DAY 16 - 31 Days of Evangelism Tips and Training

REPENTANCE

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:14-15) 

Repentance is one of the most positive of all words. John the Baptist centered his preaching on repentance (Matt. 3:2, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3). Jesus also preached repentance, commanding His disciples to do likewise (Mark 1:14-15; Luke 24:47). The angel predicted that the Messiah would save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). The requirement for this salvation would be repentance. 

To repent means to stop going one direction, to turn around completely, and to go the opposite way. Repentance involves a dramatic and decisive change of course. God urges us to repent when the path we are taking leads to destruction. Repentance will save us from disastrous consequences! What a wonderful word! How comforting that the Creator loves us enough to warn us of impending danger!

Our problem is that we think of repentance as something negative. When we recognize our sin, we prefer to “rededicate” our lives to God. We may even tell others we have resolved to be more faithful to God than we were before we failed Him. Yet the Bible does not speak of rededicating oneself. It speaks of repentance! Repentance indicates a decisive change, not merely a wishful resolution. We have not repented if we continue in our sin!

Repentance involves a radical change of heart and mind in which we agree with God’s evaluation of our sin and then take specific action to align ourselves with His will. A desire to change is not repentance. Repentance is always an "active" response to God’s word. The evidence of repentance is not words of resolve, but a changed life. 

~Blackaby Ministries   

Source: Facebook 

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Since repentance has been mentioned a lot since we started this 31 days together, I thought I would share what I came across on Facebook yesterday (the message above) and I want to take a moment to make note of something......

In talking to people over the years there seems to be much confusion over two words, "confess" and "repent". Many think they mean the same thing. When a preacher or other Christian says, "You must repent", there are those who believe he is talking about getting all choked up and emotional over our sins and then confessing those sins before God. BUT, confession and repentance are NOT the same thing.  

In our "steps" to salvation, confession has played a big part in leading others to Christ (which is often used in The Sinner's Pray), but the need for repentance, in some cases, has been left out. Now, this may be a key explanation as to why we, too often, witness the following. People go to the altar, confess all kinds of sin, claim to "get saved" and then......

- Never return to church.

 

- Return to church, but still live like the devil...thinking, okay, I confessed and believed...I'm saved..."once saved, always saved", right? Even if I continue on in my sin, God will one day welcome me into His heaven. Most often, their fate is now sealed because other "believers" have assured them they are saved because they have "believed". These people are now dangerous to the cause of Christ because others will look at their lives and say to themselves, "What hypocrites! They are no different from me. Why do I need Jesus?" 

 

- Continue on in the church for a time, but then fall away. Many will never return. The ones that do, are most likely those who didn't "get it" the first time, but think they are "rededicating" their lives to the Lord, when in truth, re-dedication is never mentioned in scripture. What they may actually be doing is getting saved for the very first time. But, if there is no repentance this time either, re-dedication will have no lasting effect. This can cause a vicious, deadly cycle of coming in and out of the church...each time vowing to start living for God. These people are also hurtful to the cause of Christ. Each time they will tell their friends that they are now "gonna live for God", yet then they fail...again and again. Their friends will then think to themselves, "God cannot even keep a person saved. What hope is there for a sinner like me?" 

 

- Continue on in church, maybe even getting involved in ministry, but the person doesn't seem to possess the fruit of the Spirit. There is no love for ALL the brethren (only their group), no burden for the lost, no compassion for those who are not like them, etc. Many become legalistic in their views and try to live a good life in order to maintain their right standing with God. Many people will even look up to these individuals as being God's "cream of the crop". Remember the Pharisees and Scribes. They were well respected in their day for their, continual, striving to keep the law. They seemed to be above reproach. But, one thing was lacking...humility and a broken spirit over their own sin. They loved to look down their noses at others in order to make themselves look good. This group is VERY dangerous. They have caused many people to turn from Christ. Those who have been hurt by these people will either turn away from church, never to return...turn to false gospels (looking for love in all the wrong places)...or become Atheists and Agnostics (because they were turned off by what they thought were the best of Christ's followers). 

 

What damage can be done when confession is made without repentance. Repentance means "turning away from". It can be put this way...you were walking in one direction...then you made a 180 degree turn and started walking in the complete opposite direction. 

 

In a true salvation experience, here is basically what happens: When we first came to Christ we loved our sin and that was what enticed us. Every day of our lives we walked in it and toward it. BUT, one day we met the Savior. He was made known to us by the preaching (proclaiming) of the gospel and someone showing us from God's Word that we were a sinner. Our hearts were broken, knowing that all along we had been sinning against our Creator and by faith we accepted the sacrifice of His beloved Son. This saving faith is not passive, it is active. It produces repentance...a desire to turn away from our sin. We are now repulsed by it and set out to live a life that is holy and dedicated to the Lord...not to earn our salvation, but because the Holy Spirit has now entered in and turned us into a new person...a different person than we were before. A person, set apart, for good works. 

 

Confession is also a part of this saving faith. It will cause us to cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness for all that we have done and then it will cause us to confess to others that we now know the Lord. There are no silent disciples. We will be bursting to tell someone...anyone...about what we have experienced. 

 

We don't walk away from a saving faith with the same burdens we had before and we don't walk away with the old desires of the flesh. ALL things are new! From that day forward we WILL grow, no matter how small the growth. We were dead, but have been made alive. The fruit of the Spirit will only grow from a vine that has life.

 

Now, don't get me wrong...after our salvation, satan will start to work as soon as possible on stirring up the "old man" that is still inside us. He may even convince us to sin, but this time, there will be no pleasure in that sin and we will be miserable in it until it is confessed. We no longer look for sin, sin looks for us. Sometimes, we may stumble, but God is now our Father and He will do whatever is necessary to bring us, quickly, back into fellowship with Him. He will chastise us if we are disobedient, He lift us back up when we become discouraged, He will gently nudge us back in the right direction when our spirit is wounded. We also have the Holy Spirit to comfort us in sorrow and convict us every time we are tempted to do evil. And we have Jesus Christ who is ALWAYS interceding on our behalf and ready to offer up forgiveness for any sin that we have allowed to creep in.

 

Saving faith is an active faith and it is a producing faith!! It starts working the day we are saved and remains in us until the day we die. It keeps us with the Father. It helps us to know His voice. We can never disown Him, no more than He can disown us, because He is now a part of us. And even when we sin against Him and we fight the desires of the flesh, we will also have His desires...and that is to love the brethren, to love souls, to love His Word (for it is no longer grievous to us), to talk to Him through prayer, to worship Him, to live separated from the world, and to do and accomplish His will.

 

My friends, "REPENTANCE" is necessary. Unless ye repent, ye shall ALL, likewise perish! You cannot accept Christ in the free pardon of sin with the thought in mind that there are sins you can still commit. Either we are willing to give them up or we have not fully grasped that is our sin that has separated us from God in the first place. Saving faith will compel us to repent...to turn from all known sin in our lives. It will compel us to dig into to God's Word and see what else we are doing that does not please God. Again, not to earn our salvation, nor to maintain it, but because an all-seeing God has shown us our heart and we are no longer the same!  

 

Dear Friends, apparently satan doesn't want this message to go out. I've had problems with getting it written, formatted, and published due to problems with Blogger. I'm going to go ahead and publish it now and then come back and add in the verses that came to mind as I was writing this. I just want to get it out to you while the system seems to have stabilized. Thanks for your patience! God bless!

 

~The Princess Warrior ♔ 

DAY 15 - 31 Days of Evangelism Tips and Training

Since my internet is acting up today I'm posting something that I had in my files that might be of interest and shed some light on the term "Once Saved Always Saved".

Over the last 14 days I have introduced you to Evangelist Ray Comfort. Years ago, when I went through his program called "The Way of the Master" I emailed Living Waters and asked where Ray stood on the aforementioned term. Here was their response:

When people call and ask where Ray stands on the charismatic issue, prophecy, predestination, etc., we tell them that he doesn't have an opinion because he doesn't want to divide the Body of Christ. However, let me share where Ray does stand on one issue that I think Christians may be able to come closer together on--the issue of "Once saved always saved."

Someone asked Ray's opinion on a book on the subject, written by a very respected man of God. After reading the book, one thing he noticed, was there was a very evident silence on the subject of true and false conversion. This was despite the fact that it is incredibly relevant to the topic dealt with in the book. The New Testament deals with this in great depth. It tells of Judas' profession of faith (he was in truth a thief, and was referred to by Jesus as a "devil"), to the parables of Jesus about the true and false "believers" sitting alongside one another. It speaks of Demas, who forsook Paul because he "loved this present world." As such, he revealed himself to be an enemy of God--"Whoever is a friend of the world is an enemy of God."

In one case, the author referred to a pastor/friend who was found to be "romantically" involved with another woman. The pastor had made his mind up to divorce his wife and marry the woman. I presume he means that he had been committing adultery. Instead of challenging the man as to the validity of his faith, and therefore warning him that "adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God," he spoke of the man's "loss of rewards."

Ray does believe in eternal security for a true convert. He puts his hand to the plow and doesn't look back, because he is "fit" for the kingdom (Luke 9:62).

Those who are fit for the Kingdom are not hypocrites as was Judas. The true convert is eternally secure in his faith, because his faith in Jesus is genuine rather than false.

However, if a man steals, lies, kills, rapes, hates, lusts, covets, commits adultery, etc., and calls himself a Christian, he would be very wise to examine himself and see if he is "in the faith." The Bible makes it very clear that hypocrites will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

If a man has no understanding of true and false conversion (in his ignorance), he may make a calculated decision to forsake a few future eternal rewards and trade them for the immediate and temporary pleasures of sin. His confidence is in an interpretation of scripture that may have eternally tragic repercussions.

Ray thinks that teaching on true and false conversion would clear the air when it comes to the contentions between two opinions that so often divide the Church. It would bring closer together those who say you can lose your salvation at the drop of a sinful hat, and others who think that Christians can get away with murder and still be assured that they are saved, because they once professed faith in the Savior.

For more information, if you haven't already, please read "True and FalseConversion".

Special Note: Please make no mistake or wrong assumption from this text. Salvation is eternal and always has been and always will be through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ...for by grace are we saved through faith...but, true saving faith will produce repentance and a changed life. After becoming a Christian we may fall into sin, but we will not run to it, neither can we stay in it. 

Jesus Christ said that He has begun a good work in us and will continue it until He calls us home...and God cannot lie. Once saved, always saved is correct, but one must be truly saved to always be saved. God gives to us eternal life and no man can pluck us out of His hand!

DAY 3 - 31 Days of Evangelism Tips and Training

Today, we will be following up on what we were discussing yesterday. We may have to spend one more day on this subject, but please remember -- this one subject is VITAL and so very important. I promise we will move on and get to other evangelism tips and training in the many days ahead.

Instead of taking extra time to recap, I would suggest that you go back and read DAY 2 (if you have not done so already). We are continuing the line of thought -- Are we truly saved and how can we know for sure? It is essential that we get this nailed down so we can carry on and be effective in building up the kingdom of God and it is essential that we be able to help others know for sure that they are in the faith. So, here we go……

Back in 2006 my ideas and preconceived notions about witnessing were turned upside down forever by two powerful messages: 

Hell’s Best Kept Secret

http://www.livingwaters.com/learn/hellsbestkeptsecret.htm (You can listen here or download as an MP3.)
http://assets.livingwaters.com/pdf/HellsBestKeptSecret.pdf (or you can read the transcript here)
http://assets.livingwaters.com/pdf/study_sheets_HBKS.pdf (study sheet) 

True and False Conversion

http://www.livingwaters.com/learn/trueandfalse.htm (You can listen here or download as an MP3.)
http://assets.livingwaters.com/pdf/TrueAndFalseConversion.pdf (or you can read the transcript here)
http://assets.livingwaters.com/pdf/study_sheets_TFC.pdf (study sheet)

I HIGHLY recommend that before you precede any further to either listen to or read these two messages. If you do, you will be better prepared for the things we will discuss. If you don’t, then some things I say to you may not make sense. If this gets you behind in reading the daily material, please don’t worry -- I don’t plan on removing anything; it will be here when you need it. I want you to go at your own pace. Quantity is not as important here, quality is. I want you to grasp what you are reading and listening to, so don’t rush and compromise your understanding. 

Through the messages Hell’s Best Kept Secret and True and False Conversion I have learned that around the turn of the last century preachers began to change how they presented Christ (and the gospel message) to others. Easy believism (my term for it) was born and society started on its downhill slide. Prior to the 19^th century all the great preachers used 10 powerful cannons (The Ten Commandments) to shoot into the hearts of men, women, boys, and girls and great revivals were the results. Churches were packed out, many were converted, and holy living was the standard. Now, I’m not sure who it started with, but we can be assured that the “easy believism” way was the brain-child of satan himself. 

Okay, now what do I mean by that term? It is a tragedy of modern evangelism. It was when the law of God and its capacity to convert the soul was forsaken (I am not talking about us still being under the law, but using the law just like Jesus did; to show men their need for a Savior – this will be explained more in the days ahead). After forsaking the law, to drive sinners to Christ, modern evangelism had to find another reason for sinners to respond to the gospel. And the issue that modern evangelism chose to attract sinners was the issue of “life enhancement”. The gospel degenerated into “Come to Jesus Christ. He loves you and will give you peace, joy, love, fulfillment, and lasting happiness.” This is an easy way to introduce Christ to others, but it can create false converts because this teaching does not produce fruits of righteousness. It does not produce holy living. It does not get men lost so they can be found. It does not produce repentance. And one big drawback to this message is that it will not fly with someone who already has a great life. Remember, there is pleasure in sin for a season. Those who love their sin and are happy in it will see no need to change. What do you tell them then?

Which message is easier to say to a lost and dying world? 

1) Come to Christ and He will give you peace, joy, love, fulfillment, and lasting happiness. 

OR 

2) Believe and repent or you will die in your sins (this is after you have shown them what their sins are through God’s standard – His law). 

Nowhere in scripture do you find Christ or His disciples presenting the gospel to lost sinners as described in option number one. They did, however, teach that these things would come after salvation. Number one is so much easier to do, but it will not produce true converts. This message is very appealing to those who are down on their luck and looking for an easy way out of their problems, but it will do nothing for those who are already happy with their lives.

I may shock you with this statement, but I don’t need God in order to live my life here on earth. Millions of people, with no knowledge of the true and living God, get up every day and go to work, go to school, have families, have hobbies, go on vacations, have a good time, survive tragedies, etc.  God gave humans the will to live and thrive and many of them get along better than I do.

Okay, now pick your jaw up off the floor and let me explain in my own words and through my own story what I mean by saying this. I recently shared this with an unsaved person who felt that my need for a god was because I was weak and too helpless to take care of the issues of life on my own, that I had been influenced by my family to become a Christian, that I had been deceived into thinking there was a God, and that I was not really looking for truth. Boy, were they wrong! Here is an excerpt from what I shared:

I am and always have been a very strong-willed person and I don’t like to be fooled. I research EVERYTHING. I always want to know the truth.

In the past I was a tom-boy, took karate and fought in tournaments, was in the Marine Corps for 6 years, etc. I have had some horrible things happen to me, but I am a survivor. At times, I can be a loner. I really don’t need anyone else. I have always picked myself back up and carried on. To get through this life I don’t really need God. Without Him, I would just keep pushing on – like non-believers do every day. BUT, there was always one thing I could not do for myself – I could not make myself righteous enough to go to heaven. By taking a long hard look at God’s Law and His Word, I know that I have lied, stolen, cheated, committed adultery (Jesus says lust is adultery) and fornication, I’ve hated (scripture likens this to murder), been disrespectful to my parents, coveted, manipulated others, shunned authority, been selfish, worshiped “things and people” over God, have gossiped and slandered, etc.…I could go on and on.

When I came to Christ it was NOT because I was weak and needed someone to help me or guide me and it was not to have a better life. I looked into the mirror of God’s Word and saw what a wretched person I had been. I saw a sinner who needed a Savior. I needed Christ to bridge the huge gap that was between me and the Lord (because of my sin) – to help me stand before a holy and righteous God. That was one thing I could NOT do on my own. No matter how much I tried to clean up my life, I knew all the things I had done were still on my account and no matter how much I had tried to bury them that me and God knew they were still there. On top of that, I knew that my sinful nature would still cause me grief. I knew that I could not remain sinless for very long. The nature I had fed all those years would always be with me.

I did not grow up in a Christian home (I grew up around drugs, alcohol, etc.), so belief in God was not something instilled in me or forced on me. But, one day, the Holy Spirit of God pulled on my heart strings – just like He does every person. Instead of ignoring Him or refusing Him, I looked to see what He had to say (remember, I said I wanted to know truth – I would not hide myself from it). I diligently inquired of Him – wanting to know if He and His Word were real. I searched the scripture and I searched for Him to see if He was true. I found that it was He who had first sought me. He knew before He even laid the foundation of the world that I would one day exist. He knew that I would accept Him. He knew exactly the time to come knocking at my heart’s door.

Like I said, I didn’t need Him to help me through this life, but I did need Him to make me righteous. I could never do enough, be enough, or say enough to change the fact that I was a sinner – and sin CANNOT enter into heaven. If it did, it would cease to be heaven because we know that just one little sin (like a lie) can lead to another and another – just like our society keeps getting worse and worse because sin is tolerated a little more each day. Those of us who have lived long enough are witness to the fact that our society’s morals are not what they were 20 years ago, or 30 or 40. They are ever changing and not for the better. More and more is tolerated, but God will not tolerate it in His heaven, and for that I am so thankful. This life has too much pain because of our sin – and pain and sin will never into the gates of God’s great city.

What non-believers don’t understand is that I have, on a personal level, met the Savior. I have walked with Him and talked with Him. I have felt His presence in my darkest hours. He has prompted me to pray and I have seen Him answer miraculously. He has opened my eyes to see many things in a different light and on a different level. Just as I know my daughter, my son, and my husband because they have been a part of my life, I know God the same way. I cannot un-know them and I cannot un-know God. I cannot believe my family does not exist because I have met them and I have been with them…so, in the same sense I could never believe God does not exist. I would have to create an elaborate lie and repeat it to myself every day, but even then would be unable to convince myself.

I believe God and His Word with everything in me. Since I have experienced what I have with Him there is nothing on the face of this earth that can convince me He doesn’t exist and that His Word is not powerful and changes lives. I’ve had too much evidence before me.

I could have existed in this life without God, but I didn’t really live until I met Him.

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Dear friends, as you can see, I did not come to Christ to enhance my life, I came because I was convinced by the law of God that I was a sinner in need of salvation. The wrath of God abided on me. I threw myself on the mercy of God, placed my faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross, and then repented (turned from my sin). Coming to Christ to make my life better would have been easy, but it would not have been real. I had to come the hard way, by taking a good long look into the mirror of God’s Word and seeing myself for who I really was: a hell bound sinner – hopeless – lost and undone. But, thank God for His infinite mercy, love, and grace that would save an old sinner like me.

Thank you for hanging in there with me. I hope this has been helpful to you and has given you some new insight to an older and proven method. Tomorrow we will conclude this train of thought: Are we truly saved and how can we know for sure?

Copyright Information 

Copyright © 2009 The Princess Warrior Ministries. All articles are copyrighted on the date they are posted, unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. Permission granted for not-for-sale reproduction in exact form including copyright and web address. Other uses require written permission. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are taken from the King James Bible.