In this episode of Gospel Talks, George and Jeff tackle one of the most foundational questions in evangelism: Is the Bible necessary when sharing Christ? Can someone be led to Jesus through relationship alone, emotional experience, or personal testimony? Or is Scripture an essential part of genuine evangelism?

Drawing from Scripture and real ministry experience, George and Jeff explore why God’s Word is not just helpful—but central—to saving faith. They discuss why truth must anchor evangelism, how the Bible functions as God’s self-revelation, and why confidence in Scripture is far more powerful than confidence in argument, personality, or persuasion.

Whether you're new to evangelism or actively discipling others, this episode will challenge and encourage you to trust the Bible more deeply when engaging the lost.

Episode Topics & Chapter Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction to Evangelism and the Bible

Setting the stage: Can someone come to Christ without you opening Scripture?

02:48 – The Role of Scripture in Evangelism

Why we cannot truly know Jesus without the Word of God.

05:23 – Truth vs. Emotion in Faith

The danger of following feelings rather than truth—and why modern culture gets this backwards.

07:44 – Experiencing God Through Truth

Why lasting spiritual experience is rooted in what God reveals in His Word.

10:23 – The Importance of Teaching and Truth

Evangelism involves teaching—not just kindness, winsomeness, or character.

13:10 – Faith Comes by Hearing

A walk through Romans 10: how people believe, call, and respond to the gospel.

15:42 – The Power of the Word of God

God uses His Word—not our cleverness—to bring people to faith and conviction.

18:17 – Confidence in Scripture for Evangelism

If the Bible is the delivery, what is relationship’s role in sharing truth?

20:54 – Conclusion and Call to Action

Have confidence in Scripture. God will honor the Word He has spoken and sent.

24:17 – NEWCHAPTER

Additional notes, insights, and encouragement for laborers.

Key Takeaways

• Evangelism is calling people to follow Jesus, and we cannot know who Jesus truly is without Scripture.
• Relationship is a delivery vehicle for truth, not the truth itself.
• Emotional experience cannot define spiritual reality—truth must lead the heart, not the other way around.
• Teaching is a biblical requirement for evangelism—people must understand the message before they can believe.
• God’s Word never returns void. He has chosen Scripture as the tool through which He brings conviction and faith.
• Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God—Romans 10 is the roadmap for evangelism.

Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world

become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.

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I'm George Pinocchio and I'm joined by none other than Jeff Musgrave, founder, author of

The Exchange.

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There's a lot of empty bookshelves behind me.

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Don't be concerned about that.

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I'm moving my office location to a different part of the valley and just want to let you

guys know that that's on purpose, not by accident.

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But we have an incredibly exciting title today.

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And the whole topic today is situated around this one question.

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Do you need to use the Bible when you're trying to win somebody to Jesus Christ?

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When you're trying to lead somebody to Jesus Christ, introduce them to Jesus Christ?

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And so, you know, do you just need a good argument?

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You need to win some personality?

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Can relationship alone win them?

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That's what we're gonna get to.

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So, Jeff, I think you've got some great thoughts on this.

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Tell me what you've seen in scripture.

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so many things to think about.

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What we're not going to try to do today is say, you know, what is necessary, because

there's lots of pieces that have to fall into place.

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And without the work of the Holy Spirit, none of this is happening.

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The key question, the specific question is, you know, is the Bible necessary?

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I mean, can we can we just kind of share our thoughts about it?

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And certainly your testimony

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I mean, it's one of the most powerful evangelism tools you have not trying to discount

that at all.

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But I think the very first thing we have to do is kind of come down to what is evangelism.

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know, correct me if if you think I'm wrong, George, but I think that the most basic core

of what evangelism is, is calling people to become followers of Jesus.

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I mean, when Jesus was here on earth, his

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call to people.

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And when they became his disciple, he his call to them was follow me.

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And so it seems to me like the basic call of the evangelist is follow Jesus.

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Would you agree with that?

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I would agree 100%.

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Yep.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So if we're going to ask people to follow Jesus, I mean, we've, we've got a world that

easily throws around the word, the name Jesus, but we're warned in scripture that if we're

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not careful, we could actually follow another Jesus.

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And so we to be able to define what that is.

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How do we know God?

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How do we have a relationship with God?

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How do

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How are we going to know who it is we're following?

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And the scripture says of itself that the Bible is the progressive self revelation of God

to humans so that we can know him.

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So God by nature is communicative.

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He created humans in his own image.

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One of the things that will drive any human crazy is not being able to communicate with

another human.

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uh

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we by nature are communicative.

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That's a reflection of our creator who we are to bear image to.

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He is communicative and he communicated himself to his image bearers through the word of

God.

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And so just on a basic level, is the Bible necessary to be able to have a relationship

with God?

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And the answer would be absolutely yes.

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Yeah, and I love the way you're intersecting those two ideas is how can you know that you

know Him without the truth?

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You know, how important of an ingredient is the Bible and evangelism is the flip side of

that is how else would you know that you believe in Jesus and that who you're following at

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the moment is Jesus because of all the counterfeit belief systems and worldviews and

figures out there in history.

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your messiah could be anybody.

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The only way to know if your messiah is also Jesus is to open the Bible.

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Mm hmm.

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I heard a man recently say these words in an encounter about following Jesus.

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He says, I know what's true in my heart.

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And so what I'm doing with my life is trying to find what connects with my heart.

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And I think that's, in fact, I know that's going about it totally backwards.

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That puts me as the definer of truth.

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And I think it's interesting when, when God tells us what salvation is, we looked at a

verse a couple of weeks ago, first Timothy chapter two and verse two, when we were talking

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about, living a peaceable life and, we had that episode on war.

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the verse there says that God would have all men to be saved.

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So he's talking about

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bringing people to salvation evangelism.

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And in the context, he says, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

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So literally, he is saying, on the one hand, we're talking about I want everybody to be

saved.

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And then he uses this synonymous phrase, and it comes to the knowledge of the fruit truth,

the way we come to salvation is through the knowledge of the truth can't do that apart

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from

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the revealed word of God that he gave to us.

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It doesn't come from my heart.

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I will say this, he satisfies the needs of the heart.

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He fills up the needs of the heart.

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So a relationship with God that doesn't fill your heart is not what God is offering.

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But he's not saying just go looking for what your heart longs for because our hearts are

deceitful.

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uh desperately wicked.

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uh What we have to do is go look for the truth and the truth comes in and fills in the

heart.

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Right, right.

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can't, it's exactly right.

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I mean, we've been told as kids growing up around Disney to follow your heart.

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And it's basically the worst advice in the world is follow your heart, which what we need

is truth.

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It's what the world needs, not what the world wants, but it desperately needs truth.

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so Jesus says at the end of truth, you're going to find me.

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Whether you accept or follow, that's I guess a different thing, but the truth always leads

to Jesus.

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I think that we as evangelists, and I don't really care for that term because I think

everybody says I'm not an evangelist.

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The fact is that if we're trying to share our faith with other people, we fit into that

category.

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So as someone trying to share his faith with someone else, better terminology, I, I, if I

say to people,

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Following your heart is the worst advice you could ever have.

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It's going to literally ring so false to them because they've heard all their lives, their

heart is important.

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I think granting that their heart is important is valuable.

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God says their heart is important.

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God is pursuing their hearts.

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Hmm.

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to have your heart satisfied is not by, chasing after things.

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the way to have your heart satisfied is to find Jesus and he comes in and meets those

needs.

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So I think to, help a person say, yes, I get it.

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Your heart is important.

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God loves your heart and he's pursuing it.

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But the way he wants you to, to find what's going to satisfy your heart is this truth that

is revealed to us.

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Does that make sense?

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Right, yep, absolutely.

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And so that, I mean, we talk about this in scripture, Jesus talks about a light, he talks

about a light set on a hill, he talks about, he kind of uses these analogies and truth is

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part of that, right?

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He's the light because he's another form of truth.

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He's literally walking around the self-revelation of God while he was here on earth.

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But, know, and...

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And those are specifically the two truths as they're encapsulated in Scripture, the life

of Jesus Christ and the rest of Scripture, that present you with who God is.

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And he says you need to know the truth.

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And I think we think no like no, but the reality is no like, it's kind of awkward, like

Adam knew his wife, a relationship no.

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That has always been the modus operandi of realizing something in the Bible.

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It has always had a relational plane to it.

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And so,

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Yeah.

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And I like to use the phrase to experience God.

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mean, that's, that's really what that's talking about is to, to genuinely experience and

commune with God in intimacy.

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That's, that's the picture there of knowing that you're, you're pointing to that's, and so

people are looking for an experience.

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I totally get that.

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But frankly, when we go around looking for experiences,

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It's kind of like a butterfly flitting from place to place to place.

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You don't know where you're going to end up.

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But when we followed the roadmap of the truth, which is the revealed word of God, we're

going to experience God, it's going to be a wonderful experience, but it's but we know

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where we're going while we're doing it.

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Well, it's really interesting you bring that up because what happens is when you don't

have the Bible involved in evangelism, when you don't have the Bible involved in

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somebody's approach to God, it's kind of like you don't have the decipher, the key, the

map that kind of untangles or interprets everything.

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And so if all you're being led by is experiences, which experiences evoke emotions, which

means now you're being led by emotion and there's nothing more turbulent than a person's

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emotions.

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I mean, yesterday I was...

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I mean, you would not want anything to be based on George's emotions.

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If the stock market was based on George's emotions, it would be far more turbulent than it

already is, right?

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And that's, part of the problem is anything in this human world that's based on human

emotions is going to have those ups and downs.

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And what you need, that roadmap, like you're talking about the key, the cipher is the

Bible.

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I so here here's another this is just to those of you who are trying to share your faith.

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Then we think okay, I got to convince someone that the Bible is the truth and

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I don't feel like I have to convince someone that my flashlight works.

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I just have to turn it on.

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And so I feel like sometimes we do ourselves a great disservice to be talking about the

flashlight, and telling them all of the wonderful, beautiful features of this flashlight,

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and you really need this flashlight, when really all we need to do is just open the book

and it the light shines out, and the truth is seen.

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And so

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That's why when someone asked me the question is the Bible, I mean necessary?

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How are going to shine the light if you don't turn on the flashlight?

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You got to have that.

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100 % Yep.

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Yep.

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It's I love I love that analogy because it goes to it gets away from it's one of our

temptations as Christians is to argue through things and and present them as this is my

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viewpoint.

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I've got to sell you on this and it's like, nope, you just have to do it.

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You just have to go ahead and that's real faith by the way, because now you're saying

watch I'll show you it works.

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Let's go stand on the bridge.

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and to that point, you know, in, in first Timothy, he, Timothy was told, God wants

everybody to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

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Paul uses that phrase, the knowledge of the truth three different times in the two books.

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And, um, in second Timothy two to we've looked at this passage before

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talks that the servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome.

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This is not about debate.

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You can win a debate and lose a person's heart.

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But it conversely, we need to be kind to everyone.

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He doesn't say, that's it.

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Just don't argue, be kind, everybody would be.

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So sometimes I think another error

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that people walk into is if I can just show them Jesus, if I can just be the example I'm

supposed to be, it'll all work out.

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And the very next phrase says able to teach.

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And so part of what we do is teaching.

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I the, I think somewhere along the line, you made the statement, if, the Bible is missing,

it isn't evangelism.

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And, uh, I, I think that

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That's where that comes in is that what we are teaching is the truth from the Word of God.

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And what the Word of God is, is the self-revelation of God.

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We're literally introducing people to the real God through His Word.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yep.

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I think I think that's exactly right.

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That's and I think sometimes what happens is When we get away from the Word of God, we

feel like we have to recreate the wheel a little bit We feel like we have to you know use

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words of wisdom Paul calls them words of wisdom and and if you ever looked at like first

Corinthians 2 1 to 5 Paul says this and when I came to you brothers I did not came

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proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom for I decided to know

nothing

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And that's truth, right?

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That's the Bible.

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Again, the author and the power of the Bible.

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power of God so that their faith would rest in the words of God is what Paul is saying.

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And so I think one of the things we do is sometimes when we scroll on social media or

TikTok or Instagram or whatever, we see these really, really smart dudes.

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I just started following one yesterday where I thought, man, the way he puts stuff makes

it so clear.

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But every time I try to be like him or say it like him, I just can't.

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Like I'm not as smart as that dude.

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He definitely has been gifted with a mind.

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to think things through in a very unique angle and present them in a way that puts them on

the bottom shelf.

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All that's great, but you know what's even way more powerful than anybody's IQ?

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The word of God.

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You can't go wrong going, using Jesus' exact words to answer somebody's question.

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You just can't go wrong doing that.

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And guess what?

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It's really easy.

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It's already been written down.

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You just have to read it.

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Yeah, one of the things I love about you, George, is that you know that truth, but you

still keep trying to learn and make yourself a better person of sharing the faith.

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So there's this there's this balance in which we are we're doing both we're trusting the

word, but we're trying to get better.

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We're trying to learn as much as we can.

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I think one of the things that you have to recognize if you are going to

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um, present truth as truth in a world in which that says, that's your truth.

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This is my truth.

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if we're going to present it as truth, mean, nothing, this is not my truth.

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This is the truth.

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Um, we're going to get pushback.

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And I love the phrase that Paul uses in second Timothy two, where he says patiently

enduring evil, recognizing it's going to come.

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And one of the you know, this about me, one of the things I loved about Charlie Kirk was

that when he got that pushback, he was patient.

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And he corrected his opponents.

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Now he didn't always use the gentleness that I think of.

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But but it wasn't with that emotion and red angry face that that that is the opposite of

of of gentleness.

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So if you look at those conversations, there is

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amazing gentleness in comparison to what happens inside my heart when people say that's

not true.

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You know, I tend to want to fight.

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And God says, No, we need to correct our opponents with gentleness.

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And here's the bottom line, that God might perhaps grant repentance, leading to the

knowledge of the truth.

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So we teach God's the one who brings them to the knowledge of the truth.

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Yep, I agree with you.

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It's exactly what Romans 10-17 teaches, right?

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Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

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And so I love that passage.

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In the context of the passage, I there's a lot of other rich things.

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I don't know if you want to talk about some of those there that are related.

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go to that, let me just say this because I agree with you.

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That is so key.

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Second Timothy three, Paul says that there are people who are ever learning, but never

coming to the knowledge of the truth.

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That's why the word of God is so critical because if we're going to bring a person to the

knowledge of the truth, then that, faith element has to come in.

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I mean, it's, it's not enough to hear the truth.

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as your word, knowledge, experience, we have to experience the truth.

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And the only way we can do that is through the faith and faith comes from the word of God.

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I love that because that means he's directly contrasting the word learning versus

believing.

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And I think that's a key distinctive.

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Now we're a ministry that teaches laborers how to teach, right?

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I mean, that's the whole point of the exchange online.

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You can go take our seminar online, become a teacher of evangelism, teacher of the 150

Bible verses in the exchange Bible study.

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But all that aside, um if people don't make the jump, if they don't

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put stake their life on it.

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It's just knowledge.

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just stays, actually, not just knowledge, it's just information at that point.

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It's just information.

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Nobody, yeah.

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I was gonna say, nobody is as learned as probably Bart Aermann, but he clearly does not

believe in Jesus Christ.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Paul, or excuse me, I, the writer of Hebrews, in chapter 10, talks to people just like

that.

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In fact, the book of Hebrews seems to be written to a group of people, some of whom are

genuine believers, and some of them who have come right up to the door, and are

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fellowshiping in the same group, but have never quite embraced it.

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And Paul warns,

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excuse me, the writer of Hebrews, I'm just so used to saying Paul because he wrote so

many, the writer of Hebrews, warns that, coming to a knowledge of the truth where I know

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it here is not the same thing as actually embracing it and making that exchange with

Jesus.

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I know a lot of people who know a lot about God, but they've never made that exchange with

him.

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That's where faith comes in.

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And in fact,

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you were talking about Romans 10 17 faith comes by hearing hearing by the word of God.

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If you back all the way up to verse 13, he says everyone who verse 12 knows and believes

that Jesus is and then he says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

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So that's critical.

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But then it goes on and says how they gonna call on him if they haven't believed on him.

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And how are they going to believe if they've never heard?

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And how are they going to hear if no one has preached?

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And then he goes on, says, blessed that that's the reason the Bible says blessed are the

feet of those are beautiful are the feet of those that preach good news.

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It's, it's the bringing the good news.

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And the good news is that that truth of the word of God, we actually get the word gospel

from that phrase, good news.

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mean, those words, the phrase good news in the Greek language is the same word that is

translated elsewhere.

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Gospel, the gospel is the good news that we preach.

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And when we preach the truth, God does the work of bringing people to faith.

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That's in verse 17, just the very next verse.

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So then faith comes from hearing and then he, he,

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Some people might be frustrated with us.

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You're being a little too specific.

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mean, we could just talk about the truths without re using the Bible.

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says faith comes by hearing and then Paul gets very specific and hearing through the word

of Christ.

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It's the word that that does the convincing.

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Hmm.

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Yep.

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I agree with that 100%.

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It's the word that convicts.

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It's described as a sword piercing, dividing to the soul.

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And it really does that.

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We have promises in scripture about this word will not return void.

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And so I love the way you put it.

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We were talking just before we came on.

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Relationship is not truth.

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It is a delivery vehicle.

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Yeah, it's it's it's the delivery truck.

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Right, right, right.

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If the delivery truck shows up empty, there's nothing, know, this might be a really nice,

beautiful truck, but it's not really, there's no point to it.

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The point of the relationship is to deliver truth, and I think sometimes we forget that.

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I think what we do is we try to sometimes summarize the gospel, maybe we don't want to

open the Bible, get into the Bible, be committed to a Bible study.

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I know sometimes, I'm the type of person, it takes discipline and a commitment.

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I have to decide ahead of time, I'm going to finish this Bible study with this person.

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Because I would much rather just sit and talk and get to know them and basically give them

the truth but in my own summarized words and not really include the Bible in the

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conversation and that's not a good practice.

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No.

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In fact, George, I wonder sometimes you and I both have experienced it.

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The pushback always comes with the Bible.

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It always comes.

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If someone is going to reject, um, as long as we're talking in generalities, it's like

we're all going to, yeah, I don't really like that.

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But when, when the pushback comes, it's, it's when we start showing them what the Bible

says.

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Mmm.

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wonder sometimes if the reason we tend to stay general is because we were trying to avoid

the pushback.

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Right.

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Yep, I think we're scared what's going to happen when we get there.

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And I think what we have to remember is that when they're pushing back, they're not

pushing back on us.

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They're pushing back on God.

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And so if God and somebody else are having a shoving match, I'd step out of the way.

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I wouldn't try to insert myself.

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I would continue to present truth.

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And the more they ask questions, I would continue to present truth and present truth and

present truth and let God do His work.

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And it may mean that your four-week Bible study takes six months because it's a long

fight.

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But you know what?

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It wasn't a fight between you and them.

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It was a fight between them and God.

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And I think that's why we sometimes take these things personally when they don't work out.

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Is we think, oh was the delivery truck was bad.

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No, the delivery truck was not bad.

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The delivery truck is the delivery truck.

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They opened the door and found out what's inside and said, don't want it.

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And nothing, it could be the best delivery truck in the world.

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But you know what I mean?

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Relationship as a delivery vehicle.

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It's not a judgment on that.

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It's a judgment on, this person rejected the truth and we know many people will.

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Yeah.

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In fact, in the context of Roman 17, Isaiah is quoted and Isaiah, when he's called, I'll

go, you know, gee, God says, who am I, who will go for us?

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And, and, and Isaiah says, I'll go.

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And, um, he, he says, but

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who's going to believe this?

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How in the world is this going to work?

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And God answers.

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Faith comes from hearing and hearing of the word of God.

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The reason we must get to the word of God is because that's the tool God has chosen to

bless.

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um I, my apologetics can be perfect and someone can walk away unbelieving, but, but the

tool that God is going to bless and use

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is the word of God.

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Now I'm not saying everybody's going to get saved if I use the Bible.

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I'm just saying that the people God is calling to himself, he's going to do that work

through the Holy Spirit working through the word.

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Yep.

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Yeah, it's Isaiah who also says, as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not

return there, but water the earth, making it spring forth and sprout, so shall my word be

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that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that

which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

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That's exactly the idea, and I think we have to live like that.

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We just have to decide if it's a conversation without the Bible, it's not a conversation

about evangelism.

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So if I could sum up this entire podcast with just here's what I would love everybody to

take away from this is that you can have confidence in the word of God.

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The word of God is the power that of the of God written in the book by the Holy Spirit.

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The Holy Spirit then takes those words that he inspired and implies them into the hearts

of people.

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And we have confidence that the word of God is going to do the work God sent it to do,

just like you just quoted.

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Amen.

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Amen.

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So pray with us as we pray to the Lord of the harvest, as we use God's word, as we go with

it on our mouth and on our lips and speak it to our neighbors and friends and family and

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coworkers.

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Pray with us that God would send forth laborers because we know that the harvest is

plentiful, but the laborers are few.

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Really exciting, all the things going on at the exchange and very excited to see what God

is doing

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to help us be more effective in bringing up, raising up, and deploying laborers.

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We love you guys, we are praying for you.

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See you next week.