Pastor Jared continues the fifth week of our sermon series, "Spiritual Practices".
Park Springs Sermons
June 30, 2024 - Spiritual Practices - Evangelism
(upbeat music) - You're listening to a message from Park Springs Bible Church located in Arlington, Texas, where we discover life in the power of God's grace and share his life-changing grace with others. (upbeat music) Join us as we hear from the word. Good morning, it is good to see all of you. And I do wanna say a special greeting to our first through sixth grade. I just want you to know like we're glad you're in the room. You're joining us for big church this morning, which is exciting. We want you to know that you're part of the church. And so I know the other weeks, it's nice to have that special place for y'all. It can be a bit rowdy and sing some more songs and have some fun, but we're glad you're in here. So just so you know, what's gonna happen is I'm gonna be up here for about 25ish minutes and then I'll close this out and we'll sing some more songs. So that's how this morning's gonna go. So I'd love for you to utilize those kids' sermon notes, to try to pick up something useful for you. It is for you. And so we're excited that you're with us this morning and collectively our family's kind of altogether a bit more than our normal Sunday. So I am excited to jump in this morning as we've been kind of journeying along this summer, discussing different spiritual practices that we engage in. These actions we can take that anchor us in our relationship with Jesus, that bring us into a position to be transformed by God over time in relationships. So that's what we've been kind of walking through every week taking a different practice. And there's different ways you can think about this idea of practices. And obviously every single week, there are ones that are derived from the scriptures. So we look at the Bible and look at the commandments of God and what we see there, that instruction, that prescription for our lives. And we're always gonna draw from that. But you can also kind of just look at our collective Christian history and also ask yourself the question, like what have the people of God done over time? 'Cause we have this great lineage in history that kind of win the New Testament in chronologically. We have writings from those early church leaders that came after that. And we kind of look at this history over time of how God has revealed himself to his people and how the people of God have responded sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And God has continued to draw us home. And one of the things you can just see over the course of Christian history, one of the things that the people of Jesus do is talk about Jesus. And that is implicit in the scriptures as we're going to see, but we can just recognize that, that that's always been a part of our Christian faith, is that part of the practice of following Jesus is talking about Jesus with others, which is the practice we are going to be talking about today. And in some ways, that is a unique aspect of our religion, our faith is that it is a tenant within Christian teachings to attempt to bring others into the fold of God, into relationship with God. And so I don't know if you've had friendships with people that adhere to other religions. Most other religions is not as active as we are Christians of trying to make sure everybody else knows about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so most other religions have some type of tenant as far as like, hey, if somebody asks you, tell them about it, but for us, it's very clear, like this is a go-and-tell situation when it comes to the message of Jesus Christ. I mean, you can even think about what we talk about, like in December in the Christmas story, like the shepherds, they were some of the first to receive this news, and what did the angels proclaim to them? Behold, I give you great tidings of good joy that is for all people. And that was that kind of that first proclamation of, hey, the Savior has arrived, and this message, this reality, this news, isn't just for the 15 people that heard it on that mountainside, it is for all people. And kind of from that moment on, that has always been a part of what it means to be a Christian is the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ. And in fact, if you kind of dig into a little bit more of church history and kind of know some of the different branches of Christianity, you can break that down in so many different ways, and that would be a very complicated talk for this morning, but you might know that you're kind of in a stream of Christianity that historically was called evangelicalism. And there was an aspect specifically of that brand of Christianity, that strain of Christianity that very much promoted the idea of the proclamation to all people, this message of Jesus Christ. And that's one of the things we want to talk about this morning because this message, this reality that we adhere to and believe in and have built our lives upon is a message of good news. And so that's how it is described within the biblical message and it's where we derive our word gospel. So we talk about that a lot and we kind of know that that's kind of a catch-all for the teachings of Jesus. But what that word means and where you find it in the New Testament is this Greek word, pewongelion, which literally means good news. It's like this joyful proclamation. And it's the word Jesus utilized to talk about what he was ushering in and proclaiming. And the people of God have latched on to ever since that this message, it is a religion, there are teachings about God, but it is a message of good news. And so that's where we derive our word gospel from, and then we utilize a lot in our everyday teachings within the church, but it's also where we derive another word and that's the specific practice we wanna talk about this morning, it is evangelism. And those two things are linked. And so when we talk about the gospel, this message of Jesus Christ, that salvation is available to all people and we can be reconciled to God by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And then as an overflow of that reality is evangelism, which if you kind of break it down in the Greek it's kind of just like gospeling. It's taking this message and spreading it, that in its original form was not supposed to have a stopping point, but when it is received it immediately becomes extended. And so for our purposes this morning, because I know that word evangelism can have different connotations and you might have a different association with it, or maybe you've been taught about that at some point in your spiritual journey, if I could just give you our definition for this morning, I would say that evangelism is telling other people the good news of salvation found in Jesus Christ. Evangelism is telling other people the good news of salvation found in Jesus Christ, which might feel a little bit different than the other practices we've been talking about, because the other practices we've been talking about are a bit more on kind of the internal spiritual life. We've talked about like Bible meditation and I think we would understand like, hey, this grows my relationship with Jesus as I'm exposed to the word of God and it kind of works against some of my sinfulness and selfishness and we've also talked about fasting and how that brings us into connection with God. And so it might feel a little bit different that evangelism typically feels external. It's like, okay, here's something I'm going to do for other people, but what the Bible describes is actually it has this impact directly on our relationship with Jesus when we step into this action of proclaiming his message, proclaiming his salvation to other people. I love how Jesus actually states it in the first chapter of Acts. Acts chapter one is right before Jesus ascends back to the Father. So it kind of recounts these last moments He has with the disciples, with the followers, before He goes back into heaven. A lot of times we look at this in Matthew chapter 28, it's where we get the Great Commission of Go and Tell, which is very much that evangelistic push. But in Acts chapter one verse eight, it's recorded as saying it like this. Jesus said, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, into the end of the earth. And I have found that that has been true in my personal life, that there is this overlap in how I experience God when I step into faithfulness in doing the things God has commanded me, specifically in this area of telling other people about Jesus. Like I have never come away from a moment where I had a conversation about Jesus with someone else, where I felt weaker in my faith. It was how I actually experienced that overflow of the Spirit in me, like, hey, I stepped out, I bumbled, I felt weird, it was a little bit awkward. But man, I feel jazzed up inside because I actually experienced this thing God talked about. This Holy Spirit empowerment and this practice of letting other people know that they can have the same internal joy, salvation, foundation, purpose, peace, forgiveness that I've experienced in Jesus Christ. We experience the work of God in our own life. We are exposed to a new measure of the Spirit when we engage in this. But if we can be honest this morning, we could probably all recognize that collectively in our lives, this is a practice that is often neglected. Like maybe we've had some experiences or some touches of this, but by and large, I wouldn't say this is one that just occurs every weekend, every single one of our lives. It's maybe very fleeting if it has existed at all in our current spiritual practices. I think there's different ways to talk about that, the why of that and how we can engage in that. I wanna do that a little bit this morning. But I want to kind of utilize an analogy that I think that we could all relate to. So show of hands, how many of you have ever wanted to be in good physical shape? Okay, cool, God, we're all on the same page. Let me ask a follow up question. Has anyone ever felt like they were in good physical shape at one point in their life but are not currently? Okay, there are some universal truths we can recognize. And one of the realities that is at play in our bodies is this wonderful little biological process called muscular atrophy. And so muscular atrophy is the wasting or thinning of muscle tissue. And there are three different types of atrophy. One is physiologic, there's a neurogenic atrophy and also a pathologic atrophy. But we wanna talk specifically about physiologic muscular atrophy because that atrophy is lifestyle based. It is due to a lack of activity that muscular tissue begins to thin and waste away. And it's one of those things we've known kind of within our scientific community and the medical field for quite a while now. And one of the ways you can see it's most clearly as an example is when we begin sending people into space. Because one of the realities of being in space and being outside of the pool of gravity is that there is a lot less pressure on your body. So when they start doing that in the 60s and then they realize that if somebody was in space for a certain amount of time, it began to have this wasting effect on their body because there was no resistance and no strain upon their body. And we've seen that kind of play out in a lots of different areas of society and you probably know that that's just a reality like, hey, if your job's primarily sitting, you need to counteract those effects and be more active where it begins to have all these different health impacts on you. Because when our muscles, when our bodies, when our very tissue is not active, it begins to waste away. And so that's why we actually need resistance in our lives to gain strength over time. And when that is absent, we grow weaker. This is mirrored in our spiritual lives. And that is why on so many different domains of what it means to follow Jesus, we encourage regular rhythms and patterns of practice in our lives. We have a weekly rhythm of church in Sabbath. You need this activity regularly in your life to grow strength spiritually. We encourage daily rhythms. Like we would encourage you as brothers and sisters in Christ to be in the word of God every single day, of not letting a day go by that you don't speak to your heavenly Father in prayer. We need this activity in our life because when you do not have it, your spiritual life begins to thin and wastes away. Now I remember my Baptist upbringing and learning a song at like VBS or in different children's moment that went a little bit like, I'm not gonna sing it, but it was read your Bible and pray every day and you'll grow, grow, grow. Does anybody know this one? Okay, and it was forget your Bible, forget to pray and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. It might seem very simplistic, but it's so true. And we recognize this in domains of our lives that actually when we go through testing or have tension put on our lives spiritually, the result is this growth and the strength we feel in our relationship with God. The Apostle James, he put it like this in James chapter one. He says, "Count it joy, brothers, "when you meet trials of various kinds, "for you know that the testing of your faith "producers steadfastness." And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Our spiritual life is designed to grow stronger through activity and practice of pouring into the relationship with God. And when we neglect those practices in our life, we feel distant from God. And I think we have that conversation very commonly in some of the other practices, such as reading our Bible and such as praying and not neglecting, meeting together and coming into church. But I would say that the same is true and we need to apply it to our evangelistic zeal. Do we engage in the practice of telling others about Jesus? It's one of those ones we know is commanded. We see the stories we've read through the book of Acts. We know the great commission, but it's one that we can, I would say just often neglect and we begin to kind of build up different excuses why it's not necessarily necessary for me in my life. That it's just not my personality, I'm a bit more introverted, I don't have time, like I haven't seen it play out. And just some of the things I have heard through conversation over time is maybe some experience of like, you know, I tried it once and it did not go well. So, you know, I think I just, I don't have the spiritual gift of evangelism. But I would just say if you apply that to any of the other domains of our spiritual practice, we would know that that's not a very good reason to not engage in it. Like, hey, you know, I've read this Old Testament passage that was obscure and confusing and I didn't understand it. So, you know, I just don't think I'm supposed to read the Bible or, you know, I actually went to a friend and confessed some sin to them at one point and, you know, it was awkward, it was uncomfortable. I just don't think God's called me to confess my sin anymore. If we begin to apply that lens in the same way to evangelism, we might see that this is something God calls every single one of his followers to engage in. Once again, like we just sang for his glory, but also for our good. It is a practice that brings us into relationship with Christ and the Holy Spirit will use in our lives to draw us deeper into relationship with him. I know one of the conversations I've had often with people over time is that I think we often, we have the goal of doing this. Like we do know, it is a good thing to do. But then we begin to kind of justify in our own minds of how we might kind of like skirt a direct conversation with somebody about Jesus. And so I know I think just one of the most common, not necessarily objections, but common conversations I've had is, you know, I'm just more relationally evangelistic. I want to build a foundation of friendship and then over time, you know, when the situations ride and there's another solar eclipse and, you know, everything's lined up. If they ask me the question, then I'll begin the conversation about God. And I would just say like in theory, that's not a bad idea. Like build a relationship with somebody, begin to tell them about Jesus over time as opportunity presents itself. But one of the things I've just found is that when in your head, you're going to play the long game, that moment almost never arrives. And it's one of those things that we do like, "Hey, everything has to be perfect, so I don't turn them off to the Christian faith, so I need them to have either a life crisis or a particular question or a miracle needs to happen right in front of us so that I can bring this up." And I would just say, I mean, and you can judge your own experience, a lot of times it just doesn't end up ever happening that we tell that person about Jesus. And I would just say as a pro-tip in your relationships, if you begin a friendship with someone, the longer you wait to bring up aspects of your faith, the weirder that conversation is. 'Cause I've actually, I've been in that position before, even as a pastor. It's like, man, I've known you for seven years, and I've never once kind of asked you about where you stand with God, but I need to bring this up now. That makes the conversation honestly a bit stranger. But if we actually lead with what we would say is most important to us in all of our relationships, then God can use that in our lives. And I find this a really important aspect of our faith, because it is so clearly within the scriptures, especially as you read the New Testament and you see how God spread his good news, the gospel, all over the world through one generation of people, you see how practiced this was. And I have found, just in my personal experience in church, and as I've tried to grow and pursue Jesus, this is just Jared's personal evaluation, just take it for what it is. I would say markers of maturity that I look for and have seen really play out in people's lives as they move towards wanting to be serious about the things of God. I would say that there are three practices, I think that most reveal a deep dependence on God. I would say the first one is confession of sin. Like as a follower of Jesus, if you take that really seriously and you actively seek people out and be like, let me tell you where I have strayed. I would say that is a big marker of maturity. Shows a humility that you will let other people in. It shows a trust in the gospel that you know that your sin is covered, but there's this healing aspect when we reveal it to others. Like I'll say, that's a big marker of maturity that we can walk into is just being really, really honest about our shortcomings. I'll say a second is actually giving financially. There's nothing we are more tempted to rely on outside of God than our finances. And so if you want to move towards a seriousness about putting Jesus first in all things, giving consistently of your finances is a big aspect of that. It is a big marker of Christian maturity over time. But then thirdly, I would say if you're evangelistic, that you take seriously that the Bible describes a reality where at the end of every single person's life they are either going to an eternal relationship with the Father or they are going to be eternally separated and God's chosen instrument for bringing people into relationship with himself are his people declaring the good news of Jesus. If you take the things of God seriously, these things are present in our lives. And I would say evangelism is one of them. And so I want to look in Ephesians chapter six. So once again, I think this is not an unknown reality to us in the scriptures. And so I want to look at just a couple of verses towards the end of the book of Ephesians that have been resting on my heart this week. So in Ephesians chapter six, right towards the end of the chapter, right before Paul wraps up this letter. So right after the whole armor of God, starting in verse 18, Paul says this. Praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. And also for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. I have always thought this verse was kind of crazy. That Paul is asking people to pray for him that he would be bold in declaring the gospel. If you notice in verse 20, he says for which I'm an ambassador in chains, that's not hyperbole. He's literally in prison for sharing the gospel. And I've just always found that it's kind of seemed a little ironic to me that Paul's asking everybody else like, hey, pray for me for boldness while I'm in prison for sharing the gospel. And if you know anything about Paul's life, when he actually, he comes to faith miraculously through that Damascus road incident and once he regains his side, it says he immediately began to tell people about Jesus. And then it just seems like, I mean, the rest of the New Testament, Paul's just going on a terror, evangelizing everywhere, regardless of what happens afterwards. So he goes into a town, he tells him about Jesus, they like try to kill him, they hit him with rocks till they think he's dead and he dusts himself off. He goes to the next town and he tells more people about Jesus, like this is Paul's story that we read about, like we map the missionary journeys of Paul. Like, and so I just find it like, it's kind of crazy that Paul is saying like, hey, pray for me that that will be bold in this declaration of the gospel. In fact, in Romans chapter 15, Paul makes this statement, he says from Jerusalem to a Lyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel. And I don't know if you know your ancient Near East geography, but if you can just kind of picture in your mind's eye where Jerusalem is, you know, in Israel, a Lyricum is modern day Albania, which is where we sin, some mission teams at times. So if you don't know how that works, if you go north from Jerusalem, you hit Lebanon, then you hit Syria and then you hit Turkey and then you hit Romania and then Bulgaria and then Macedonia and then Albania. And what Paul is saying over the course of his life is that he has evangelized all of those areas. And so why is the Apostle Paul, as he is sitting in this moment writing encouragement and instruction, divinely from the Holy Spirit to the church in Ephesus saying, may I pray for me that when I open my mouth, I should, I would speak as I ought to. I think one of the realities that play here is that Paul recognizes and we can all recognize is that past faithfulness doesn't guarantee future faithfulness. And like I said, we probably, if all had that moment where we've engaged a little bit with someone, maybe things of God came up, maybe a spiritual matter arose, maybe it was revealed that you were a Christian, but that's one of the aspects of practices is that we are supposed to engage in it continually because it has this transformative work in our lives. And so I would say past confession doesn't guarantee future confession. Past moments of prayer do not guarantee future moments of prayer is a practice that draws us into dependence and allows us to experience the joy of the Father in saving people that he loves. And so like the Apostle Paul, do we ever ask people to pray for us or do we pray ourselves for boldness that words would be given to us when we open our mouths to proclaim the mystery of the gospel and that we would declare it boldly as we ought to speak so that we can be drawn deeper into this relationship that we can put God first in all things including every single interaction we have with the people God has put around us. Or has our spiritual life in some regards at your feet? I think the physical analogy is a good one. In fact, Paul uses it a lot in his writings towards the end of his life in Second Timothy. He says, I have finished my race. And in fact, as he's given instruction to the churches, he talks about like training your body for righteousness and even he's like, hey, if you're a boxer you don't just beat the air, you train like you're training for the prize, he uses this physical analogy a lot. And so that's why I do find it helpful for us because I think we've all kind of recognized that activity versus inactivity impact on our physical selves. And in fact, if I was to bring it into my own life in regards to being in shape or attempting to be in shape, the one I have just least enjoyed over time is running. I've played high school sports so I kind of really don't mind lifting weights like I find it a bit cathartic helps me relieve stress but to me running is just the worst. And I would say because this, like as I have exercised in lifted weights sometimes I've taken a pause for like a month in comeback and I feel relatively the same strength, usually just about, but here's what I've known about running. Like I will run consistently for like six months and then I'll not run for four days and then try again and I feel terrible. Like there's something about that aspect that if you neglected it all like you immediately just feel completely depleted. And so I think there is this reality in our spiritual self. Like once again, to compare it to prayer or to studying the Bible. Like when we are neglecting these things on a daily level I think there is this thinning of our relationship with God. Like we are supposed to be drawn into deep dependence on the Father. You know, like Jesus said, if you abide in me, if you live in me, if you remain in me, that is a daily activity. And then you will bear fruit. That's what he's talking about. And so I know for all of us, myself included, there is probably this reality that there is a step we need to take in regards to the spiritual practice of evangelism. Like if I can just share it personally, like probably the season of my life where this was most present was in college. I was excited about the work of the Lord and in college is kind of this cool environment where there's like 20,000 young people right in the same geographic area and people are open to having conversations. And so that was a regular practice in my life. I would say almost weekly where I was engaging with people on some level about the things of God. I would say if I'm evaluating my life right now, I find it a lot more difficult. One because all of my close and dear friends are Christians. My work life is here. I mean, 95% of every interaction I have every week is probably with the fellow believer in Christ. And a lot of the call God's put on my life is to encourage believers. And so this is an aspect of my life that I have to like look for opportunities and I have to encourage myself and spur myself on that maybe I am a little tired, maybe God's gonna give me an opportunity to step into this practice. So I'll just say this. Like I know it can feel very daunting. And once again, I know that when we hear evangelism, we think either we need to be like the Jehovah Witness or the Mormons and we need to go knock on the door and ask if people have half an hour of their life to spare or we're walking up to some stranger. And that can be an aspect of it because it's in the scriptures. So the Holy Spirit moves people have got that way. But just say like if there's any desire to move in this aspect at all, you know I want to just give you some encouragement of what that might look like. So if you've ever wanted to run or had that desire to get in physical shape, you know a lot of times it's helpful to have a goal. So one of the things that's kind of played out on our staff is Pastor Charlie runs and the rest of us don't. So for probably like nine years now he's been lobbying all of us to run more and it's actually kind of starting to pay off. He's been playing that long game for a long time. Anyway, there's been some motivation on the staff and there's been some conversations about maybe a staff 5K, that kind of thing. But anyways, if running has ever been absent from your life and you're like I want to start but I don't even know what you do to get to that point. And then you googled it, you can find these running programs and you can find all sorts for every distance but usually they begin with like the word couch. And that's where maybe the most relatable experience you can have is like okay what's my starting point? It's like I'm sitting on the couch. So you can find like a couch to marathon plan, a couch to a 10K plan or a couch to 5K plan. So if you're like hey I want to run a 5K that seems incredibly daunting, way out of anything I've ever done. Okay, what's this road map to get to there? And it's like step one, get off couch. No, but you can find all those. So I just want to keep on this analogy and I want to give you my couch to 5K plan for evangelism. So if you're looking for a first step in what it means to share the good news of Jesus with others, I would say step one of getting off the couch is pray out loud. It would be hard to get comfortable talking about God if you never talk to God. And I would just say I know a lot of us we keep our spiritual life internal and even if you are by yourself, the act of praying out loud draws you deeper into a relationship with God. We are an integrated person. We are physical and spiritual in praying out loud. Get comfortable talking to God before you'll ever be comfortable talking about God. Step two, I would say pray out loud in front of a group. You have brothers and sisters in Christ. Be spiritual in front of other people. And if you can't talk about God in front of other fellow believers, it might be really difficult to talk about God with a non-believer. So pray out loud in front of a group. You don't have to have fancy pastor words. You can just talk to your heavenly father and other people can be present for it. Number three, tell a work friend something that involves God. Once again, we're babysapping it. Maybe it's just I went to church yesterday is a way to introduce that conversation. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe something about how God has answered a prayer in your life. Maybe a moment you've seen God work. Maybe something new you've learned that you found interesting, that they might also find interesting. Tell a work friend something that involves God. Number four, meet your neighbors. You have to be willing to extend yourself relationally. Feel like we culturally have moved out of the, everybody knows everybody who lives on their street, but maybe we as Christians can bring that back. Begin that practice, even if it's not necessarily overtly spiritual yet, but initiating relationally with others. Number five, ask a non-believer you know to come to church or a church event with you. I think for us, hey kids, if you've zoned out already, you do this really well. One, you're great at making friends, and two, you're great at including friends and things that are important to you. But this is something we can do, is God has placed people in our lives. We can extend the invitation. We might say no, but we can step out in faith and do our part and invite people to things that matter to us. Have someone over for dinner and ask them what their spiritual background is. And that might sound crazy to you, but this has to become commonplace in our language. If Jesus is most important to us, why would we not talk about him? And also I would just encourage you to be intentional with hospitality. I would say our culture has moved away from depth in relationship and having people at your table and sharing a meal is a great way to care for someone. And almost no one feels bad about being offered a meal, to be intentional with hospitality. Number seven, go on a church mission trip. Almost yearly we offer an opportunity, maybe overseas or maybe even locally, to do something evangelistic collectively with your church. Now let's say this is a great step for a couple of different reasons, but one of the things that happens if you've ever been on one of these trips is like, hey, you literally, you've got 10 days that the whole goal of those 10 days is to tell other people about Jesus. It is this motivating factor. It is this equipping factor in your life. It's this experience. There's usually a team, seven to 12 people. We're all doing it that can kind of help. You take some of those steps if that's just been absent from your life. And I know sometimes we can do this disqualifying aspect of ourselves, because once again I've had this conversation, like, hey, do you wanna go on this mission trip? We're gonna tell people about Jesus. It's like, well, I don't tell people about Jesus here. I'm like, that's fine. Start there and then bring it back here. That's fine. Like you can have this aspect of our lives of, hey, for those two weeks I really dove into this thing that the scripture describes and I experienced God in a different way and Jesus brought some things out of me. And so now I can go and incorporate that into my daily life, my daily practices. We're about to send a team to Taiwan. We are looking at partnerships in Mexico for spring break next year. We have this recurring partnership in Albania and there's something special about these trips. And so as those opportunities arise and we talk about them, I would encourage you, if you have the time, the motivation, the capability, jump onto one of those trips, even if it scares you. Number eight, ask a non-believer if you can pray for them. You know, maybe it was that work friend that you already said something spiritual to. Number nine, have a spiritual conversation with a stranger. I feel like that's kind of getting closer to usually what's in our head when we say evangelism. And I would say that's absolutely a part of what the Bible talks about. And I'll just say, you gotta look for those opportunities. The God does presents us with, not like interrupting somebody like, "Hey, can I talk to you about Jesus?" But God does give us moments of connection with other people we do not know. One of the ones I've just realized happens relatively consistent in my life is when I get a haircut. And so I would say for you, kind of know when those moments happen, they're like, "Hey, I'm probably going to interact "with a stranger, I do not know." And on the other side, also, one of the things I just encourage people is like, figure out you're in. Like we know how conversational dynamics work and you know, usually ask some questions, they ask some questions, figure out a mode at which it can get to spiritual things. And I would just say, mine's pretty easy. And so usually, if I'm talking to somebody, I say like, "Hey, what do you do?" They tell me what they do and then they reciprocate. I'm so glad you asked, I work at a church. And so it's pretty easy to turn that back to God. But every single one of us is going to have those opportunities. Maybe you said, you know, your kid's sporting events, you know, maybe it's in line at the grocery store, you know, there are going to be interactions we have with strangers that I truly believe are divine appointments from God that most of us don't take God up on. And so just know that that could be a part of your journey and of your spiritual practices is to have a spiritual conversation with a stranger. Number 10, ask a non-believer if you can share with them about Jesus. I would just say, take the plunge. There are people around you currently that have not experienced the love, forgiveness, and acceptance of Jesus Christ, who are trying to meet their own ends and are failing and need to know that there is something better. And maybe that sounds weird or awkward or you don't want to be that weird Christian, but I have found that literally asking someone like, hey, can I tell you about what I've experienced in Jesus? I've rarely had that met with resistance. It doesn't mean every single time the end of that conversation is someone also places their faith in Jesus, but sometimes it does. If we want to talk about spiritual practices, there has been nothing that has grown my own personal faith more than when I have sat with somebody else and they place their faith in Jesus. And I want you to experience that as well. That is not an exclusively pastoral moment. That is for every single follower of Jesus to be a part of this grand story of how God has offered his salvation into the world. And you can be in that moment with others that God has placed around you. You can be the one. It was the final link in that chain and the moment was right and they said, yes to the things of God. And there are a few things that will grow your faith more. So I just say, take the plunge. Maybe there's somebody that has already come to mind as we have spoken about this. And maybe you need to be like, hey, I'm sorry, it's been 13 years, but my faith in Jesus is really important to me. Would it be okay with you if I tell you what that's about? Maybe it's that moment. This is what we do. It's part of our practice of following Jesus. The people of Jesus share the good news that everyone can be reconciled to God. And as a church, it's important that we do this. And that's why we do take time and resources and people and go to areas where there's less gospeling occurring. And so I mentioned that we have a team going to Taiwan. They're actually departing this Thursday. And as I close out this morning, I want to invite our team from Taiwan up and we're going to commission them before they get on an airplane, before this Thursday. So if I could get the Taiwan team up. There's this pretty crazy reality in the book of Romans when Paul describes salvation. And Romans chapter 10 describes the gospel, the good news. And then there's this verse that says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." But then Paul goes on this progression and says, "How are they to call on someone in whom they've not believed and how are they to believe in someone that they have not heard of and how are they to hear unless someone tells them?" And that's just a reality for all of us. Every single one of us came to a saving relationship with Jesus because somebody else told us that I was a possibility. And I don't know much about the demographics of Taiwan. There's a very low, low, low percentage of Christianity, which means that just by being in that country and the different people they encounter on every single day and every single moment, probably the likelihood is that those people don't have a relationship with Jesus. And so y'all have a credible opportunity to do some gospeling over the next couple of weeks and just know that your church is behind you in prayer. And I just personally say, I'm proud of y'all being willing to take the time and the extra effort it is to get across the world and also support a local church over there. So thank you for being willing to do that and your church is behind you. And so church, stand up, take a moment. We're gonna pray for them and before we send them out and then we'll also continue on our service with a couple more songs of praise and worship. Father in heaven, we turn to you. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you saved us, that you, while we were still sinners, you died for us. God, that's all of our story, which means every single one of us has a story to share. God, I pray for these six individuals from our church as they head to Taiwan, God, that you would go before them, that you would give them strength and boldness and power in their inner lives. God, and just like Paul, that they would proclaim the gospel as they should. The words would be given to them when they opened their mouths. God, that language barrier wouldn't interfere, that timid feelings wouldn't creep up. God, that they would just rely on you and be excited about this opportunity. God, so as a church, help us to be faithful and prayer over these next two weeks as they are there. Gotta pray that all the little logistical issues of traveling would go smoothly. God, and we ask that you save people. God, that there would be divine appointments that when these friends open their mouths, God, the gospel takes root in hearts. God, we know it's possible, and we ask you for that unashamedly in the name of Jesus Christ.