we fail to share the Gospel while performing acts of kindness, we just made them the most heinous acts of negligence and betrayal. Don’t be fooled by that old saying, “Preach the Gospel and use words when necessary.” This is not biblical! Romans 10:14 says, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” People need to hear the Gospel!

Taking the Gospel to the lost should be the obsession of every church, Sunday school class, youth group, women’s ministry, men’s ministry, single’s ministry, and senior’s ministry. If it is not, those ministries are utter and total failures. Ministry was never meant to be social clubs, and all too often this is exactly what many have become. Christians often seek to participate in building campaigns, men’s breakfasts, canoe trips, youth camps, Vacation Bible School, Sunday school, and other gatherings of believers more an aggressively pursuing the lost. This is wrong! We need to be as passionate about sharig the Gospel as God is about saving the lost.

One to Remember

What if You Were Dead in Your Sins, and Chrisians Overlooked You? Will You Go?

Watch this video a few times. Listen to the message. It's powerful! Click here for lyrics

Open-air Preaching in Clarksville, TN

Today, while sharing the Gospel in downtown Clarksville, TN, I saw a group of about eight to ten people waiting in line for an office to open. I took the opportunity to preach the Gospel to them. I gave all of them a million dollar bill Gospel tract and stood back to preach. I was able to record it with my digital recorder. Here is how it went…

Click Here to listen

Quote of the Week

'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face -- whose mercy you have professed to obey -- and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
--William Booth

The Jesus Christians Forget

As I share the Gospel with people, I often have lost people tell me that God will not send them to hell because God is a God of love or that He is forgiving or that He is merciful. Because of their misconceptions of who God is, I often see no urgency on their part to get right with God. Where do lost people get this idea that God is a mere benevolent granddaddy in heaven? I believe it is a result of ignorance on today’s church. We love the Jesus of the Gospels, the meek lamb that takes away the sins of the world, but there is another portrayal of our Lord and Savior that is equally as valid. In fact, to prefer one portrayal of Christ over the other is idolatry; it is creating a Jesus that makes you comfortable and rejecting the Jesus that is revealed in scripture. This portrayal I write of is found in Revelations.

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. (Revelations 19:11-16)

This passage describes Jesus! Look at what it says! “…he judges and makes war… Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations… He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” This passage talks about the wrath of God that Jesus will bring on the ungodly, sinners, unbelievers, lost, and all those who have rejected the redemption found in Christ Jesus. This passage then continues to describe how Jesus will crush all the ungodly with mere words. “The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh” (19:21).

We must come to the realization that God is just at terrifying as He is loving. He is the God of wrath and the God of love. He is both, not either or. We must stop trying to lure the lost with a false impression of God’s love. We give the impression that God just throws His love around like a prostitute. What a blasphemous impression to give about our God! God’s love is best expressed in that He saved us from His own wrath by suffering His own wrath on our behalf. We need to be like Paul and tell lost people how God loved us. Paul wrote, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The love of God is available to all but will only be bestowed on those who repent and put their faith in Christ. Those who don’t will suffer the wrath of God. The Gospel message cannot only consist of merely saying God loves us; it must also consist of the terrifying wrath of God to make it not only biblical but also to make it make sense.

Preach the Gospel Clearly!

This morning during my quiet time, I was reading out of 1 Corinthians 14. In this chapter Paul writes about spiritual gifts. As he addresses the rules of speaking in tongues, he writes, “So also you, unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air” (Verse 9). While Paul is specifically addressing speaking in tongues in this passage, I don’t think it twisting or stretching the interpretation of this passage to conclude the following principle: Anytime there is preaching, the speech must be clear so that the hearers may understand what is being said. Nowhere is this more important than in the preaching of the Gospel.

My greatest burden is that the preaching of the Gospel has been mangled by meaningless clichés and unclear presentations. When I share the Gospel out on the streets and people tell me that they are Christians, I always ask them to tell me what someone has to do to become a Christian. A vast majority can’t answer this question! How can this be? I believe that there is a level of understanding of the Gospel that one must have to be able to respond to the Gospel. How can someone, who has come to the conclusion of their depravity in sin, their dependence on Christ crucified for salvation, and the fact they must repent and trust the savior, not be able to articulate what one must do to be saved? This just doesn’t make sense.

This is the result of Christians not preaching the clear message of salvation to the lost. I don’t know how many times I have heard preachers and Christians say things like “Ask Jesus into your heart.” Where did this come from? What does that mean? Did you know that this phrase is not even in the Bible? How does this get the message across that you must repent and trust Christ? It doesn’t! How about “Make Jesus Lord of your life or turn your life over to God?” This sounds right, but again, how does this get the message across that you must repent and trust Christ? Christians will also say to a lost person, “You must recognize you are a sinner, and receive Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.” Even this lacks much explanation. How does one receive the gift of salvation? There is more to it than just a mental assent to the Gospel message.

You may be thinking, “Come on! You are taking this too far.” I really don’t think I am. Like Paul wrote, “…unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken?” I think God’s word should never be fooled with. We should never take away from His glorious message of Christ crucified. This is exactly what we do when we use meaningless clichés and unclear presentations when sharing the Gospel. Why would we even want to play around with the Gospel? If lost people don’t come to an understanding of it, they will go to hell! Every time a Christian opens his mouth to share the Gospel, he must be sure to preach it in such a way that his hearers can understand their predicament in their sin, the consequences of their sins, and the kindness of God available to them through repentance and faith in Christ. If a lost person doesn’t understand all this at the end of a Gospel conversation, the Gospel of the Bible was not preached.

Do You Know You're Bad?

John Piper is a great American preacher who is in touch with his own depravity before Almighty God. Are you?

"Because of heretics like you, sir!"

The first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, is heckled during a “sermon” in England. I don’t know the name of the man who took a stand against Mr. Robinson’s heresy, but he is a new spiritual hero of mine. Just as Mr. Robinson was expressing his sadness and discouragement that the Anglican Communion would be tearing itself apart because two men want to engage in homosexually, this man stood up in a crowded church and called Mr. Robinson out on his heresy. Watch this video, and witness what a real Christian does when something threatens the purity of the Gospel message and the church. Watch how this congregation claps and sings to drown out this man's pleas for the people to repent. (Please excuse the first 10 seconds of this video; I couldn’t find another one.)


Thank you! Whoever you are. You are a shining example of a true Christian.

Stop Praying for Opportunities to Witness

“I don’t pray for opportunities to witness anymore because they are all around us; we just don’t take them.” I don’t know who said this, but ouch! This is so true! We as Christians know we need to be sharing our faith but don’t to it. There are lost people walking all around us, yet we can’t gather enough nerve to open our mouths for the Gospel. We will gladly chat away when we run into a stranger who is wearing our favorite collage football team’s logo, but we are too afraid to share the Gospel with a stranger. This mentality plagued me for years. I knew I needed to share the Gospel, but I couldn’t; I didn’t know how to. I recently heard that only 2% of Christians share their faith. This is so sad. Why is this? Charles Finney put his finger on the reason why: “It is the great business of every Christian to save souls. People complain that they do not know how to take hold of this matter. Why, the reason is plain enough; they have never studied it. They have never taken the proper pains to qualify themselves for the work. If you do not make it a matter of study, how you may successfully act in building up the kingdom of Christ, you are acting a very wicked and absurd part as a Christian.” He is right!

So what are you going to do about it? You need to learn how to share your faith. Let me give you some suggestions as how to do that. Ray Comfort wrote a book call The Way of the Master. This book got the ball rolling in my life learning to actively share faith. If you look on the right of your screen you will see a link to listen to Ray Comfort’s message entitled, “Hell’s Best Kept Secret.” If you can, listen to that right now. It is a powerful message about evangelism. I have been doing a lot of “street evangelism.” No, this does not mean that I roam the streets at night witnessing to bums, thugs, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Street evangelism or “public evangelism,” as I like to call it, is all about going out in public, whether it be the mall, Walmart, courthouse, college campus, Wendy’s, or anywhere people are, with the purpose of deliberately sharing the Gospel with strangers. It is not a passive kind of witnessing where a Christian would wait for a lost person to ask why he or she is so different. It is not forming a two-year relationship throwing a Frisbee back and forth to develop trust and credibility to earn the right to share with someone. No no, this is going out, striking up a conversation with a stranger, moving the conversation over to spiritual matters, and then sharing the Gospel.

“I could never do that.” “That is too scary.” These are some of the remarks I get from Christians. On the right side of your screen is a ticker that shows how many people have died since you opened this page. Look at how fast that this runs. It is amazing how many people die each day, and Christians don’t seem concerned enough to swallow their pride and fear to go out and share the gospel with a stranger. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will be concerned about where they spend eternity. I don’t doubt that you are concerned about where strangers will spend eternity, but will you do something about it? Charles Spurgeon said, “have you no wish for others to be saved, then you're not saved yourself be sure of that,” and Roy Hargrave said, “Reach out to lost people. Give them the truth. Be bold about it. Don't be sheepish or apologetic about it. What we do is the measure of what we really believe. The rest is just religious talk. Faith without works is dead.”

Many who profess Jesus as Lord will spend eternity in hell.

Matthew chapter 7 has always troubled me. I remember the first time I read Jesus' words, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven…” (Verse 21). This passage has troubled me so much throughout the years that I have memorized it without even making an attempt. This passage says that not everyone who considers Jesus lord will enter heaven. In other word, these people think they are right with God, saved, but they are not. Isn’t that scary? This poses a very important question to all who consider themselves saved. That question is: “How do you know you are not one of these people?”

Is it so easy to be saved? What does one have to do to be saved? This is a question I always ask people I encounter who believe themselves saved. I have found, too often, that many people who profess Christ have no clue as to how one is biblically saved. How can people who are saved not know how they got saved? That doesn’t make any sense. How can people who received a renewing of the heart and mind, who crossed over from death to life, who have had an encounter with the one true God, the Creator of the universe, not know how they got saved? I am afraid these are the people Jesus talks about in that verse that has echoed in my head all these years.

How can these people be so deceived? The problem is the watering down of the Gospel that has been taking place in churches, especially the American church. Silly little churchisms have replaced the Gospel message. “Accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior” and “Pray and ask Jesus into your heart” are probably the most common. What do they mean? What verses are they? These are not ways people are saved. We have reduced the Gospel to a mere desire, acceptance and a prayer. Did Jesus say, “The kingdom on God is near. Desire to be saved, accept me, and pray”? No! He said, “The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15).

We need to return to the Gospel of the Bible. Where are the preachers and evangelists that preach, “…small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it”(Matthew 7:14) and “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5)? This is what we need.

“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to” (Luke 13:24).

How to get right with God

Imagine this for a moment: a scientist comes up to you and says that when you were born, a computer chip was placed in your head that recorded every thought you ever had. He then asks you for unlimited access to what was recorded to be used in a documentary. What would you say? Think about that for a second. Every thought you ever had! Every hateful thought! Every lustful thought! All these thoughts would be on display for all your friends and family to see. You would have to consider if you could handle the number of people that would be angry with you. What would you say to that scientist?

Do you realize what your thoughts represent? They are the unrestrained you. They are who you truly are without any outside influences. That is a scary thought. Most people think they are good enough to go to heaven because they never killed anyone or committed a serious crime. They don’t think they have done anything that would justify God sending them to hell, but do you realize that God has seen your thought life? Do you know that He be acquainted with the unrestrained you? Do you know that God considers your thought as serious as your actions? Have you ever looked with sexual desire at someone who you are not married to? Jesus said, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Have you ever lied? Stolen? Used God’s name in vain, as a word to express disgust? If you are like everyone else, you have done these things, and God sees you as a lying, thieving, blaspheming, adulterer at heart. Jesus said, “…out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matthew 15:19). It may be hard to admit to yourself that you have a wicked heart, but look at what the evidence shows. Here is the scary part.

The Bible says, “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…” (Hebrews 9:27) When you die, you will face God in judgment. If God judges you by the Ten Commandments, would you be innocent or guilty? Keep in mind that lying, stealing, and committing adultery are some of the Ten Commandments. How many did you break in your thought life? You would be guilty. This next question is serious; take some time to think about it. If you are guilty, should God send you to heaven or hell? When I ask people this question, many times they say, “probably hell.” I tell them they are almost right and that if they remove the word “probably,” they will be totally right. Revelations says, “the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral…the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (21:8). This is serious. Does it concern you that you will go to hell because of this? It should!

Sometimes people tell me that they will be okay because they will just ask God for forgiveness. Do you know that God just can’t forgive our sins? Let me explain. If there was a judge on the bench, where you live, who would dismiss anyone’s case that came before him just because they were sincerely sorry and asked for forgiveness, how long do you think he would have a job? Not very long! He would not be just. Since God is perfect, He is just. God does not turn a blind eye to sins. He just can’t forgive sins. A punishment must be carried out.

Do you know that God is kind and made a way that He can be forgiving and just at the same time? God took the form of a human being in Jesus Christ and suffered the wrath of God on the cross. Let me illustrate what Jesus did. Let’s say you stole a million dollars from a large company. You went out and spent it all on a good time. A year later the law caught up with you. You are arrested, put on trial, found guilty, and given a two million dollar fine, and if you couldn’t pay it, you were to spend 80 years in prison. You don’t have two million dollars, so you will go to prison and likely die there. But, let’s say you have a rich uncle. His lawyers told him this would likely happen, so before court that day, he goes out and sells everything he owns, all his houses, cars, and land. He cashes in all his investments, bank accounts, and even rolls all his pennies. He has exactly two million dollars, and stands up in the courtroom, holds up that check and says, “Here is the two million.” The judge would let you go because his ruling was satisfied. But who suffered the wrath of the court that day? You or your uncle? It was your uncle. He gave all he had to pay your fine. This is what Jesus did on the cross. He suffered the wrath of God for you, and the Bible says you can be a partaker of this if you do two things. Jesus said, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15)

Jesus said you must repent and believe what I just explained above. You must repent. This meant you stop doing the things God has said is wrong. You must make a conscience effort to stop lying, stealing, committing adultery in your heart by looking lustfully, and anything else God says is wrong. Not only this, but you must start doing the things God says is right. You find this knowledge in the Bible. This is why it is important to read the Bible; you can find out what God hates and stop doing that, and you can find out what God loves and start doing that. The other thing you must do is believe the good news. In other words, put your faith in Christ, relying on what He did on the cross to make you right with God. Faith is more then a mere belief. If I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute on, would I be believing in that parachute or putting my faith in that parachute? I would be putting my faith in it.

This is what the Bible says one must do to get right with God. It also says that when you do this, God will renew your heart and mind. You will start hating the sins you once loved and love the things of God you once hated. It is how you will know you are right with God. If you don’t develop a loathing for the sins in your life, you can’t be assured of your salvation. The Bible says to “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Make sure you are saved.


150,000 people die everyday. That is two people a second. Please consider what you just read. You never know which second you and another person will be standing before God in judgment.