Welcome back to Ignite. One of the most exciting opportunities I’ve had in doing podcast, Billy’s and Steve Amosun. And my dear friends who are prolific face shares, we’re talking to different wives who live in different parts. That way, we kind of live close together most of the time when I’m out in Arizona, but you’re a way of Northern, way far away foreign country, but you spend half your time in Washington, DC, but separately apart, God has brought us to the same place where we are soulmates. You, each of us are there not because we influence each other? After, right? I mean, after we’ve come to this place of recognition of who God is, and what he wants us to do is after that, that we’ve come together and start sharing stories and, and when we’re sitting around a table, or laughing a tie, I have so much fun. And so we’re gonna do that a little bit today about I want to talk about the stories. We’ve talked about the stories a lot, thank you both for being on previous podcast. But nobody ever hears about it, how much fun it is. You’ll Bless those who persecute you. I don’t want to rehearse. For somebody else. I don’t want that. I have never felt persecuted. Have you felt I haven’t felt persecuted? I think there are people who are just afraid to share their faith. Well, it’s fear. Okay. And it is fear. 80% of Christians are living in fear Correct? For a whole lot of reason. Correct. Now take your version, as it relates to sharing your faith. Yeah, expound on that. Well, and maybe you can, maybe both. You have some tips on this, but I think people are afraid. What if I mess up? What if they ask a question? I don’t know the answer to Yeah, oh, yeah. What? Am I going to embarrass myself? Or God or God? And so I’m not qualified. I’m not qualified. I, I haven’t. Oh, gosh, very, there’s this wonderful i There’s a pastor Aleister bank, he tells a story about the thief on the cross, who gets to heaven. And the angel says, Did you go to Bible study? No. Do you know the doctrine of salvation? No. Did you go to church? No. And the angel says to the thief on the cross and exegesis. So under what authority are you here? And the thief said, The man on the middle cross, said I could come. And that’s our story to share with people that once they find themselves in alignment with Jesus, the man on the middle cross, says you can call and that’s the message that we get to share. And it doesn’t matter whether we’ve gone to Bible study, or no that no have have gone to Bible school. It doesn’t matter why often, often talking about the most prolific of all faiths shares are new Christians. That’s right. That’s right. They have more fervor, they have zeal. That’s right. They have zeal, you know, in, in Revelation, chapter two, God says, I know you go to church, should we get a Christian I know you go to church, I know, you know, good teaching for bad I know you give resource of labor, and respectfully and sacrificial, I know that, but I have this against you, you’ve left your first love. And you’re no longer doing the first work. And that’s where the church is today. left our first love, we put other things in place of God, often saying, God, we help me with my god. It could be a ministry. It could be good stuff, not bad stuff, but all sudden that becomes a preoccupation. And if it doesn’t go well, for trusting man, it doesn’t go well. Then we’re where are you God, when God is our God, and when we love him, we’ll share him. We talked about whatever we’re excited about. If we don’t if you’re not sharing your faith, folks, you got to check and see, Is he really your first love? But that’s what you’re talking about. Do you have a pulse? deepest spiritual? Spiritual pulse? Yeah, I wouldn’t have that pulse btw. Like a heart. Yeah, I want to have a strong pulse. Forgot, like Steve, like Steve said, you know, I think the first knows three reasons I seen that why people don’t want but number one is that they think they don’t have enough knowledge. So they they fear and but the bottom line is they’re fearing man rather than fearing God. In because if we fear God, then we will obey Him. But they don’t need a lot of knowledge. You can enter if you’re a quick gesture, that scripture on Luke territories, I’ll give you the words to say, is so powerful. It’s not on our recitation or stuff we know. He’ll give us the words to say so there’s no pressure. No, if it’s our words, this just man talking. Our words don’t change anyway, but he gives us the word to say that’s the Holy Spirit’s figure through us until you have that experience, you have no idea what it’s like to have intimacy with God, where he doesn’t change the people in front of you, with his words flowing through us not the words that we read and memorize or recite, or whatever. It’s like Romans 216 says the power is in the gospel. So if we just share the cross with people, they don’t have to have a love of head knowledge or scriptural knowledge, resist joy, zeal they have. And when you talk about the Jesus died on the cross, that’s the power of God. And that’s what changes people’s lives. So that’s number one reason so they need to really good God. Yeah. And number two, the second reason, I believe, is because they don’t really understand the severity of hell. When you understand how severe hell is, you’ll be more persuasive with people. In Second Corinthians 510 and 11. Paul said, Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. Now even though the Scripture is talking about the judgment seat, the reward see for Christians, he was also referring to judgment and hell in general. So when you understand judgment, hell in general, you’ll be more persuasive with men. See, you will think I didn’t know how was this severe? I didn’t know it was that bad. I cannot let my family or my friends go there. I have got to take more passion. Take more effort in praying, you know, maybe you’ll get on your knees, you’ll cry in your fast and pray for your family members. When you know, I don’t want them to go their Lord. Send laborers across their path, give them dreams and vision, do whatever whatever it takes them back from hell. So learning about how helps us have that passion, that desire to want to witness this. Hell, it’s eternal. Right? The scariest thing about hell is not that it’s just bad, but it never ends. It’s right. That never ends. We’re used to bad stuff ending even if we die it in right. Hello never ends a billion years ago, don’t go to end when you’re sitting there with your full knowledge during that you could have accepted Jesus Christ would bill came by to talk to you, Steve came by, but you chose not to. And now you’re in hell. And if it was just being alone, in darkness, by yourself. It’s way more than that. Boy, I mean, you read on how we stop talking about how you only 10% of the church’s pulpits today are even mentioning hell or heaven or salvation. So we forgot about hell, it’s half of salvation. You have good news and bad news. We have rewards and punishment that’s in us. There’s nothing more basic in our lives that are say rewards and punishments. We’re just preaching rewards. And half of the message is a punishment or people are most evangelicals doing breed there is a hell anymore. There’s no fear of hell, right? There’s even a Barna poll that showed that 71% of Americans believe in hell, but less than one half of 1% believe they’re going to go there. Yet Jesus said, Matthew, seven men are going there and few are going to heaven. So when we get that grasp that health severe hell is, you know, Jesus talked about how in 46 different verses. So it’s a message of love because it’s a message of warning. He’s letting people know there is a hell you don’t have to go there he Oh, he got over to us that everything serious. I mean, there’s maybe a bad he overachieved in heaven. The rewards in heaven are beyond anything we could possibly imagine the glory of heaven and its eternal. But he also received in hell he made hell the ultimate resistor for going to hell. He made it so bad that who would go to hell, nobody wants to go to hell. But we’ve lost our fear. Hell, here I don’t think we I’ve been pondering this the past couple of months. How evil is evil. It is ultimate evil. It’s not just kind of evil. Evil is and our nation our world. I feel I personally, I feel like just evil is on the run. And so every year we’re using Satan’s world. And I think Satan, we try to appease, we try to make a deal with evil and the bottom line is evil is evil, and it wants to kill and a straw he wants to take us to hell Exactly. He He’s hell bent on taking his tail. And so believers need to understand that and quite honestly, as you’re talking about preaching and churches, I believe one of the reasons why our nation is in the condition that is in right now is because the pulpits have been silent. For the most part. The world has lost their looking and we sit silent. And it’s our fault. The reason that world’s in this race because it’s our fault. So we want to talk about can you we’re already out of time. Can we stay on for and do another one of these together and talk about the rejoicing country hell as the hell was evil. It’s the epitome of evil we can You imagine how we were, but the good news is we don’t have to go there. We have a free ticket out of there. It was talking about that in the next every Can we do that? Yeah. Okay. I hope you’re enjoying this folks as much as we are. This is real life. And we’ll see you next time.
