I’d like to introduce the speaker this morning. He’s Dana Condon from New York.
Hi, I’m Dana Condon from New York. It’s nice to be down here in your spring weather. It’s much warmer down here than we’re having up in New York right now, and I’m glad to be with you to share on this matter of the gospel.
Last night I shared, and of course, I think I don’t need to say that outreach, evangelism, and the gospel need to be held in context. There are many things the Lord is doing in this day. He’s building His church. He is bringing His people to a real understanding of Himself. He’s recovering a lot of stuff that has been lost over the years. Evangelism fits in as one of the notches in the whole thing.
You know, it’s hard to hold everything in balance. But as we follow the Lord, He seems to bring us through seasons of emphasis. There are times when He emphasizes relationships, times when He emphasizes prayer, and all of these things are part of our life together. Yet He brings us through seasons.
I trust that your spiritual exercise in these recent days over this matter of the gospel and outreach is an indication that the Lord wants you to enter into a season of harvest for His sake. It is an act of worship to evangelize, just as surely as it is an act of worship to raise our hands and thank the Lord for what He has done for us. It is an act of worship to be obedient to the Lord.
I remember a stunning meeting that I was privileged to attend one time. There was a group of about twenty people who lived some fifteen miles from the assembly they attended on Long Island. They said, “How about if we have a meeting over where we live?” So we rented a hall and set up a series of six Sunday-night gospel meetings.
These twenty folks had been praying, and the doors opened. In came 150 people. Many knew the Lord, and a number of them did not. This was early in the 1970s, probably 1973, when worship was an experience unknown to many Christians.
We began to sing choruses in a free worship form—songs such as “Great Is the Lord,” “Thy Lovingkindness,” and others. We went through ten or twelve choruses straight. The folks had their hands raised, and we were singing “Hallelujah, Hallelujah.” I looked down, and there was a lady in the second row just bawling.
Eventually everybody noticed. She was crying so loudly that there was a ruckus. Of course, the fellows ministering tried to pretend nothing was happening, so I went right along. Meanwhile, a couple of people went over to her.
This lady, in her late twenties, got soundly saved that day. She was a Mormon, but that day she found the Lord. Her testimony was, “When the saints were worshiping, I saw the Lord. What else could I do?”
Isn’t it amazing? The Lord’s form of evangelism is this: the Lord’s people being preoccupied with Christ.
Last night I shared a little bit about the gospel. My hope is simply that as we understand again the Gospels and see Jesus of the Gospels—Who is the content of the gospel and also the preacher of the gospel—somehow He will infect us in such a way that we will be the gospel and preach the gospel. People can see Jesus in us as we relate these things.
Somebody asked me after the meeting last night, “What did you exactly mean about the gospel of the kingdom?” Obviously, once again, Dana was as clear as anything. This person said, “What did you say, anyway?”
I think the gospel of the kingdom, simply put, is this: I do not know how effective it is when we take somebody who already knows that they are a sinner and focus them on this world. We say, “Now look, you’re not making it in this world, and you’re a sinner, and you need Jesus.” They may say, “Well, yeah, I can’t argue with that.”
But the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom is such that you preach Christ and the reality of this unseen kingdom in such a way that it becomes the reality they see. It is not so much an awareness of this life as it is an awareness of that dimension which is here, near, and needs to be entered into through repentance and faith.
It is a question of preaching the gospel of the kingdom in such a way that people see the King. As that old chorus says, when you turn your eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face, the things of earth grow strangely dim because there is an awareness of this kingdom.
All of us, in our experience as Christians, are aware of this duality in which we live. You live in this world. We can worship in the morning, and somebody may be looking at his shoes, thinking, “Oh man, they need polishing.” Then something is said—perhaps the testimonies that are spoken—and suddenly we are brought into another realm.
There we are. Well, that is the kingdom. That is what meaning really is. That is what life really is. Yet in five minutes we can slip right back into this real world. We are living in between.
I believe the gospel of the kingdom brings people into an awareness of this kingdom. That is what John the Baptist had an anointing to do. He made Jewish people realize that the kingdom of God was not merely that earthly place called Israel. There was something there, but it was beyond them. It was another realm, right there on top of them: a spiritual dimension to which they needed to open their eyes.
This is the gospel we need to preach today. No matter what secular man may say, God is as near as their heart and their mouth. There is a whole dimension of spiritual beings that God wants to make us aware of as we enter in and recognize Jesus as the King.
Another thing I shared last night was the practical end of what we are trying to do. There is a twofold end to my being here in these couple of weeks. First of all, as it says at the end of Acts 2, the Lord added daily to the church such as were being saved.
It is my hope that the church can engage in normal evangelism. What was normal evangelism? It was not having a revival meeting every week or drumming people up with special tents and all this kind of stuff. The normal evangelism of the church is carried on through our daily lives, and the Lord adds daily through the church those whom He appoints to be saved.
But it involves a sensitivity on our part to the Lord leading us to people. We tend to become passive, and we are not engaging in normal evangelism.
People are afraid of witnessing and evangelism because they envision themselves having to stand outside the supermarket every Saturday and preach. But really, daily evangelism—life-worked-out evangelism in the church—is simply this: if you, through your faithfulness, can make contact with one person who is not a Christian this year, get to know them.
Become a long-suffering friend of theirs. Help them understand the gospel. Pray with them through their problems. Somehow be an instrument along the chain of several instruments God will use to bring them to the Lord. If you could do that with just one person this year, it would make a tremendous difference.
Forget your whole neighborhood. We are always thinking, “Well, I’ve got to reach out to twenty-five people.” It is so large that we never get to it. So how about one person? “Lord, just one person.” Pray for the one person, work with the one person, and help the one God seems to lead you to. Maybe He will lead you to two or three.
If everybody were doing this kind of thing, the church would be multiplying. Now, we are not out for numbers. As a matter of fact, once there is a harvest, God often cuts the thing right off so there can be consolidation and growth. A season of harvest does not go on forever. The Lord gathers in a bunch, and then He works them and incorporates them into the body of Christ.
May this be a season of harvest here in our midst. May the Lord do His work in your heart as well.
Next Sunday morning, we are going to have a gospel meeting from ten to eleven. It is going to be a one-hour meeting—a blessing for many in itself. We are going to sing a couple of songs: “Amazing Grace,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” songs that a person who is not a Christian would probably know.
We will have two testimonies, special music, and I will get up with my guitar and sing a song. Then I will preach a short gospel message, and we will have a response time. That is it. Simple. But the Spirit of God will be here in a mighty way.
Your involvement is really the key. I would like to challenge everybody here to go before the Lord before this day is out and simply say, “Lord, is there someone You want me to bring next Sunday morning?”
I believe everybody here can bring somebody who needs to hear the gospel next Sunday. But I know everybody is chicken. Everybody thinks somebody else will do it. Everybody thinks somebody else is not as busy as they are or has more contact with the world. Forget all that stuff.
Go before the Lord and say, “Now, Lord, is there someone?” If someone comes to your mind, then you pray, you ask, you bring them, and you sit with them.
When people are truly willing, it is amazing the doors that open up. If your heart is not willing, you may say, “Lord, is there somebody?” but you will not hear. You will say, “That’s impossible. My uncle could never get saved.” But if your heart is open, then listen and obey.
It would be a marvelous thing if we could come together next Sunday morning with this place packed out—half Christians and believers, half guests and seekers. God would move in a mighty way.
This Wednesday night at prayer meeting, I suggested that we have a chalkboard up here and write the names of people we are praying for and asking to come. I know you may ask some people and they will say yes, but I suggest you bring them because eighty percent of people who say they will come will not. The devil will snag them up.
But if you say, “I’ll be by Sunday morning at 9:30,” it is kind of hard for them to call you up and say, “Well, I don’t want to come because my shoes aren’t shined.” People are more likely to come if you are going to pick them up.
This is spiritual warfare behind all this activity. I hope you will engage in it with me, and we will have a gospel meeting next Sunday. It can be a real moving of God.
Now, in 2 Timothy 4, Paul says to young Timothy:
But thou, be sober in all things, suffer hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry.
The question cannot be answered whether Timothy was actually an evangelist by calling. But as a responsible brother and a servant of the Lord in the church, Paul is exhorting him to do the work of an evangelist. My exhortation to all of us is to do the work of an evangelist.
Who is an evangelist anyway? This person, an evangelist, is not mentioned very often in the Scriptures. In Ephesians 4:11, in the list of ministries, you have apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. In Acts 21, Philip is mentioned and called an evangelist. He is the only one specifically called an evangelist. Then, in 2 Timothy 4, Timothy is exhorted to do the work of an evangelist.
An evangelist is somebody who sees a revelation of the Lord of the harvest. They do not just see lost souls. What they actually see is the Lord of the harvest.
The Lord of the harvest shows an evangelist that the fields are white unto harvest. Do you remember that story from John 4? After Jesus’ interview with the woman at the well, the disciples came back. Jesus said, “Look out here at the fields. Do not tell me that there are still a couple of months before harvest time. I say to you, the fields are now white unto harvest.”
The disciples looked out and said the fields were not ripe yet. Jesus may have been pointing to the actual fields, which were not ripe, but He was making a parable. Every time they passed through Samaria, the disciples had the idea that nobody there was ready to get saved.
They might say, “The people in Richmond are not ready. They are gospel-hardened. They have heard too much on the radio and seen too much on television. We need to go up to New York. That is where the harvest is ripe.” But Jesus knew the Lord of the harvest, and it gave Him different eyesight.
When Jesus looked out at the Samaritans, He said, “You fellows do not even realize it, but these folks are ripe for the picking.” The disciples looked at men after the flesh and saw compromised Jews. Jesus looked beyond the façade, saw hungry people, and said, “These folks are ripe.”
An evangelist also has some gift that enables them to contact the world. The gift varies. Some of the best evangelists I know have a big ear. They are listeners.
They listen when people talk, and they respond with a discernment that comes from listening to the Lord and listening to somebody talk. Most of us go through the workday while our associates are sending off little signals of despair, hopelessness, sinfulness, and guilt. We are so busy in our own lives that we are not even hearing what is going on.
But an evangelist picks up on it. The Lord says, “That person, that person right there.” Half the time, what brings somebody to the Lord is somebody who cares, listens, and shares the truth with them. That is a gift.
Others have a gift of wise counsel. Some have more outward gifts. Some people have a way of disarming people when they share the gospel.
I went out a number of times with Arthur Blessitt in the streets of New York City. This guy could disarm anybody. He did not take offense the way he shared the gospel. One time, at two o’clock in the morning in Times Square, he asked a fellow if he knew the Lord. The man pulled out a knife and said, “You pig.”
Arthur said, “Jesus loves you. You don’t need that. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’” The fellow put the knife away and listened. I mean, there was a gift there—a personal gift.
Some people the Lord uses with more spectacular gifts. The gift of healing is often used in evangelism. You find it in the Book of Acts, and it is still true today.
I do not consider myself a healer by any means. Jesus is the Healer. But in a Tuesday-night meeting, we gave an invitation and said, “Who here really feels like God could heal you and you need that?” About ten people came up, and some of them got healed that night.
It was not because I had some kind of special thing going. Jesus wanted to attest to the gospel that had been preached there. He sent the Holy Spirit behind to show those people that this is true.
My particular gift in this matter of evangelism is that I can take my guitar and sing, and people open up. Then I share the gospel. That is what I will do next Sunday morning, and that is what I do up in New York. I open it up with the guitar, and then I get in the gospel—the old G and G: guitar and gospel.
An evangelist is one of those fellows who is brave enough to pull in the net. There are a lot of folks who witness, but they just cannot draw it in. They cannot say, “Would you like to pray?” They cannot say it.
But there is always somebody willing to pull the net and say, “Now, buddy, are you ready to get serious with God? Let’s pray.” Sometimes people are ready to become Christians, and I pull the net. Other times, I get them to pray before they are even Christians: “Well, God, if You are real, prove Yourself to me.”
Evangelists are all kinds of strange characters: counselors, listeners, preachers, singers, one-on-one people, and different kinds of fishermen. Some use one little hook with a worm on it. Some folks throw out a whole net. That is the way God is.
Now here is my question: are you one? How many evangelists have we got here this morning? Who knows? Nobody wants to be called an evangelist. Some folks will almost admit they have a teaching ministry. Forget apostles. They went out with the New Testament—well, evangelists did not. They are still around.
Who cares about the name? We need folks to function. But we have to take this seriously. There are some of you here hiding under bushels.
If there are no evangelists willing to come out here, let me ask another question: how many of you are martyrs? Do I see any hands?
Here is your second mistake. You are not only unwilling to admit who is an evangelist here, but you do not realize that every Christian is a martyr. This Greek word, martyria, from which we get the word martyr, is the word translated 173 times in the New Testament as “witness.”
The Bible does not tell us to go out and evangelize 173 times. It tells us to bear witness. Only some Christians are given the gift of evangelism; every Christian is a witness.
Forget about saying, “I’m going to go out witnessing.” You are a witness. Your only choice is whether you are a good one or a sorry one. The moment you are a Christian, you are a witness, and that Greek word is martyr.
Look at Acts 1:8:
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Peter says at the end of his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, “We are witnesses of these things.” Before the Sanhedrin, he says, “We are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, Whom God hath given.” Paul shares that God appointed him to bear witness of the things of Jesus.
First John 1 is a perfect example of what it means to be a witness.
That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes,
That which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life—
And the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life,
Which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us—
That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also,
That ye also may have fellowship with us:
Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
John says, “This is how I bear witness.” A witness simply testifies to the things they have seen, heard, touched, and handled regarding Jesus.
God raises up evangelists, and they do a special work in the church, edifying the church through this matter of the gospel. But what God really wants is for us to understand this witness that we have to bear.
The greatest influx of evangelism and salvation in the church will happen the day regular saints—the non-evangelist saints—share with people they know the things they have seen, heard, touched, and handled regarding Jesus. That is the most powerful sermon you have ever heard.
When somebody stands up and does not give arguments, great theology, questions and answers, or refutations, but simply says, “This is what I touched. This is what I felt. This is what I heard from Jesus. This is how I responded,” the Holy Spirit comes down and bears witness with that witness.
Within that word martyr is the connotation of somebody who laid down his life. That is exactly what you have to do to bear witness.
First John was written by a man who ended up on the Isle of Patmos. Why? He says in Revelation that he was exiled because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. You know what that word testimony is? Martyr. The same word.
It is one thing to preach the word of God. Sometimes that does not ruffle too many feathers. A lot of folks throw Bible verses around. But then you preach and testify in such a way that you have felt, handled, and touched God through Jesus Christ, and suddenly the sparks fly. The devil gets angry, throws up opposition, and you may get exiled—or even lay your life down.
When we are martyrs, we share with people the things we have seen, heard, and touched, but we are willing to lay down our lives.
The problem with witnesses is simply being willing to lay down our lives. We are all chicken. Maybe somebody is not here, but then they are just some other kind of fowl.
Ask somebody who has faithfully witnessed a thousand times, and they are still chicken. There is something about being out there on the front line, speaking to unbelievers who may hit you, yell at you, or reject you. There is so much laying down of life involved that you are still chicken.
By the grace of God, and not because I wanted to be, I have been railroaded into all kinds of witnessing situations—soapboxes, outdoor meetings, indoor meetings, crusades. I have been through the whole thing. I want to tell you, I am still chicken.
You never overcome this, because you are out on the edge of the unknown with Jesus. There is a certain brokenness that has to happen for you to be an effective witness.
We all tend to stand on this thing called the threshold. I like this word threshold. I fell in love with it when I saw the movie The Right Stuff. Chuck Yeager was talking about breaking the sound barrier, and they called that place where you break the sound barrier the threshold.
The pilots believed that when you came to that threshold, demons in the sky grabbed hold of the plane and shook it. It was a superstition, but just before you hit the sound barrier, an experience of disorientation and dizziness happened. Chuck Yeager was the first fellow to break through the threshold.
I looked it up in the dictionary. One meaning of the word threshold is the end of the runway.
Folks, we are the best taxi-ers of airplanes the world has ever known. We fire up the engine, get down the runway, and say, “Hmm, let’s take it back around. I’m not sure the wind was right.”
About once a year, we get all worked up about this thing. “The engines are good. We are ready to go. Let’s witness.” Then our engines misfire. When the sisters are ready to evangelize, the brothers are not. When the young ones are ready, the old ones are not. The left wing is always dead. We have to circle around one more time.
God needs an airport like Hong Kong. If you do not make it off the runway, you go down into the water. The first time I flew into Hong Kong, all you saw was water on either side. You landed—boom—on this runway built out in the water. If you do not make it off, bye-bye. Down you go.
How do we get off? It is very simply a matter of laying down our lives.
Jesus said that nobody leaves house, mother, father, brothers, or sisters for His sake and the gospel’s sake without receiving a reward. In that context, He said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”
Every aspect of Christian life involves an experience of the cross if it is to be real. But I have a simple saying: the cross seems most evident in our lives at two points—when we really give ourselves to prayer and when we are willing to reach out and evangelize.
We experience the cross in prayer because we are in our closet. Nobody hears or appreciates. There is no human comfort through the thing. There is a lot of toil and labor, and only the Lord knows. Many of us cannot embrace that cross because it is too costly. But when you do, the Lord really answers prayer.
It is the same way with witnessing. We talk like we believe everything, but when you are out there on the firing line, you find out what you really believe. Do you really believe God is with you when someone is yelling at you? Do you believe it when one of your own relatives says, “You are never welcome back in my house if you ever talk about Jesus again”?
Though the cross is applicable to every area of our Christian life, the most obvious and contextual meaning of bearing the cross in the Gospels and Epistles has to do with sharing the gospel.
Paul, when he talks about his trials and tribulations, speaks of them in reference to sharing the gospel. The cross has its inward life and crushing effect on the soul, but it also has an outward manifestation in the persecutions that come from reaching out into this world.
There are two areas of self-denial I would like to share this morning if we would be effective witnesses. I believe that if we are faithful, the Lord will raise up some among us who are evangelists. But I want to talk to the witnesses here this morning. Who is that? Everybody here who is a Christian.
The first area of self-denial is willingness. Are you really willing to be a witness, or do your excuses, insecurities, and fear get in the way? Everybody is chicken, but what you do with your chickenness makes the difference.
Look at the prayer of a willing witness in Psalm 51. It is not only a great psalm of repentance in the life of David; there is a little section that speaks directly to our willingness. David confesses his sin regarding Bathsheba and Uriah.
Psalm 51:10-13 says:
Create in me a clean heart, O God;
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Thy presence;
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation;
And uphold me with a willing spirit.
Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways;
And sinners shall be converted unto Thee.
David knew very practically that there were conditions to his testimony standing in strength and converting sinners to a holy life. What were the barriers that had to be cleared away?
“Create in me a clean heart, O God.” There is no way we can get away from that. If we expect to be witnesses while our hearts are fouled with duplicity, then we do not understand the secret.
“Renew a steadfast spirit within me.” We are all fluctuating, and David says, “Lord, I know that I fluctuate. I need a steadfast spirit, a right spirit.”
“Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit.” David knew he was chicken. He knew that he might be willing today but not tomorrow unless the Lord sustained him with a willing spirit.
We do not have a willing battery that gets stored up. We have to exercise our will every day. Perhaps yesterday you were a spiritual giant, and today you are Minnie Mouse. There is no battery you take into the shop and build up so that every day you wake up willing.
You grow in the Christian life to the place where you have the sensitivity to bow before the Lord every day and say, “Lord, sustain me with a willing spirit.”
It is better to admit where we are with the Lord than to try to fake it. Say, “Lord, I am going to work today, but I do not really feel so hot. It is Monday, after all. I do not really feel willing to be a witness. Who wants to bother with people’s lives? I cannot even get my own together.”
“Lord, sustain me with a willing spirit. I say to You today, Lord, I am willing to testify to the things I have seen and heard if You will give me opportunity.”
There are so few saints willing to do that that whenever a saint does, they always get opportunity. I want to be so bold as to say that if you would be willing before God and say, “God, I am chicken, but despite that, I am willing. I open up my heart for an opportunity to share the things I have seen and heard with somebody who needs to hear it this week,” everyone who really said that today would have an opportunity by next Sunday.
That is how much God wants people who are open. God is dropping clues all over the place for us to pick up on, but we are going through there with our radios turned off instead of tuned in to His station.
You do not stop and buttonhole everybody at work. You simply go to work open. Somebody may be having coffee and, out of a clear blue sky, drop a religious subject. God says, “Ah.” Somebody else shares discouragement with life, a crisis at home, or the breakup of a marriage. All of that is opportunity.
Let us not talk about committing ourselves to evangelism for the rest of our lives. Let us talk about being willing tomorrow. It will not happen with everybody this week, because God has His timing in everybody’s life. But if you say, “I am willing, Lord,” it is amazing what happens.
I have shared this in a number of places, and I always get testimonies from people who say, “Dana, I did that. I prayed, and the next day…” College students especially can become dangerous, only because God opens up opportunities.
I do not mean they ramrod their way in and start pestering people. Opportunities just come knocking right on their forehead. God needs an open vessel. Live your life. If you are really open and willing and say, “God, I have my antenna up to Your clues,” then live your life.
Do not get paranoid, as though every situation has to become a witnessing opportunity. All you have to do is live your life and be aware that God may knock on your door and say, “Here is an opportunity.” If that happens once every two weeks, and you are an open vessel, share in those opportunities.
The other aspect of self-denial is knowing and living with an awareness of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Whenever we talk about witnessing and the gospel, we have to talk about the Holy Spirit, because He is the Witness Who will affirm everything that you say.
We need to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and we need to know the anointing of the Holy Spirit. So much witnessing is engineered witnessing. Two people can take the same Campus Crusade course on witnessing. One will be effective and one will not. The difference will be the Holy Spirit.
The effective person may start out with the book and put it away after two sentences, then simply go by the Spirit. We need that anointing of the Holy Spirit.
When we begin to share the gospel, all kinds of opposition can arise that needs to be dealt with in power. I have been in gatherings where I stood up and shared Jesus and demons popped out—probably literally.
One time I was with Arthur Blessitt in Times Square. He started sharing the gospel, and a woman stood up, totally demon-possessed. She began talking loudly, disputing the things being said, and disrupted the meeting. It was a free-out demonic display. You could see it in her eyes. You could see she had come under control.
You need spiritual resources at times like that. You cannot just pack up your suitcases and say, “Let’s go somewhere else where there are no demons.”
On the other hand, we do not need to become demon chasers. You do not have to give demons that kind of place, as if there is a demon under every closet and under every bushel.
There is a church in New York where the ushers wear big badges saying, “I’m a demon chaser.” Everything is a demon. If they overeat, it is a demon. A woman says, “I got delivered from the demon of overeating,” and next year she still has not lost weight.
Everything is a demon. Nothing is soul life. Nothing is something that needs to be crucified or mortified. That is not right.
But when you preach the gospel, the enemy often throws up spiritual opposition, and you have to know how to bind situations so the gospel can be free. There are times when God gives you a straight-out clue and says, “Pray for that person’s healing.”
You need the gifts of the Spirit to operate in that context. Most of the miracles I have seen in my Christian life have had to do with times when we were reaching out with the gospel, and God wanted to testify that Jesus is real and alive.
Words of knowledge and words of wisdom sometimes come into a situation, especially in these contexts, because God wants to move. So we need the Holy Spirit and an ongoing knowing of the Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, we are all witnesses, and God will use every one of us—sometimes even in spite of ourselves. But we could be effective witnesses. We could bring people next Sunday morning to this gospel meeting who are ready to receive the Lord because we have effectively shared with them the things we have seen and heard.
It involves being willing to say, “Lord, I do not like to lay down my life any more than anybody else, but I am willing to lay it down for You. You are that kind of quality, and I am willing to do it.”
“Lord, I do not want to presume that I have all the Holy Spirit I need. Grant us boldness and power to witness in the Holy Spirit, and let our house get shaken.”
Isn’t that a wonderful story in Acts 4? John and Peter had been persecuted for sharing the gospel. After their release from prison, they came back and shared the story with the disciples. The disciples responded by praying to God, Who owns the heavens and earth, to take note of the threats of the leaders and grant them boldness to proclaim Jesus while signs and wonders were done.
The house was shaken, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. More people believed.
We need a house-shaking. We cannot presume that we have all the Holy Spirit we need. In one sense, we know the Spirit leads us and speaks to us, but we always need a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is presumptuous to believe that we automatically walk under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
There are special times of commitment in our lives. There are times for us to evaluate where we are and to renew our openness for the Lord’s working in our lives. It is not all just a daily routine.
Many of us come from a context where the church was always trying to drum us up. Every six months there was a revival. People lived like the world for five and a half months, came to revival, got worked up, rededicated themselves, and then slipped by the following week.
We Baptists did not believe that once you were saved you could get lost again, but we had a rededication machine. We stuck it up in the front of the church every six months and ground people through the rededicator. By the time a kid was eighteen years old and had been to camp six times, he had rededicated his life six times.
Our lives will succeed only as we personally and individually walk before the Lord and are personally responsible to Him. It is not a carnal life with a few rededications; it is a life lived in the Spirit, mortifying the deeds of the flesh.
But there is a sense in which the saints, corporately speaking, in order to enter into a season of harvest like this, frankly have to repent. It is not always repenting in the sense of sinfulness. Sometimes it is neglect. Sometimes it is attitude. We get smug.
Where I live, in our little group and assembly, everybody who gets saved gets saved at the evangelical church. Then, when folks want to go on with the Lord, they come to us. But we have no door for people to get saved. We do not have gospel meetings or that kind of thing.
I do not think that fully represents the Lord. Does He not want a full testimony here, rather than just a partial one? We depend on others to get people saved, and then we try to lead them on deeper. That is not right, is it?
I see a vision of the tabernacle. By the grace of God, He leads us into the holy place. You go into that tent and see gold, embroidery, the incense, and the bread. It is so beautiful. We find our ministry there and run outside the tent, waving people in: “Come on into the holy place.”
That is a needed ministry. But when you are standing just outside the holy place waving people in, you are waving to Christians. Who is going to go outside the outer tent and wave people into the brazen altar where they can get saved?
It is dusty out there. The sun is hot. Sometimes it is raining. It is that old sacrifice of Calvary—the brazen altar. It is the laver that washes people. Even people who are saved have to be washed before they go into the holy place.
When folks are praying, raising their hands, and participating in an unstructured meeting, that can only happen in the holy place and be carried off properly. But someone has to go back outside where lost people are, where people are afraid to come to the brazen altar.
To be the full testimony of Jesus, there must be a brazen altar and a laver as well as the service inside the holy place. That is the full testimony.
I think all the Lord wants to do is add the outer court to our lives. People come to the Lord. People are washed through basic discipling. People come into the holy place and see the beauty of the Lord, and they are caught and captured. That is real salvation—bringing somebody all the way in.
Some churches have only an outer court. People get saved and stay around the brazen altar, but nobody tells them to go inside. Praise God for the salvation of Jesus, but the burden of the Spirit in this day is to recover the saints to the inside.
Still, that does not mean He is avoiding everybody outside. Jesus came down from heaven as a testimony that God loves the world. He still does.
It takes brokenness in our lives and repentance to have the outer court restored and the fullness of testimony that Jesus wants to be in our midst.
I would like for us just to bow our heads. We are going to have a few moments of prayer.
There are those who are faithful witnesses and have paid much cost to share the things that are most worthwhile—the truth about Jesus. But as we come to this threshold of harvest, to the threshing floor, to bear fruit for this, we find ourselves in need of evaluation.
We do not want to take mere human exhortation, but we ask Your Spirit to speak to us about our own willingness to be available, to share with people, to have our antennae up, and to be willing to speak the things we have seen, heard, and touched about Jesus.
We think that You are the Door, and You can open that door if there are just willing people. Lord, would You send us?
Oh Lord, I pray that perhaps we could receive a new and deeper anointing of the Holy Spirit for this season—more than we have known before—with a greater moving of Your Spirit and attestation to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and lordship.
Truly, as a result of His being enthroned in heaven, You poured out the Holy Spirit. May we see that in these days. As people open their hearts in willingness to be witnesses for You, open doors of opportunity. Bring people to their minds. Enable them to make real contact. Help them to bring people to this meeting, and Lord, let there be harvest.
It is Your Spirit that we ask would do the work, but we know You want willing vessels on our part. I pray that You would examine us.
Brothers and sisters, allow the Spirit to examine your heart. Is your heart clean? Can you pray that prayer of willingness? Do you need restored to you again the joy of His salvation?
Has the Holy Spirit, as it were, been taken from you? Do you need a fresh portion and filling of the Holy Spirit?
In Jesus’ name, let us be honest before our God, ready and willing for the ingathering in accordance with His will.
Now let us just have a few moments. If anybody wants to respond or pray.