Go Where the Spirit Leads: Lessons from Philip

``Holy Spirit must be involved. You're not gonna go find your friends and say, okay. Today, I've just decided to be committed, and I'm not gonna do better, I'm gonna lead all my friends to Jesus. No one's coming to Jesus without the work of the Holy Spirit. So when we think that we can just pull this off, we have to figure out that with the Holy Spirit has got to be involved. So the word of God is involved. The the Holy Spirit involved, and there is a human to deliver the message. [00:40:54] (24 seconds)  #SpiritPoweredWitness

Sharing Christ with people and walking with them as they learn to follow Jesus can get very, very messy. And sometimes, 98%, it requires you to get in the ditch with them. And it's a long process of helping somebody meet Jesus face to face and learn to walk in him moving forward. We're not we're not promoting today that we're gonna go out Saturday morning to meet some people and lead 10 to Christ and come back and keep moving. I'm talking about the lifestyle of an evangelist doing the work that God has called us to do. [01:11:17] (42 seconds)  #MessyDiscipleship

So understand, if you want the power of God in your life working through you to bring other people to Christ, you gotta be daily filled with the spirit. That's the starting point. And then you get to this passage in verse 26. Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. Here's the thing. If you want to live the life of an evangelist and you wanna see God using you to help other people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior, number two, you must go where the spirit leads you. [00:45:56] (38 seconds)  #DailySpiritFill

Here's the thing. God did not call us to fall in love with results. God called us to fall in love with people. And when we love people, he'll handle the results. But we gotta love people the way he has called us to love them. We gotta see him, and then we gotta be available to be with him and even wait and spend lots of time if it is required. [00:59:27] (21 seconds)  #LovePeopleNotResults

Listen, this is your number eight. You gotta meet people where they are, but you always take them to Jesus. Look at look at what Philip did. He he didn't say to the guy, well, you're reading that passage, but I got something else I'd like to tell you about. He didn't do that because he's listening. He's engaged. He's hearing. He's seeing the person. The guy's question was not about Romans chapter three verse 23 that you and I would rush to. His question was about Isaiah and what this passage was about. So Philip was willing to start where he was and then get him to Jesus. [01:06:55] (43 seconds)  #MeetPeopleWhereTheyAre

Because sometimes we see our evangelism process as being friendly with people and having lots of conversations with people and walking away from people and never introducing them to the truth of Jesus. And you can talk travel softball and schoolwork and all the other things as much as you want, but if Jesus does not get involved, lives will not be changed. So not only do you meet them where you they are, you have to do that. We cannot say to people, I would like you to dress up a little nicer and talk a little nicer and do some better things, and then come see me at the church, then I'll tell you about Jesus. That's it's not how that works. [01:09:08] (40 seconds)  #IntroducePeopleToJesus

But when you're at that table today and your waiter comes over and you're beginning to have conversation and he said, you say, how you doing? And he says, well, it's been a tough day and you say, well, I'll have the steak and the baked potato and throw some rolls in there. He knows that you have not seen him nor heard him. But if you go into a restaurant thinking that the only reason you're there is to get the food you're ordering, you've missed the whole point of being the evangelist. [01:00:43] (29 seconds)  #SeePeopleEverywhere

Let me ask you this question. How you don't have to raise your hands on this. Just think through it with me. Have you been one of those people that was not seen? Like, in your life, have you been that that person that you felt like, man, nobody sees me. So you understand what happens when someone does see you. You understand what happens when when all of a sudden someone stops, pays attention to you, says, hey, I wanna know you. It's life giving. It's life changing, and we have to become people that see the people that God has put in front of us. [00:53:42] (40 seconds)  #BeTheOneWhoSees