Win Souls to Christ
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 1013 aired on January 19, 2025
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes, please stay with me. It won’t be long, just 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration,
education and no solicitation because we’re not going to try to sell you something. We’re not
going to ask you for any money. We just want to give you information that will help you verify
and identify the plan of God for your life. If you want to orient and adjust to the plan, it’s up to
you. I hope will. My job is to be accurate every Sunday morning here on The FLOT Line radio
show that plays across America in all 50 states. Thank you for giving us a few moments of your
time. I remind you of our website where you can order our books. They are all free. We have
many great books, especially
God’s Grace In Aging
which is a great book for older people. Also,
Christian Problem Solving
and
Practicing Your Christianity
are other books. These are all
available free of charge and most of these books you can play from our website. Our announcer
Jack Steele will read them to you if you click on the particular link. We have so much
information to offer you and we are so grateful that we can do this. Our Father has provided all
the finances that we need as we trust Him daily and He’s never one time let us down. We have
stepped out on faith and He provides for every need we have. We are so grateful for those of you
that have prayed for us, sent us requests and sent us Christmas cards and letters over the
holidays. Thank you. Now let’s get into what we want to study today. I want to talk about
something I haven’t talked about before. I want to talk about being a soul winner. I mention soul,
not body. It doesn’t do you any good to save the body because the body is going to perish
eventually but the soul will never perish. God wants to deliver souls and so He wants you to be a
soul winner. In Proverbs 11:30,
“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who is wise
wins souls.”
Another passage that I love is Luke 15:7,
“I tell you that in the same way, there will
be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who
need no repentance.”
Whenever you win an individual to Christ, when you win a soul and you
deliver that soul from the Lake of Fire, there is a party in heaven, joy in heaven because you did
your job. As we enter into the year 2025, I’d like to issue you a challenge about this, okay? As
you know, I’ve always encouraged you to study God’s Word under the ministry of a well-
qualified pastor. In doing so I’ve used the illustration of a FLOT line in your soul to stop the
sources of outside adversity from becoming the source of stress related sins on the inside. Sins
like worry or self-pity or even fear will neutralize your spiritual life and cause you to be
unproductive.Your spiritual life is designed by God to be self-sustaining and reproductive. The
physical life and the spiritual life are totally different but both share many of the same traits. One
of these traits is the ability to reproduce. Just as a husband and wife have the ability to produce
children, we as believers have the ability to reproduce as well. Notice what Paul the apostle said
in 1 Timothy 1:1-2,
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our
Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith.”
Although
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Paul is not the individual who led Timothy to Christ, he did consider himself to be the spiritual
mentor and a father figure, actively guiding Timothy and encouraging him in his Christian life.
On the other hand, both Paul and Timothy led many individuals to the saving knowledge of faith
in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. In Acts 16:13-14,
“And on the Sabbath
day we went outside the gate to a riverside, where we were supposing that there would be a place
of prayer; and we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled. A woman
named Lydia
[the name of my wife by the way]
, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple
fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things
spoken by Paul.”
Paul led Lydia to Christ as an individual soul winner. Again in Acts 18:24-26
we find Paul witnessing to Aquila and his wife Priscilla whom he led to Christ. These two
eventually witnessed to Apollos who was an interesting individual. He knew about the Lord and
the baptism of John, but he did not have the whole picture of what really had transpired. In this
passage,
“Now a Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came to
Ephesus; and he was mighty in the Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the
Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning
Jesus, being acquainted with the baptism of John; and he began to speak out boldly in the
synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him
the way of God more accurately.”
In my early days as a new Christian, I was encouraged to
witness to people. I even went to retreats where we went out on the streets and we witnessed to
strangers with the intent of leading them to Christ. We used a little pamphlet from Campus
Crusade called
The Four Spiritual Laws
and we were supposed to interview people and
eventually go through the four spiritual laws with them. This is something that I did in the early
days of my Christian life. Actually, there was more emphasis on witnessing to people than Bible
study and the need for spiritual growth. When I got saved, this is the way it was. I was really
never comfortable with these public approaches to strangers, much less the testimonies that were
given at night where people would stand up and brag about how many they witnessed to that day.
I personally have led many individuals to Christ in both public and private situations and I can
assure you, it is amazing to see a lost person ask God to save them. If it wouldn’t violate people’s
privacy, I could tell you who they were. There have been some amazing opportunities. Let’s go
over some important things for us to understand when it comes to witnessing. When this
witnessing study is concluded on being a soul winner, then I trust you will make it a priority in
your prayer life every day to ask God to lead you to a lost individual so that you can give them
the gospel and have an opportunity to lead them to Christ. Acts 1:8 says,
“But you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
I heard
someone say, “Jerusalem and Judea are your house and your neighbors and Samaria is the bad
side of town.” The Holy Spirit comes upon you at salvation. One of the ministries that God does
is to indwell you with the Holy Spirit, seal you with the Holy Spirit and fill you with the Holy
Spirit. You have the ability to be a soul winner based on the power of the Holy Spirit in you and
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the dynamics of the Word of God in your soul. Let’s get some principles about being a soul
winner, what it means and what it doesn’t mean. 1. Every believer in Jesus Christ is in full-time
Christian service. It’s not a matter of dedicating to full-time service. It’s simply a matter of
believing in Christ. When I first got saved, there would be revivals that I would attend and
preachers would give an invitation for people to dedicate themselves to full-time Christian
service. “Why don’t you come up and give your life to full-time Christian service?” I’ve seen
people say, “I feel like God’s calling me to be a missionary. I feel like God’s calling me to be a
preacher. I feel like God’s calling me to be a youth director” and they say they’re going to give
their life to full-time Christian service. Actually, we are all in full-time Christian service once we
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are mandated to share the gospel, to give the Word of God,
to lead people to Christ. We are mandated to be soul winners. 2. Christian service is related to
your royal ambassadorship. You are an ambassador for God. You may not think of yourself this
way, but you are a royal ambassador. Every one of us, as believers, is an ambassador
representing God to a lost and dying world. Where did I come up with a concept like this? 2
Corinthians 5:20,
“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an
appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
This should be your
testimony. You are an ambassador for Christ. Your job is to win people to the Lord Jesus Christ,
to reproduce. This is why God left you here; not just to take up time and take up space. It’s so
that you personally can lead individuals to Christ. Don’t think you can’t do it. All you have to do
is ask a person this one simple question, “If you died today, do you think you will go to heaven?”
Then off you go based on what they say. 3. The Church Age believer has two areas of
responsibility in witnessing. One is the witness of our life. 2 Corinthians 3:3 says,
“Being
manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit
of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
Your life is a testimony
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Your consistent service to God, your consistent spiritual growth, your
consistency in living your faith the way you’re supposed to is a witness to people and will win
people to Christ because you are being watched. Whether you know it or not, you are being
observed. When you fail, when you blow it, when you talk about how you love the Lord and
you’re a Christian and you’re going to obey God and then you go out and do something wacky,
people see you do this and you lose your testimony of life. There’s also the testimony of the lips,
the witness of the lips. This is the second area of responsibility. This witnessing is the royal
family communication of the gospel to the unbeliever on a personal, individual basis. It’s called
personal evangelism rather than mass evangelism. I’m an evangelist. I have spoken in many
places that I have had the privilege to give the gospel to thousands of individuals in thousands of
meetings, assembly programs, schools, churches or wherever. This is mass evangelism. But I’ve
also had the privilege to do personal evangelism. You may not have the gift of evangelism like
me, but you have the responsibility to be a personal evangelist for God. This is an informal,
conversational type of evangelism where one individual communicates the truth of the gospel to
another individual. This is your job as a soul winner. You are to witness for the Lord Jesus Christ
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and to win people to Christ so that their soul will be delivered. 4. There are many false issues
related to the gospel. Here’s one. Don’t fall for this. Sin is never an issue in salvation. You have
to remember this. You don’t get saved because you quit sinning. All sins were paid for on the
cross, complements of the grace of God. This is why 2 Corinthians 5:21 says,
“He made Him,
who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in
Him.”
Your sin is not an issue. You may say, “I’m a drunkard. I’m addicted to pornography. I’m
an adulterer” or whatever. This is not an issue with you getting saved. In Colossians 2:14, the
issue is Jesus Christ and the gospel is the only thing that is pertinent to the unbeliever. Don’t
make an issue out of their sin. Don’t make an issue if you’re talking to someone, “Brother,
you’re smoking you’re going to go to hell if you smoke that cigarette.” That’s dumb. It’s not
what the Bible says. Don’t make an issue out of sin. Make an issue out of Christ, the Person who
died for every sin. All sins were dumped out on Him on the cross including your sin and my sin.
Even if we quit sinning today, we would not go to heaven without Christ because He said,
“I am
the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me”
(John 14:6).
Telling someone they need to quit sinning is not going to get them saved. Don’t make an issue
out of this. Another false issue related to the gospel is don’t argue, don’t beg and don’t try to
persuade anybody to believe. Just let the unbeliever make his own decision. You need to avoid
false issues such as salvation by works. “Do you want to get saved? Then you’ve got to give up
something.” Observing some sort of taboo or some other legalistic standard is not how people get
saved. Nothing is accomplished toward salvation by persuading an unbeliever that he must give
up his sins or change his behavior pattern or join a church or be baptized. These are not what
save you. This is why Paul said,
“For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel,
not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void”
(1 Corinthians
1:17). He said in Romans 1:16,
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God
for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
The most
powerful weapon you have is the gospel. The death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus
Christ can change a man’s life when he understands what Christ did for him. When he
understands how God loved him, how God so loved the world, remember John 3:16. When you
share with him that he can have a new life,
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come”
(2 Corinthians 5:17).
People need this. People want this. They rejoice at this. If you tell them this, you can have a
phenomenal opportunity in leading individuals to Christ and being a soul winner. But don’t try to
force a decision. Don’t try to demand that they join something or fess up something. This is the
job of the Holy Spirit. You avoid any begging them, any emotional public invitations and
remember to respect the person’s free will. I have led hundreds of people to Christ in public
assemblies without giving public invitations. I’ll share this with you. One time I was at a school
speaking and the principal asked me if I would give up one of my five days to speak and I did.
There was a local evangelist in town speaking at a local church and he came in and he spoke. I
was in the gym listening to him and he gave a public invitation to get kids to come forward and
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promise they were never going to sin again, to publicly come down and invite Christ into their
life. You don’t have to do this to lead people to Christ. Many of these kids went back up in the
bleachers and continued to be the same person the next week they were before I got there and he
got there. Public invitations don’t save people. What saves people is believing in the Lord Jesus
Christ. If you make this clear to people, they will respond. You’ve got to avoid the pitfalls in
witnessing. You can’t argue with people. You are here to give information, not argue. If you get
into a conversation with someone about the Lord Jesus Christ and they want to argue, just tell
them, “Have a nice day.” You make decisions based on pistisism which is faith or you make
decisions in your life based on empirical data or you can make decisions based on some sort of
rationalism. When someone rationalizes that they are smarter than God and smarter than the
Bible and when they say the Bible is disproved by some kind of scientific data, don’t argue with
them. You are not going to change their mind. Just give them the gospel and let the Holy Spirit
do the work. You planted the seed, get out of the way. Don’t argue over the validity of the truth.
If you can deal with people alone, always do it. Don’t deal with them in a crowd. If you can get
them in a personal one-on-one, this is what you need to do because witnessing in front of other
people creates false issues. You can even embarrass people, that they’ll lose their prestige or that
they’ll be heckled because you preached to them and you caused them to do something publicly.
Just give them the gospel. Give them the good news. Tell them they can start their life over
again. Tell them Christ died for their sins. Tell them salvation is free, it doesn’t cost anything.
Here’s something else to remember. A high IQ is not necessary to witness for Christ, especially to
those who have a high IQ. You don’t have to be a genius to share the gospel with a genius. It’s
not necessary. The most powerful thing you have is the gospel message. It’s not about your IQ.
It’s about what the gospel is and what the Holy Spirit does with it. The Holy Spirit takes the
Word you give and plants it into their heart and convinces them of their need to believe in Christ.
He convicts them of their need so don’t worry if somebody is smarter than you or has a higher IQ
than you. Don’t be afraid to talk to them and do not ever brag about your experiences in
witnessing. Don’t ever get into this. I’ve been around people who said, “I witnessed to 15 people
today” and they brag about it. They brag about who they talked to. “I talked to a guy in the
restaurant. He was my waiter and I made him quit waiting on tables while I gave him the
gospel.” I’ve seen this happen. Don’t brag about what you have done. Just give the Word of God.
If it’s in printed form, personal form or however you do it, just give it and get out of the Holy
Spirit’s way. A lost person who is not a Christian is spiritually brain-dead. Romans 8:5-6,
“For
those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are
according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death,”
spiritually
brain-dead. Only the Holy Spirit can enlighten him. Only the Holy Spirit can overcome the
spiritually brain-dead individual. We have a word for this in theology called common grace.
Once a lost man hears the gospel and understands the issue, then his choice is to accept Christ. If
he does, it’s called efficacious grace. Common grace and efficacious grace take place at the
moment of salvation. The Holy Spirit requires you to give accurate information to the lost
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individual in order to do His job. In John 16:8-9,
“And He
[the Holy Spirit]
, when He comes, will
convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they
do not believe in Me.”
That’s the problem right here, the sin of unbelief. It’s the unpardonable
sin. If you reject Christ as Savior, there’s no way to be pardoned. We cannot get in the way of the
Holy Spirit when witnessing for Christ by begging someone to accept Christ or by arguing with
someone about it. We just need to make the issue clear and get out of God’s way because it is the
ministry of God the Holy Spirit alone that can break through to the spiritually brain-dead lost
man. Being saved, salvation, is by faith alone in Christ alone. It has nothing to do with giving up
something or trying to make other people over into the kind of person you want them to be. In
witnessing people often want the unbeliever to change their habits, their personality or something
else as a part of the gospel. This has nothing to do with the gospel. They don’t have to quit
dressing weird if they want to get saved. Sometimes missionaries try to convince the natives that
they’ve got to dress like the English people dress. Now that they’re saved, they’ve got to quit
dressing like they used to dress. Don’t try to change someone’s habits. Anything the spiritually
brain-dead unbeliever can do is not the way of salvation. Unbelievers can give up all sorts of
things and still not be saved. Another thing you need to remember, there are false issues in
salvation. I’ve heard this from many different people. Commitment Salvation is when people tell
you that you’ve got to believe in Christ and commit your life to Christ. This isn’t true.
“Believe
in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved”
(Acts 16:31), period, over and out. You can’t commit
your life to Christ. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You can say, “I want to be saved. I
want to accept Christ as my Savior. I want to follow Him to the best of my ability,” but don’t set
yourself up for failure by committing your life to Christ and then two weeks later you sin and
fail. You think it didn’t really work. Then there’s this thing called Lordship Salvation where
people say, “You’ve got to make Him Lord of your life. If He’s not Lord of everything, He’s not
Lord at all. You’ve got to make Him Lord of your life.” He’s Lord whether you make Him Lord
or not. He is THE Lord Jesus Christ. When you believe in Him, this is all that’s necessary. There
is no such thing as Morality Salvation, being good, earning it. It doesn’t work this way. There is
no such thing as Ritual Salvation, believe and perform certain rituals, or Emotional Salvation.
That you’ve got to get emotional, cry and feel sorry. I remember a story about a guy praying with
a friend of mine who said, “You know, I just don’t feel anything” and my friend whacked him on
the head. He said, “Why did you do that?” “Did you feel that brother? Now pray.” I thought that
was cute. Walking down some aisle, inviting Christ into your heart, is a distortion of the gospel.
Anything the spiritually dead unbeliever can do is not the way to salvation. Unbelievers can give
up all sorts of things and still not be saved. Revelation 3:20,
“Behold, I stand at the door and
knock”
is written to believers out of fellowship. You don’t invite Jesus into your heart. Scripture
verifies what is necessary. What’s necessary is 1 John 5:11-12,
“And the testimony is this, that
God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who
does not have the Son of God does not have the life.”
This is the issue. In order to be an effective
witness for the Lord Jesus Christ you must lift Him up. John 12:32 says,
“And I, if I am lifted up
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from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
The true issue for us as we talk to people is
Romans 4:5,
“But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is credited as righteousness.”
That’s all it takes, faith alone in Christ alone. A mature
believer may find opportunity in leading a young believer to the source of accurate Bible
teaching. Try to get them under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, to be hungry for truth and
to grow in the grace and knowledge of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Sometimes we witness
to give the gospel. Sometimes we witness to give the importance of spiritual growth and spiritual
stability. God wants you to be a soul winner. I hope and pray today and tomorrow that God will
give you the opportunity to talk to a lost individual and share the gospel with them. Thank you
for listening to The FLOT Line. We’ll come back next week, same time, same place. We
appreciate your prayers.