Telling The TRUTH
020213 Telling The Truth 28 Minute Program
[music] You're listening to "Telling the Truth" from Triple T. Christian Youth Ministries, "Telling the Truth to and Through Teenagers." Here is Triple T. Founder and President George Dumes. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who threw Him, believe in God, who raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 1 Peter 1, 2021, New King James. Where is your faith? Where is your hope? In things, in people, or in God. It is God alone who will direct your path if you will allow it to happen. First, you have to trust Him. Secondly, you have to follow what He tells you to do through His Word. The Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword. So read the Bible and do what the Bible tells you to do. God has a compassion for people. He sent Jesus to live perfectly, being born of a virgin and then having lived perfectly. He then died for your sins and mine. To be buried and to rise again. And that risen Christ is ready to move into the heart of anyone who will open to Him and allow Him to give Him or Her life that will last forever. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Jesus was there and He knew it was going to transpire. Tell somebody, God loves you, Satan hates you, but you love God. You can follow Him if you will, because in the world, there are going to be difficulties. Listen to 1 Peter 5, 8 and 9, New King James Version. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he made of our. Resist Him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. In other words, you are not the lone ranger. It's not just you that the devil is stalking, but the faith factor makes all the difference for you and for others who believe. So the word steadfast is the way you consistently place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Understand that God loves you, and He will take care of you no matter what you are facing today. But while you are taking care of you, and while you are knowing that God loves you that much, please love others and reach out to them. Have this approach as you pray with and for, and read the word of God constantly with other believers. Resist the devil, talk to the Lord all the time, and then reach out to those people who need Jesus. Know this, when you do, wonderful things happen. To those who have obtained like precious faith with us, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Second Peter 1, 1B, New King James Version. Listen carefully. God loves you, and the precious faith that you can put in Him through Jesus will give you not only life everlasting, but abundant life now. God wants you to live for Him, and He wants you to know that your precious faith is going to be able to be shared in a very wonderful way if you're willing to do it. It becomes your personal determination that will cause you to get into the word of God on a consistent daily basis. To let God speak with you, and then to talk with Him specifically about people who need Him. Pray with other believers, and as you fellowship together, don't bask in your own wonderful life, but reach out to those who don't have such a life because they don't know Jesus. Pray with them, and for them, and then go to them with the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus. You can, if you will, the determination is personal. Will you? Only you can answer that question, and will you do it quickly? Again, you are the only one that can say yes or no. Please pray and go. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. First Peter 1, 5, 6, and 7, New King James Version. How about your diligence? Are you going to be what God wants you to be? To live the kind of life God wants you to live? Add to your faith virtue, and then knowledge, and self-control, then perseverance, then godliness, brotherly kindness, and then love. God is love, and God wants us to love Him and to love others as ourselves. These words of wisdom as God spoke to Peter, and through Him, and then this message for us can help us learn how to live wonderfully well. Let's go through those words one more time. Faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love. Do you love the Lord enough to tell other people how much He loves them? I hope you will. We live in a wicked world. Listen to 1 John 5, 4, New King James Version. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Yes, the world is full of people who do not love God, and because they don't love God, they hate each other, and they fake it, and they say they like you, but they don't. So be careful, and be prayerful, and put your faith into effect 24 hours a day, seven days each week, all year long. And as your faith is developed and increased, how can that happen? Three ways. Number one, through prayer, asking God to help you really trust Him completely. Secondly, by the reading and the heating of the Word of God. All scripture is given by inspiration, so that God speak to you, and thirdly, share your faith with others, with believers, and with those who have not yet believed. And as you put your faith into effect, wonderful things can happen. You can overcome the world. It is the victory through faith that makes it all happen. So where are you with the Lord today? Are you together? Are you willing to fellowship with other believers, and then go with the gospel? God wants us to contend for the faith, not cantankerously, but compassionately. Listen to this word to Jude, verse three, New King James. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. Contending or defending or upholding is what God wants us to do about footing faith in Jesus Christ. We can have faith in things or people, but as faith in God, through the Lord Jesus, that causes the world to be changed. God wants you to reach out to those who need Him. He wants you to fellowship with other believers, and to determine strategically how to reach those who don't yet believe. Praying diligently and consistently reading the word of God, and then going with the gospel, telling people to admit they have sinned, to believe on Christ, to confess Him publicly, will change lives for eternity. God will use you to help others go to heaven if you are willing to tell them the truth. Know that you can, if you will. You've got to live somewhere forever, so isn't it time to learn how to live? In Jude 20 and 21, New King James tells us how. Listen, but you beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God. Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. What a way to live. Building yourselves up on your most holy faith. Faith is holy or should be. It needs to be implicitly placed in God with no reservations. The Holy Spirit will allow you to pray with words you don't even have to utter. When you just open your heart to Him, God will hear your heart. He wants to hear your words, but sometimes it's difficult to articulate what we want to say to the Lord. We need to keep ourselves in the love of God. Loving others, loving God, and loving ourselves enough to take care of the one body God has entrusted to us. And then looking forward to eternity, eternity with Jesus. Don't go alone to heaven. Take people with you. Take as many as you can. Tell people how to go. Tell as many as often as possible. Every Saturday at 7.27 p.m., you are invited to attend a live youth event at Triple T, 13,000 US 41 North at Boone Building Harmony Road, midway between I-64 and Evansville Regional Airport. Every first Saturday, a good news club for ages 6 to 9 is available in a separate room. For more information, call 812-867-2418 or visit www.tripletchristianyouth.org. Shoot for the stars. Leading youth can be a way of life. It can be everything that motivates you to do what you do if you do it correctly. If you do it with the right motivation. If you do it putting God in the center of everything and then moving from where you are to where you ought to be. We've shared with you some concepts. Pray. That's first, that's foremost. That's the imperative. Second, seek God's will in every area of your life. Then set your goals. Determine where you're going to go, how you're going to get there, all of these things. Goals in every area of your life and of your ministry and of your impact and of your outreach. Then of course, start where you are. Then use what you have. Do all you can and shoot for the stars. As you look up at night at the canopy of heavenly bodies that are overhead, that you see out there shining brightly. Know that God in heaven created that whole thing. He put it there. He did it purposefully. And so as we look out from our little sphere, let's don't limit ourselves, but let's expand our horizon to the greatest degree we possibly can. Let's think about expanding that sphere on and on and on. Let's think about how many people we can really impact with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's diligently pray and personally pursue every avenue of opportunity to reach people for Jesus Christ. They are out there. They need to be one. They need to be reached. They need to be influenced. They need to be impacted with God's glorious gospel. And if you don't do it, and if I don't do it, who's going to? Shoot for the stars. I remember so well hearing the statement made that America was going to enter the space race and that the goal had been set to put a man on the moon. Most people thought that was too fantastic to ever become reality. But because enough people caught the vision, because enough people pursued the goal, because they did just start where they were. And they used what they had and they did all they could. It did happen. And a spacecraft did land on the moon and people did walk around on lunar soil. Why? Because somebody said, let's shoot for the stars. Suffice it to say that out there where you live, there are people who will tell you that it can't be done. Don't even try it. Tuck your tail between your legs and go back to wherever. But don't listen to those disparaging words. Rather listen to God's clarion call when Jesus said go. Go into all the world, your world, my world, and preach, proclaim, proclamation, publicize the gospel to everybody everywhere. Get the message of the Christian way of life to people who need to know the Lord. People need the Lord. They need the Lord where you live, where I live, where other people live. And as we look at those people, and as we see a new a glimpse of what has happened and what can happen, it behooves us as individuals to say, God helped me not to limit my horizons. Sometime ago, an English Bible scholar by the name of J.B. Phillips wrote a little book. A friend of mine gave me that book and said, George, I think this will help you if you will get this guy's perspective. The title of Phillips book was your God is too small. The question is not how big is God, but how big is he in your mind, in your heart, in your circumstance? How big is God? How big and vast and wide? How big is he? Do you limit God? Do you think, oh, this would be nice, but I could never do that. You couldn't, but God could. And if you and God work together perhaps, just perhaps that dream, that vision can become a reality. When we take away those moments of limitations, those handicaps that we give into ourselves, and then look and say, okay, I might not make it this time, but next time I'm going to try harder. I'm going to do more. I'm going to utilize more tools, more people, and I'm going to reach more people for Jesus. And if we continue to do it, we're going to watch God work in wonderful, outstanding, stupendous ways. Again, there's nothing like prayer to accomplish the impossible. God wants us to get on our knees and bow our heads, and in humility say, God, I know that you can do anything. Because I know that you can, would you God show me ways that I can be made usable of you, places that I need to change, things I need to rearrange. God speak to me, show me what I'm supposed to do, and then God help me get other people to work with me. Help me to bring others into the picture, into the sphere, into a key group to keep evangelizing youth. God show me moment by moment, hour by hour, step by step, what to do, what to say, where to go, to endeavor to accomplish the seeming impossible for your glory. Do you understand that God will do what he says he will do? My God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Do you believe that? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Will you understand that? And will you put that into effect with every ounce of energy God will entrust to you? And are you willing to continue going with the gospel to people who need the Lord? Only you can determine that. Only you can say, yes, I will or no, I won't, or maybe I will or maybe I won't. But it takes a determination to say, yes, I will no matter what the circumstances are, that prevail. Yes, I might stop for a moment. I might fall short of my goal. I might not make it the way that I thought I would, but I'm going to keep on trying until I accomplish what God would be pleased for me to accomplish. My friend Bob Bland says, shoot at nothing and you'll hit it every time. So let's shoot for the stars. Let's determine that God has something in store for you and me to do together that we can't do alone, but as a team, as a tiger team, as tiger teammates, we can reach people for Jesus Christ. We're training tigers. Tiger means, I must personally advance Christianity today. Where do they do it on a school bus, in a cafeteria, in the neighborhood? They do it where they are and they are reaching out to those they know. And they are giving the word of God directly, specifically to people. I'm talking about the whole word of God, a whole Bible. And kids are taking those Bibles to school and they're giving them away. And yes, it is legitimate and yes, it is legal and yes, it is happening right here where we are. There's an Illinois high school that has a group of students that has the goal to reach every student in that school with the gospel. They want to give every one of them a copy of the word of God. They're not standing out on the sidewalks, distributing them that way. They're giving them one-on-one in conversation with the people, letting them know that everybody everywhere is a sinner. Telling them for all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. Letting them know that the Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Telling them what Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that her believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." And Jesus didn't stop there. He said, "He that does not believe as condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God." God never expected anybody to go to hell. Hell was designed for the devil as angels, but because people do not respond to God's love. They will go to an eternity away from God in a place called hell. It's hot, it's real, it's forever, but nobody has to go there. How does that change when we share our faith with people and tell them how much God loves them? And after they have believed on the Lord Jesus, then the next step is to tell other people. That's how Christianity is communicated worldwide. You tell the one next to you, I'll tell the one next to me. In no time at all, we'll tell them all. Tell them, tell them one by one. Youth of Angelism is the most important ministry that there is. We've got to reach people before they turn 20. Statistics tell us that between 85 and 90% of everybody who ever becomes a believer in Jesus Christ does so before their 20th birthday. So we've got to train students to share their faith where they are, adults to coach them and to encourage them and to help them learn how to do what they can do well, and then to go with the gospel. We're training at Triple T Christian Youth Ministries, what we call creative Christian communicators. They're taking every aspect of their lives and any of the things that they really like to do and they're developing their talents for the glory of God and the winning of their friends to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's happening. Stay tuned, we're going to tell you more. In order to shoot for the stars, we have to put together an extreme dream team. Counting by county, community by community, campus by campus, tigers, teens involved, going evangelizing regularly and tiger teammates, adults who will encourage, enlarge and expand. The vision, every youth, to have the opportunity to hear the gospel with an invitation to believe on the Lord Jesus before turning 20. The objective is to partner in youth evangelism with local congregations and ministries, challenging and training youth as tigers, and then tiger team impact evangelistic youth efforts can happen as God opens doors. We're targeting 31 counties in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky this year of 2013. God willing will be going out to the tri-state. And there are 31 counties that are targets now, but 93 Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky counties within a hundred miles of where we are. And so by December 28, 2013, triple T's 2,500 consecutive Saturday, the Lord willing, we hope to have at least the names and addresses of potential tiger teammates and people who will put together the tiger team impact evangelistic youth efforts, not only on these 31 counties, but in 31 more for 2014. And then moving on forward for 31 more in 2015 so that we can saturate the entire tri-state of a hundred miles from where we are located. God willing on February 6, 2016, three years from now, triple T will have its golden anniversary, 50 years old. And we're going to celebrate for a whole year to set the tone for triple T's second 50 year span if the Lord terries his return. Our omnipotent omniscient God knows the possibilities now through 2020 and far beyond. All glory goes to God for what He has done, what He is doing and what we believe He would have us to do. The Bible candidly presents the team concept in Romans chapter 12. Our thrust right now is, but you be watchful in all things. Enduroflictions do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. We want to expand. We're going to have teams that will enable people to work together and achieve high goals that would be out of reach for individuals working separately. Teamwork multiplies abilities and strengths. Teamwork enables individuals to complement one another and compensate for one another's lacks and weaknesses. Pat Williams from Orlando Magic wrote a book, "Extreme dreams depend on teams." And we are putting together the dream team now. God has given us some very wonderful people. Just last December, well, beginning the latter part of November, November the 29th, moving till December 31. God gave us 115 tiger teammates who invested between 20 and $5,000 each. What a wonderful thing for people. And nothing is too small and nothing is too large. And it all comes together to accomplish the purpose of communicating Christianity creatively. And that's why we do what we do. We call it public relations outreach. We use every means and media possible. That's why we're coming to you by radio. That's why our broadcast is on podcasts. And anybody anywhere in the world can pick it up anytime they want to. That's why we use print. That's why we put billboards by the side of the road. That's why we're endeavoring to raise a million times for digital to put a large sign on our property facing Highway 41, where 25,000 vehicles pass by every single day. And those vehicles average three to five people per vehicle. And we've got to reach those passers-by with the message of eternal life and also let them know what's happening on this corner at Triple T's 30 Acres at U.S. Highway 41 North and Boomvener Harmony Road. That's why we invite you to be a partner with us. First to pray and then to be a giver. $20 makes you a Tiger teammate, encourager, and provides a scholarship for another 10 to 19-year-old to come to be trained in leadership and peer evangelism. We want you to be a part of all of this, and we invite you to come any Saturday night in February because we are, again, shooting for the stars. Check the website or call us. Ergo 812-867-2418. Christ through you can change the world. [ Music ] Every Saturday at 7.27 p.m. you are invited to attend a live youth event at Triple T, 13,000 U.S. 41 North at Boomvener Harmony Road midway between I-64 and Evansville Regional Airport. Every first Saturday, a good news club for ages 6 to 9 is available in a separate room. For more information call 812-867-2418 or visit www.tripletchristianyouth.org. [ Music ] For your free copy of the "Telling the Truth" newsletter call 812-867-2418 or write Triple T, 13,000 U.S. 41 North, Evansville, Indiana, 477-25. Tune in to "Telling the Truth" next week at the same time on this same station. [ Music ]