RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Evangelism – 4 Luke 13:5; Matthew 9:18
Sammy Tippit: I am so excited about sharing how to share your faith and talking about that with Wayne Jenkins. Wayne is the director of evangelism for the Louisiana Baptist Convention. You have taught people how to share Christ with others for so many years. We appreciate all you’ve done in the past and what you’re doing right here with us. In our last session, we were talking about the condition of people and how we need to pray in light of that condition.
Wayne Jenkins: That’s right.
Sammy: Now I want us to turn a corner a little bit on that and ask, “Okay, what are the things we need to pray for them? What does the Scripture say about that condition? How do we pray for people who need Christ?”
Wayne: Well, one of the things we ought to pray for is that their hearts would be receptive to the message. If you’re even praying for that laborer as he goes, are you praying for yourself as you go? Are you praying for that person, that their heart would be receptive? When you read the parable of the soils… There was nothing wrong with the seed. That’s the Word of God.
There’s never anything wrong with the seed, but it fell on different kinds of soil. It was the cultivated soil where it found a lodging place. So we pray that God may do a work in that person’s life, whatever that may be. It may be a series of events. It may be an illness. It might be a positive thing. I can recall one couple who were lost. They had the birth of a child, and that opened the door to sharing the gospel. It was a good thing, but it was a thing that cultivated their hearts to be receptive.
Sammy: Yeah. I remember I prayed for my mother for 25 years. She was a tough lady. She had gone through a lot of difficult things in her life and had some bitterness there, but I prayed and prayed and prayed, and over those years, you could just see God softening her heart. I would share with her. Then one day, she called me and said, “I need Jesus.” So we pray for that receptivity and God will open their hearts.
Wayne: That’s right. That’s exactly right.
Sammy: Only God can make them receptive. Okay, what else?
Wayne: Well, we talked about their being blind. One of the things we want to pray for is that their eyes would be opened. They can read the gospel. In fact, we may well talk about one of the tools that we’ll give them. It may be a marked New Testament you give somebody and are praying for them, that as they read those Scriptures you have marked for them, God would open their eyes that have been blinded to the gospel.  It may be… I had a young man who just said, “I can’t believe in God at all.” I gave him Josh McDowell’s book More Than a Carpenter and prayed that God would open his eyes. He read it all night long, came back the next morning, and said, “I understand now. I’m ready to trust in Christ.”
Sammy: You know, I have some friends who lived in Iran. They were there, and someone gave them a New Testament. They began to read it, and it was just like, “Wow, I didn’t know this about Jesus!” It was literally what you’re talking about here. Their eyes were opened. The whole family came to know Jesus. It was just tremendous. So we pray for that. One of the things I want to just keep reminding everyone of is to remember that we’re going to be sharing, we’re going to be using some methods and things later on, but this is a deeply spiritual work.
Wayne: That’s exactly right.
Sammy: So we need to pray for people’s eyes to be opened. What else?
Wayne: They have to repent. The Bible is clear on that. “…except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” I mean, there are several places in the Scripture that say you have to repent. So we pray that they would repent of the life they’ve been living, repent of their unbelief.
Sammy: That’s a big deal.
Wayne: That’s not just of a sin but of the sin of unbelief. We pray that they would do that about- face that the word repentance is talking about.
Sammy: Let me just give a definition of repentance. The word repent… You’re referring to Luke 13:3-5. Jesus said that.
Wayne: That’s right.
Sammy: “Except you repent, you’ll perish.” But that word repent means to have a change of heart, a change of direction, and a change of mind. There’s this transformation that takes place, so we need to pray for them. We can’t change them ourselves. We need to pray for God to be at work in them, that they would be willing to turn, willing to turn away from that, to turn to Christ.
Wayne: Yeah. It’s one thing to say, “I believe,” but that belief has to come to a point of repentance.
Sammy: Right. Okay, what else?
Wayne: Then the other thing I think… Once they come to Christ, we don’t quit praying for them. We’re praying for a total and radical transformation. They’re babes in Christ. It’s just like with anybody else. They have to learn to walk. They may have some habits. I remember Dr. Roy Fish, my old professor of evangelism, talked about a guy he was witnessing to at the airport who was a pilot. He would see that man all the time.
He said that when he would eat with that man out there… At first the pilot was using some pretty rough language. He said he never corrected the pilot, but then one day he came and just prayed for him. One day they sat down to eat, and the pilot let one of those words slip out and said, “You know, I shouldn’t be talking like that now that I’m a believer.” Well, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s just an example, but it’s of the whole lifestyle, that transformation…
Sammy: We all have this.
Wayne: Yes. That’s right.
Sammy: We’re always in this continual process of being changed, but we need to especially… When someone comes to Christ, like you said, they’re a new babe in Christ. The Bible says they’re born of the Spirit but they’re born as babes, so they need care. A lot of that care comes from praying for them.
Wayne: That’s right. I think one other thing would be an act of obedience, that they too would be that person who would begin to share, and that you would help them. Now one of the things I find is that some people think some other people are impossible. “There’s just no way I can take that person and give him the gospel and he’ll ever change the way he lives, the kind of person he is.”
When you read about the rich young ruler… He comes to Christ, he rejects, and then Christ says to the disciples, “It’s as difficult for a rich man to be saved as for a camel to go through an eye of a needle.” We could spend the rest of the Bible study hour talking about what the eye of the needle was.
Sammy: Right.
Wayne: That’s a moot point. He’s talking about how it’s difficult. What’s not moot is that they go on to say, “Well, who then can be saved?” He says, “With God, nothing is impossible.” I think that’s what we need to hang on to with these people who seem impossible. Remember that with God, nothing is impossible. Pray with that in mind.
Sammy: You know, you’ve talked about what the Scripture says. In the early American history of the Christian church… I’ve read of these evangelists who would go into these towns and ask, “Who’s the meanest, worst, drunkest, most despicable character in town?” Then they would key in on that person. They would pray for him or her. Then they would share Christ with him or her. When that person would come to Christ, the word would spread throughout the whole town.
Wayne: It would explode.
Sammy: Then sometimes the entire town would come to Christ.
Wayne: That’s exactly right.
Sammy: Because people would see, “Well, if God can do it for that person, then God can do it for me.” You see that. It’s sort of an interesting thing to see. The impossible is what we need to be praying for and praying about.
Wayne: Yeah. That’s right. I think sometimes they’re those people who are closest to us. We just think, “I’ve done everything I can with my brother, and he’s just impossible.” But we can’t give up. We ought to repent of our lack of faith in the God who works the impossible.
Sammy: See, with my mother and my brother, I would say that was… Sometimes I would say, “Oh man, I just want to quit praying because it just seems so hard,” but God wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let me. Keep praying. My brother, by the way… I hope people don’t think I’m saying something out of line here, but he tells me, “Sammy, tell people everywhere you go here what Jesus did for me.”
Wayne: Amen.
Sammy: Because God set him free, as I said. I mean, his life was hopeless. God set him free, and as a result of that… He’s a simple guy, but he just wants people to really know Christ. So let’s run through this list really quickly.
Wayne: All right. First of all, we have to pray for the laborers. We talked about that. We spent a lot of time on that. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers…” The problem is not the harvest; the problem is we don’t have enough laborers.
Sammy: Right.
Wayne: Then we begin to pray for the individual. We pray in light of the Scriptures and what kind of condition they’re in. Then from there, there are some things we pray. We pray that their heart would be cultivated, that the seed would be there, and that their eyes would be opened by the Spirit of God. We pray that they would repent, come to that place and repent and believe.
Sammy: Okay, that’s the third thing.
Wayne: Then we pray that there would be a total transformation of their life when they come to Christ and that then they would begin to obey him in sharing their faith too.
Sammy: So now you know how to pray for people. What you need to do is start praying and then let God do what he wants to do.
Wayne: Amen.