Jesus’ Plan for Training Soul Winners - Pastor Greg Addison - October 18, 2026

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Wow, that's incredible.

Thank you for the people who shared their testimonies on that video.

And that's really what we want to talk about today.

Normally we have a time of prayer right now, but I'm gonna hold that off towards the end.

And here's what we're gonna talk about Jesus' plan for training soul winners.

That song right there preached this message way better than I ever could.

God has given you a testimony if he saved you.

Whatever your journey is, Jesus died on the cross, rose again, conquering death and sin, so that you have victory in that journey.

Excuse me.

And when you give your life to Jesus, excuse me, when you give your life to Jesus, you have experienced a victory that is a testimony that is supernatural.

And it is a testimony that speaks into the lives of others, just like that testimony has spoken into our lives today.

And that is God's plan from the very beginning and how He has designed the advance of the gospel to work.

The plan was not for Jesus to be the one to preach.

Thank you, Matt.

But the gospel was designed for us to preach the good news of salvation.

I want you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 9.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

As we are reading through this Bible chronologically as a church, and if you're visiting with us, that's a journey that we've been doing all year.

We would love for you to join us as well.

Scripture, as we hold it like this, is designed more as a library, and it's organized as a library in topical type things, but these things unfolded in a natural timeline.

And it's a beautiful thing to be able to get the overarching picture of what God is doing as you read it in a chronological fashion.

And that's what's happening here.

Now, it's a little bit fun and interesting to go back and forth as we're doing right now as we're reading.

And if you're visiting with us, you want to join with us, the bookmarks are in a room right off the lobby.

But what'll happen is you'll get a story out of Luke, and then one out of John and Matthew, and it'll bounce back in.

And that's because the four Gospels were written to tell the story of Jesus' ministry, his death, burial, and resurrection, but they are written with a couple of different audiences in mind.

How you tell the story matters to the audience that you're speaking to.

So Matthew, for example, is writing to a primarily a Jewish audience.

He's writing to all of us, but he's writing to the Jews.

And then what he's telling them over and over and over is just as the prophets said, Jesus did this.

Jesus fulfilled this just as the prophets said.

Jesus did exactly what the prophets said he would do, and that identified him as a savior.

Mark, we learn from the book of Acts, followed around with Peter and he partnered around with Paul, and he followed them on missionary journeys and he heard them preaching the gospel.

And historians will tell us that a lot of Mark's writing are chronicling Peter's experiences with Jesus and how Peter preached the gospel.

Luke, that we're reading in today, Luke starts out his book and he's and he tells a friend, I've set out to give us an orderly story version of Jesus' ministry.

And that orderly means organized and generally chronological.

So as you read chronologically, Luke becomes a very nice pull-through.

And what we're going to look at today from the book of Luke is how Jesus has intentionally planned from the very beginning of his ministry that we are the ones who preach the gospel, the followers of Jesus Christ sharing our testimonies.

And so when you read it in chronology, you see how God is pulling a specific thread all the way through this story.

And what you see is God pulls all the way through this truth, that Jesus intended from the very beginning of his ministry not to be the one who drives the gospel.

Jesus accomplished the gospel.

Hebrews says he is the author and finisher of our faith.

But his intention from the beginning is to empower us with testimonies like we saw and the truth of the good news of where that comes from.

And he intends, equips, and empowers us to be the ones that share the gospel.

Now I want you to see with me, Luke chapter 9, it begins here in this chapter.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

We had this reading this week.

We'll have Luke chapter 10 next week, but I want you to see as we pull this thread through.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 9, verse 1, summoning the twelve, he, Jesus, gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.

Luke 9:1

So he equips them.

Verse 2, then he sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

So what he's telling them is this proclaiming the kingdom of God, that's a phrase that means share with them the good news that Jesus has come to be the Savior, and God's kingdom, God's plan is for the gospel to advance and people to be saved by the gospel.

That's what the kingdom of God is.

And so he's sending them out now.

You are going to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

And as we've seen up to this point, Jesus has been doing miracles up before Luke 9.

And what they are doing is validating him as someone other than just a preacher.

He is the Son of God, he is the Messiah.

And now as he sends them out, he is giving them this same power to affirm the message in the same way that it's been affirmed.

Verse 3, he says, Take nothing for the road, no staff, no traveling bag, no bread, no money, and don't take an extra shirt.

Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.

If they do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.

And that was a cultural thing you would do to say, Well, you know, fooie on you because you rejected us.

Verse 6.

So they went out and traveled from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing everywhere.

Now notice, Jesus is not with them.

He sent them, they go, and they are the ones proclaiming the gospel.

Now, as you read through the rest of Luke 9, you're going to encounter several different stories and experiences, all of them affirming the gospel and who Jesus is and their commitment to it.

For example, you have your scripture there, it's not on the screen, but you have this famous picture description that he gives of the gospel and of our commitment to the gospel.

He says in verse 23, if anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.

And he is telling them, as they've had this experience of going and they come back to him, he is telling them, listen, this is what it is.

I'm going to go to the cross and I'm going to die for you there.

And if you're going to follow me, you're going to take up the proverbial cross of your life, and you're going to sacrifice your life to me because of what I did for you.

The commitment that he is demanding of them is that they invest all of who they are and what he's called them to do, and that is to spread the gospel.

Then you get to Luke chapter 10, verse 1, and it begins exactly the same way with this caveat.

Luke 10:1

After this, after these events that are all happening in Luke 9, the Lord appointed 72 others.

And notice, here's the difference.

He trained the 12, and he sent the 12, and then he immediately moves into the next phase of his plan, and that is to expand the workforce.

And he now calls 72 more on top of the 12, and he equips them to send them out.

After this, the Lord appointed 72 others, and he sent them ahead of himself in pairs.

Notice he's not with them.

They are going ahead of him.

He has sent them out to every town and place where he himself was about to go.

And he told them, The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.

Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.

And so not only is he teaching them, he's teaching the twelve, and he's teaching the seventy-two, and he's teaching all 84 of them, there is a whole lot more of us that need to be put into play.

That the advance of the gospel is constantly expanding the number of people who are sharing the good news that Jesus saves.

So here's what I want you to see first.

Truth number one is this Jesus designed evangelism to be advanced through people from the very beginning of his ministry.

The plan is always that all of us are sharing Jesus.

The plan was never someone gets on television and preaches before the masses and people get saved, and everyone sits on the sideline and cheers like a football game.

If that's your definition of Christianity, you have a wrong definition, and we need to go back to the beginning and redefine what it means to get saved.

What it means to get saved is you have recognized that Jesus is the Savior, that he loved us so much, I couldn't do anything with my sin, and death is the result of my sin, and I'm going to be judged for eternity because of my sin, and I can't fix it.

But Jesus stepped out of heaven because he loved us.

He went to the cross, and there he died, a death that had no sin attached to it, so that he could literally pay the price for our sin.

He took on the sins of the world, and there he died on the cross in our place.

He rose again three days later, conquering death and sin.

That is what good news means.

It is good news.

Sin is bad news, judgment is terrible news, but Jesus paid the price for our sins to offer us salvation, and that's good news.

And the kingdom of God is, he sent Jesus to do that, and then he gave all of us testimonies who've accepted Christ as our Savior so that we can go out and share that and advance the good news, the gospel, to all the other people that need the good news of the gospel.

Now I want you to follow with me in the ark of Scripture how this works.

In Luke chapter 5, verse 10, in that section, this is Luke describing how he called the 12 apostles.

Luke 5:10

Remember chapter 9, the 12 he sent out.

These are the 12 apostles.

And so it says, so they were James and John.

They were Zebedee's sons.

Their dad's name was Zebedee, and they were fishermen, and he called them from this fishing profession, and they were Simon Peter's partners.

That's Peter, who we call Peter.

And Jesus says, Don't be afraid.

From now on, you will be catching people.

Or the phrase that you've heard in another one of the gospels, I will make you fishers of men.

And so from the very moment that God, that Jesus called them to be his twelve disciples, the very purpose and moment and mission that he gave them was to fish for the souls of men using the good news of the gospel that Jesus came to save.

So he warned them that what happened in chapter 9 is what he was training them to do.

And then you go to chapter 9, and it says, just as his plan, go to the next screen, that he sent them out.

And then in chapter 10, what I believe is happening there is not only Jesus expanding to 72 more, but he is teaching the 12 how to train the 72 to send them out.

Because that's the way this works.

And when you get later on, and we're reading chronologically through the creation of the church and the book of Acts, and then as Paul begins to teach churches and Philippi and Corinth and all those places, and write all those letters as he writes letters to men like Timothy who are going to be pastors, he tells them, the things that you've heard from me among many witnesses, you find faithful men and you equip them and cause them to teach others also.

This has been Jesus' plan from the beginning.

The plan was always that every one of us who accept the gospel became a person who shares the gospel.

And so he tells the 12, I'm going to train you.

Then he sends the 12 out as he's trained them.

And now he's training the 12 to train more, and he sends out the 72.

And as you continue the narrative, what happens after Jesus has died on the cross, he's risen again, he's preparing his followers for what's going to happen.

I'm going into heaven, and there I'm going to pray for you.

And here's what's going to happen.

Y'all are going to get busy, and you're going to do what I trained you to do and what I designed you to do from the beginning, and that's y'all go out and you tell people about how to be saved.

We see that in two places.

Matthew chapter 28, what sometimes in church life we refer to as the Great Commission.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

He says, All authority in heaven that is given to me by the Father, I invest that in you.

Therefore.

Anytime we see the word, therefore, we ask, what is that?

Therefore, because he has invested his authority in us, we are commanded to go and share Jesus and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That's what he's commanding us to do.

In another description with followers in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, they're doing the same thing that we do in our culture today.

Acts 1:8

They're saying, when are you going to come back?

And how's that going to work?

And how do we understand the 70 weeks in Daniel?

And how do we study all that?

And Jesus says, it is not for you to know those things.

God didn't write that for you.

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

God didn't write that for you to figure all this out.

You are not ever going to know when I'm coming back.

You are written those things so that you know I am coming back.

And then verse 8, but you will receive the Holy Spirit, and then you will receive power of the Holy Spirit, and then you will do what?

Go to classes and learn more cool things about, you know, Bible facts to know and tell?

No.

You will go and be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

In other words, he draws concentric circles around the planet.

Where they're living, near where they live, people not like them, the whole world.

That's the plan from the beginning.

God has always intended for the church to be the mechanism of the gospel.

And it is incredibly difficult to break through that.

Especially in American churches, in modern first world churches, one of the biggest struggles that we have in all of church life is grasping a hold of personal evangelism and people moving from the sidelines to the tip of the spear and advancing the gospel.

I want you to listen.

As you know, I'm an amateur World War II historian, right?

I love that.

And I've come across this book a little while ago.

It's incredible.

It's called Mission at Nuremberg.

I highly recommend this.

This is a book written about a man named Chaplain Henry Garricky.

He was from St.

Louis.

He was another faith persuasion than we are, but he was a follower of Christ and evangelical just like we are.

So he ran a mission in St.

Louis and he's reaching the down and out and all of that.

And in World War II, he was even past the age of chaplains, but we desperately needed chaplains, and he went and volunteered, even though it was past his time to do that.

And he served throughout World War II in the European Theater, and eventually he was appointed to be the chaplain to the German high command prisoners who were being prosecuted in the war trials at Nuremberg.

Now, how's that for a call?

I want no part of that job.

I mean, he is the chaplain to Hermann Goering and people like that, right?

It's an incredible story.

But this is written by as a as a secular history book written to just people who, like me, want to read about World War II and not to Christians.

So it's fascinating when you read how this man is introduced to a world that doesn't necessarily even understand Christians.

I want you to listen to how he's described.

Garricky believed the work of city mission, that's the mission that he was over as a pastor in St.

Louis, was not just about comforting the sick and forgotten.

It was about evangelism.

He was an evangelical Christian a half century before that term gained political currency.

Evangelicals, that's us, describing to a secular world that doesn't necessarily know who we are, listen to how we're described.

Evangelicals take a verse in Matthew as the bedrock of their faith.

In the gospel's final scene, a resurrected Christ appears to his followers on a Galilee mountain and instructs them to make new disciples by baptizing them in the name of a new faith and by teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you.

Remember, Christ says, in case his instructions are a little daunting, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Now I want you to just listen to this for a moment.

This is us being described to a secular lost world.

Evangelicals take this directive, often called the Great Commission, very seriously.

Seeing it as responsibility to save souls that have been damned to an eternity separated from God.

They see the world as a mission field.

Does that describe us?

I mean, one level it describes us, but at a deeper level, does it describe us?

They see the world as a mission field filled with non-Christians who must be rescued.

The gospel is the life raft that can buoy these souls.

The good news is that Jesus loves them.

And to avoid hell, all they need to do is accept his message of love and salvation.

Man, it's awesome when you read it like that, right?

But it's a little intimidating when we ask the question is the Great Commission the bedrock of our faith.

Is it our responsibility to take the life raft of the gospel to a world that is condemned to an eternity in hell for the judgment of their sin?

He gets it.

That's the way Jesus designed it.

The question is do we?

Do we?

Truth number two.

Now, Jesus designed evangelism from the beginning.

You need to understand this design.

This is an intentional structured plan that God has.

This is a military action, and He has trained the troops to accomplish the mission that's at hand.

Jesus didn't fling this out there as, hey, this is a good idea for y'all to do this.

This is not one of those things that Jesus says, hey, y'all just go do this and go figure it out on your own.

This is not, I'm gonna throw my people in the deep end and let them figure it out.

No, Jesus told them, I will make you fishers of men.

And then he trained them and taught them how to do it.

And he gave them the authority to do it.

He gave them the message to do it.

He shared with them who he was, he revealed himself to them so they had the person of Christ to go share.

And then he said, Okay, y'all, call these other 72 folks, and we're gonna train them how to do it.

And then after he arose from the dead and conquered death and sin, he said, See, I told y'all, now here's what I want you to do.

I'm gonna be with you forever, and all of you go out and get busy.

And it's a very intentional, equipping plan that God has, and it's in every one of these scriptures.

And so every one of us has all that we need to go share the gospel.

You think about what every one of those pictures that I've described.

Every one of them says they were appointed, or they were called, or they were sent or they were commanded to go.

I will make you fishers of men.

This is what you're gonna do.

I sent out the 12.

I sent out the 72.

The great commission in Matthew 28 that's supposed to be the bedrock of our faith, go therefore into all the world, baptizing the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Acts 1.8.

You wait here to the Holy Spirit, and once you've been empowered by the Holy Spirit, you shall be witnesses to me.

It is a command, it is an appointment, it is called.

If you have been saved by the gospel, you are now responsible to share the gospel.

Period.

No other answer.

If we don't understand that we are responsible to share the gospel, then we didn't understand the gospel that saved us.

I mean, this is the deal.

Bible says in Romans chapter 5, 8, God demonstrated his love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

He saw us in our sin.

He saw us that we had broken everything, we had rejected his rules, and he could have just judged us and left us to it and started all over again.

But that did not satisfy the heart of a loving God, the God of grace and mercy.

And he looked down and he saw Adam and Eve messed it up, and he stepped into their mess and he said, I'm gonna send you a savior to fix this.

And then we have all of these books in the Old Testament.

It took us almost three-quarters of a year to read all of that, and all of that is God's design, doing everything he can do to show his character, his grace, his promise of sending a savior, the prophecies of the savior so that we would know it was him when he came, and now we're reading how Jesus came, and all of that is the work of God to step into our lives and to bring the grace and save us.

We saw last or two weeks ago when we were talking about John and uh from the book of John, the man named Nicodemus that came to Jesus, and we saw Jesus say specifically, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

Not that the world would be condemned because of him, because the world was condemned already by sin, but that the world through Jesus might be saved.

That's what happened in your life.

You didn't wake up one day and you just decide, man, I got a sin problem.

I'm gonna go fix this and I'm gonna figure it out.

Somebody told you about Jesus.

You read about it in the scripture, you heard a song on the radio, you heard a preacher, somebody invited you to church, somebody got with you nose to nose, and they told you about Jesus, and they had a testimony in their life that made enough sense that you responded and gave your life to Christ.

That opened the door for the Holy Spirit to speak to you and the word of God to speak to you.

How does that happen?

Romans 10 says it this way.

He says, Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

But how are they going to hear unless they're someone sent?

How beautiful are the feet of those who spread the gospel of peace.

You see, he's called us to be those mouthpieces.

You cannot get around this.

There is no it's somebody else's job.

I don't have the spiritual gift of evangelism, I don't know the answers.

Somebody is going to ask me a question I don't know the answer to.

None of those things have any validity whatsoever in the facts of Scripture.

He has saved us to tell people.

He delegated authority to us.

He does not send you out unprepared and unequipped and without power.

And then in chapter 9, when he sends them out on their own, the Bible says he's given them power and authority.

He has equipped them so that when they go, they work past their fears, they work past the questions, they take with them the power of the gospel.

They speak about this person, Jesus, who is the Son of God, who has come to take away the sins of the world.

He is the author of life, the creator of life, and now the giver of new life.

And so here, take up your bed and walk.

See again.

Leopard be healed, not for their strength or value, but because it is validating the message of Jesus and who he is.

The 72.

He gave them the same power.

Matthew 28, all authority that I have in heaven, I invest in you, therefore go, because of the authority's given us.

Acts 1.8, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you.

And then you shall be witnesses.

He gives you all that you need.

If you've been in church, if you've heard the gospel, you can give your life to Jesus today, and you can go home and tell your family what happened and bring them back to church or call Pastor Greg or Pastor Matt or somebody.

Will you meet us at Panera or whatever?

And will you share Jesus with them?

And you're a soul winner immediately.

Because you are equipped with the gospel and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, just as it says in Acts 1.8, and you have a testimony that cannot be denied.

You also have a compassion for people to be saved.

He took Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and he said, You'll be fishers of men.

He didn't say you'll build a church.

He didn't say you'll build a movement.

He didn't say we'll create a new Israel.

We'll overthrow Rome.

He said, You are going to go fish for the souls and hearts of men and women and boys and girls to give their life to Christ.

He told them that's what he's going to make them.

And then when he sent them out, he sent them out.

And when he got those 72, he told them, and he said, as you go out, I want you to see the harvest.

I want you to see the lost people that are out there.

I want you to see the need.

And as you people get, as you see people get saved, I want you to see the power of that.

And here's the thought that I want all 84 of you as you go out.

I want you to know that every time somebody gets saved, I want you to think there is power in the gospel.

This is the power of God and salvation.

And there's 400 more people, and there's another village down the road, and there's my family, and all those people need Jesus, and this works.

Who's gonna go tell them?

He literally plants in their mind the teaching of more workers because of the compassion for people who need Jesus and how Jesus impacts their life.

Remember, this is the Jesus who saw you in your sin and he stepped out of heaven on his own initiative and he went to the cross and died for us there and conquered death and sin to offer us salvation.

That Jesus.

We can't preach that Jesus without having the same compassion.

We can't preach Jesus without recognizing the moment when I realized I am gonna split hell wide open unless something changes.

And Jesus changed me.

And that's the compassion that we take.

And then you've got to have a belief in the harvest.

Why is this so hard for us to break through in America?

And why in Fort Smith is it so hard?

And I'm just gonna tell you right now, this is hard for us at First Baptist Church.

It's not a problem for other churches, it is, but it's a problem for us.

Now listen, I don't want to be negative in this part.

You know I love you.

I hope you know I love you.

Man, I love what God is doing.

We have so many great things happening.

But listen, we hadn't broken through this yet.

This is the reality.

We haven't broken through this.

And I believe one of the major reasons is we don't really in our hearts and soul believe that that person's gonna get saved.

I've talked to them before, Pastor, they're just not gonna do it.

I've invited that person to church three times in the end, come.

I've tried, I'm just not good at it.

Listen, if Jesus saved you, can he save somebody else?

Did you get saved the first time you heard the gospel?

A lot of you did, but a lot of you didn't.

It took nine and a half years of daily training in my life for my parents to lead me to Christ.

Some folks, man, it's like walking through the door, but some folks like a hallway and it takes a while.

But listen, we've got to believe in the harvest.

Jesus told us, you pray for workers.

Again, the plan is all the workers who've been changed by the gospel to come and share the gospel.

His instruction to them to expand the army was pray for more workers because the fields are white for harvest, and a harvest will happen.

That brings us to truth number three.

This kind of want to leave you with today.

The workers are few.

That is a specific problem that Jesus addresses.

It is a very specific thing.

There are few workers.

Now, if you got a three by five car when you came in, I want you to wave it at me.

Everybody wave it at me.

You got them?

I got some guys.

If you need one, you didn't get one, raise your hand, they'll bring you one.

Okay?

This is important.

Here's what we need to do.

We need to assess the few issue.

So here's what I want you to do.

I'm going to ask you a series of questions, and I want you, this is your homework.

Don't be cheating off your wife or your husband, right?

Like do your own work.

I'm just going to ask you a series of questions, and I want you to write it down.

I want you to write down, I just want you to make a star on your paper.

If you have invited someone to church in the last week, a specific invitation, just you.

I just want you to make a star.

I just want you to make a star.

Here's the next thing I want you to do.

I want you to make a star, if in the last three weeks you have had a gospel conversation with someone.

Not if they got saved and you didn't have to get all the way through, but if you turned it to Jesus, I do a lot of those, and man, people find out on the pastor of First Baptist Church, and they can't get away from me fast enough.

Don't tell them you're the pastor at First Baptist Church.

That's not going to help you.

Right?

But here's what I want you to do.

In the last three weeks, make a star if you've had a gospel conversation, like a legitimate gospel conversation.

Don't you make a star?

Here's the next question I want to ask you.

Don't let anybody see your answer on this.

I want you to write down the number of people, just a guess, just a sanctified guess.

How many people you think in our church invited someone or brought someone to church over the last seven days?

How many people you think in our church did that?

Workers are few, that's what we're doing.

We're not trying to be critical.

Please hear my heart.

We're just trying to define where we are so we can grow, okay?

Now, we talk about our love list, right?

I'm gonna give you 30 seconds.

Our love list, if someone's visiting with us, you don't have to do this.

This is a church thing, but you can pay attention to what we're doing.

We have what we call the love list.

That's three people that you know are lost that God put in your life, and you're praying three things for them.

You're praying for an opportunity to invite them to church, you're praying for an opportunity to share your testimony, and you're praying for an opportunity for them to be saved.

You're praying those three things.

I'm gonna give you 30 seconds.

Write down your three names on your love list.

Okay, stop.

Here's my thought, and only giving you thirty seconds.

If you couldn't do it in thirty seconds, one of three things has happened.

You don't have one, so we've assessed we need one, or you're not invested enough to remember and get it down.

Or number three, you just chose not to.

You just chose not to.

Jesus said the workers are few, and we're going to pray in a few moments, but I just want you to see that.

Here's my next question.

How many of you have been on a mission trip?

Make a star if you've been on a mission trip.

We have multiple mission trips every year.

We have opportunities.

My next question is if Jesus said, You'll be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and almost part of the earth, I want you to make a star if you have an updated passport.

I mean, seriously, how can a Christian under the command of Acts 1.8 literally not have a passport?

Right?

Now, I could ask a few more questions, but I think we get the point.

What we want to do and what we want to see is it is God's design for every one of us to be doing this.

And Jesus warned them as they go out, the workers are few.

And so what we've done is just kind of work through collectively with us as a church where we are in that few or not.

So in a moment I'm going to pray, and we're going to pray as Jesus commanded his followers and us to pray.

But here's what I want you to think through.

Where are you?

Just where are you?

What do you need to learn?

What's in the way?

Is it a, do I believe in the gospel?

Is it, do I have a compassion for people that's greater than my uncomfort level or whatever it is?

We've taught you how to do it.

We've taught you how to do it ad infinitum.

And we have online on our website, you can go jump into the EE Loveworth Finding training deal.

You can do it online in an hour and a half and be equipped to do it.

Here's something I told somebody the other day.

I give the gospel the same way every time, and I give an invitation the same way every time.

I do that on purpose.

I can come up with lots of different ways to share the gospel.

I could give the invitation in lots of different ways, but I do it the same way every time for a very specific purpose.

You can just repeat what you've heard in the invitation and lead somebody to Christ.

You are equipped.

And God has given you the power that He has described in every single passage when He sets up sharing Jesus, every single one of them.

I will make you.

Here is your power.

Here is your power.

All authority I have is given to you.

You will have the Holy Spirit that will give you power.

He has given us that.

The question is, do we believe it?

Do we believe it?

Do you believe you can lead someone to Christ?

Do you believe that God will use you to lead somebody to Jesus?

Do you believe that?

And so here's what I need you to do.

I need you to commit to whatever God stirs in your heart from this.

Don't back away from it.

This is not beating on negative.

This is the Holy Spirit helping us understand what Jesus says about few.

And now I need you to commit.

If you haven't invited someone on your love list, invite them.

If you haven't written a love list, today is the best day in the world to start and be obedient and hear God say, Well done, good and faithful servant.

Has God stirred you to tell this person, and you have not, you've been hesitant, you've been pulling back, make the commitment to just share.

Just share.

Invite him to church.

Do something.

Make the commitment.

Jesus said the workers are few.

And the harvest is plenty.

And we're called to be the workers.

Why don't you bow your heads as we close?

If you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, man, we've said the gospel over and over and over again.

Jesus stepped out of heaven because he loved you.

He died on the cross to pay the price for your sins because he loves you.

He rose again conquering death and sin because he loves you.

And you'll be saved if you'll trust in him.

I read it from that book.

If you've never accepted Christ as your savior, that's what this whole thing is about.

It's about the gospel-touching lives who've never been saved.

It's about being rescued from the judgment of sin by a God who loves you and sent his own son to be your savior.

Come to Jesus.

Come to Jesus.

In a moment, I'm going to pray.

God's people are going to sing a testimony, letting you know that they believe this, that they have trusted Christ.

He has saved them.

And if you've never trusted Christ, I'm going to invite you to come and give your life to Jesus.

How do I do that, Pastor?

How do I place my faith in Jesus?

It's simple.

You take everything you've been, you are, and you ever will be, and you give that all to Jesus.

And friends, he'll do more with your life than you could ever do if you'll trust him to save you.

Church family, you have your card.

I'm going to ask you not to ignore that card.

Don't stick it in your Bible and put it in the backseat and pull your Bible out next Sunday morning on the way into church.

I want you to take that home and pray about it.

I want you to put it alongside your reading.

I want you to make whatever commitment God has stirred in your heart.

And I want you to pray, whether you believe it or not, I want you to fake it till you make it by faith and tell Jesus, I believe we're going to see people saved.

Because as a pastor, I believe that.

I believe we have people who are stirring, we have folks who are asking questions.

We have visitors who are coming, and I believe with all of my heart people are going to be saved, and I want you to believe it too.

So I'm going to ask you to make that your prayer.

I'm going to pray, we're going to stand and sing, and if you need Jesus, you come.

Lord, we love you and we thank you today that you are the God who saves.

And from the very beginning of accomplishing the gospel, you put in motion the plan to advance the gospel so that everybody has a chance to hear about Jesus.

And I pray, Father, for our workers.

Lord, I pray that you will make us the answer to that prayer.

Father, I pray that we will see Jesus' passion for the harvest and it'll stir in us a Jesus passion for the harvest.

I pray that you'll remind all of us in a constant way what it meant when we got saved and how our lives changed and our eternity changed and our future was changed.

And I pray, Father, you will birth in us a supernatural, Jesus-lit fire for other people to have that in their lives.

And to meet the Jesus who saves and the Jesus who saved us.

And I pray, Father, that here in our church, me and all of us, you will help us be the answer to the prayer because of what you are doing in our lives and our midst.

Father, call us to the harvest and equip us to serve.

And if there's someone this morning who needs to be saved, Father, I pray supernaturally you'll speak to their lives and they'll come and they'll be saved and they'll bring their testimony with us out into the field to share the hope of Jesus with the world that needs him.

It's in his name we pray, and all God's people said.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.