Dive into a transformative discussion on how to effectively witness and communicate the powerful message of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone. Rick Hughes shares insights into how every believer can play a crucial role as an ambassador for Jesus. Throughout this episode, you’ll discover how to provide the good news of the gospel, handle common pitfalls, and inspire others with the simple, unadulterated truth of Christ’s love and grace.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stick around. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, a whole lot of education, and I promise you no manipulation because we’re not going to try to con you out of any money. We’re not going to try to sell you anything. We simply want to give you accurate information. Information that will help you verify and identify God’s plan for your life, and if you want to orient and adjust to that plan, well, that’s my prayer you will do that. The Flatline comes to you every Sunday morning, same time, same place, compliments of the grace of God. We don’t have advertising. We trust the Lord to provide our needs, and He always has, and He always will. So let me remind you about our website for a minute before we get started this morning, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. It’s funny, but there are two other people named Rick Hughes on the internet now. They didn’t used to be that way, but There’s a Rick Hughes in Georgia and another Rick Hughes who’s a preacher somewhere. So if you want to get me, it’s rickhughesministries.org. And on our website, we have our latest audio book, God’s Grace in Aging. And it’s an audio book. You can play it and listen to it there. Or you can order the book from us by going to the website or calling… 800-831-0718. We’ll be glad to get your copy out to you or as many copies as you may need. So now let’s jump into what we want to talk about today. What do you say? You with me? Here we go. When you arrive in heaven, I have a question for you. When you arrive in heaven and it’s going to happen, you will get there if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Will there be some individual come up to you and say, thank you for telling me how to be saved? We reckon that happened to you? Someone you gave the gospel to? Someone who accepted Christ as their savior? I mean, I know a few I wish to thank for allowing the Holy Spirit to direct them to me with the good news that Christ paid for my sins on that cross. But who do you know that’s lost in their sin? Do you know anyone like that? And do you pray for the opportunity to witness to them? I mean, you have their ticket to heaven already purchased, and my question is, will you give it to them, or has Satan scared you away from doing your job? Listen carefully as I go through this this morning. 1 Peter 3.15, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you. to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. Those that ask want to know. This verse is telling us that we’re always to be prepared to give the good news to anyone who asks the question. Simply put, we were left here after our salvation, after we got saved, in order that we might be ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ. That does not mean that everyone’s supposed to be a preacher, but it does mean that you and I are charged with the task of being witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ. And this morning, we’re talking about witnessing. This verse is not telling you to make Christ Lord, by the way. How exactly do you do that? That’s the question I have. Some preacher says, make Christ the Lord of your life. Okay, tell me how to do it. And that’s just a buzzword. He’s already the Lord. But it is saying that we are to be dedicated to our mission by being occupied with Christ, which is what we call problem-solving device number 10. And this is only accomplished by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit and understanding what the gospel consists of. That’s the only way you can do that. In Romans 10, 14 and 15, the Bible says, how will they call upon him whom they’ve not believed? And how will they believe in whom they’ve not heard? That’s you, you and me. And how will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they’re sent? And just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things. That beautiful feet metaphor is used to describe the effort that we put forth to go looking for opportunities to witness in our life. Each day that you’re alive, and today included, is an opportunity for you to give the good news of the gospel to someone, somewhere, somehow. This word preaching that I quoted there in that verse, how will they believe in him who has not heard, and how will they hear without a preacher? That word preaching is the word K-R-U-S-O, K-A-Y-R-O-O-S-S-O, pronounced K-R-U-S-O, which means a herald, someone who heralds the good news. And it’s not limited to preaching from the pulpit, but it means carrying God’s word, God’s news of forgiveness for sin, and the assurance of eternal life to anyone, any day, anywhere, anytime. And this is the duty of every Christian. Paul the Apostle talks about Christians’ feet, and what the Christian should have on his feet, what he should be wearing. And it’s here in this passage that he uses a military metaphor for the believers involved in the angelic warfare with Satan. Here’s what he says in Ephesians 6.15, have your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. This reference is for our advance. We don’t walk into a battlefield barefooted, do we? I mean, you might step on something and cut your foot. We need secure footing to advance and be victorious. And our footing is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Did you hear what he said? Have your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.18, now all these things are from God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and given to us the ministry of reconciliation. That’s my job, that’s your job. Not just the preacher at your church, your job, the ministry of reconciliation. What does that mean? To reconcile means to restore relationship or to restore harmony between God and man. There’s a great gap between God and man and that gap is sin and that sin was solved on the cross by our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ and his substitutionary death. So how do you reconcile an unbeliever to God? Have you ever even asked God to use you as one of his witnesses, or have you ever asked God to lead you to a person who’s lost, who needs Christ? In 1 Thessalonians 1, 4 and 5, listen, brethren, knowing brethren, beloved by God, his choice of yours, for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction, Just as you know what kind of men we proved ourselves to be among you. So if we’re gonna witness to someone or be a personal evangelist, it includes several things. First, it includes verbal communication, verbally telling the good news, verbally giving the gospel. Second, it includes the filling of the Holy Spirit because you can’t do the job in the energy of the flesh. The word of God never comes back void, we know that, but it’s the Holy Spirit who directs you to the individual who’s actually searching. And you can wind up talking to a lot of people that are not even interested. But somewhere, if you pray about it, and if the Holy Spirit is leading you, he will lead you to a lost person who is searching. So, and third, you have to understand what the gospel actually is. So the greater your spiritual growth, the more effective you become as a witness. So let me give them to you again. First of all, verbal communication, talking to people. Secondly, you being filled with the Holy Spirit so you know who to talk to. And third, that you understand what you’re giving these people. When you witness to an individual, their personal sin is never, never, never an issue. I mean, people don’t go to hell because they’re drunk. People don’t go to hell because they fornicate. They wind up in the lake of fire because they reject God’s forgiveness in Christ Jesus, not because they’re committing some kind of grievous sin. Hey, let me ask you a question. Do you like fishing? I mean, I certainly do, and I miss it. I haven’t been able to go fishing in quite a while. Our Lord used fishermen such as Peter, Andrew, James, and John, those two brothers, to change the course of history. And here was his message to them. It was a fishing metaphor. He said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Now I caught a lot of fish in tournaments. As a tournament angler, I’ve won many tournaments, but nothing compares to leading someone to the Lord Jesus Christ and watching them accept him as their savior. I think one time about the school I spoke in in Louisville, Mississippi. And after I got through speaking, this big old rough-looking kid came up to me and said, you sounded just like me. You described my life. We talked and stepped behind the curtain on stage and stood next to the tuba. I’ll never forget that, the tuba. And he humbly asked for Christ to save him. That was a greater joy than winning any tournament, I promise you. As I went through the state of Mississippi in a two-year program to speak to every school in the state, we had recorded over 25,000 names of kids that said they had accepted Christ as their Savior. I don’t know if it actually happened or not, but I know they said they did it. What a joy. greater than any other you know greater than any bass tournament victory greater than any money you could have won in a tournament but to be able to watch someone get saved and to know that god used you to lead them to christ now you and i have the opportunity to give someone an eternal ticket to heaven and it’s no charge you hear that we have an eternal ticket to heaven and there’s no charge We don’t need to understand all the theology in the Bible, but we must understand and we must communicate what Christ did on that cross for all mankind. Hence, your first step is to be an effective witness is to learn the scriptures and be able to explain the substitutionary spiritual death of Christ on the cross and to understand that our salvation is in fact free. It’s a free gift. It’s a grace gift. It’s not something we earn, and that’s his forgiveness. It’s for all members of the human race, not just a select few. I’m thinking about the verse that says, for by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God, not of works, as anyone would brag about it. And where the Bible talks about God is not willing that any should perish. This grace gift is for all members of the human race, and we have to understand that. So once we get the opportunity to share the information of the gospel, and we encourage an individual to receive Christ as Savior, then you gotta get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit do his job of convincing and convicting. The greatest power you have is the gospel. Paul said it this way, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it’s the power of God unto salvation to all who believe it, to the Jew first and to the Gentile, Romans 1.16. So the power is in the word, and you’re not assigned the job of convincing them to do it. not assigned the job of convicting them you’re assigned the job to give the gospel and the holy spirit will take the information you give and he will do the convincing and the convicting so remember this you can expect persecution i promise you that if you try to witness you can expect persecution and hold on to your seat belt now you’re going to be surprised here The persecution will more than likely come through organized religion of some sort. I mean, those religious people that are convinced you’re telling it wrong. Because religion is very antagonistic to the message of faith alone and Christ alone. Out of all the travels I’ve done and out of the hundreds of schools I’ve spoken, every attack I’ve had has been by a religious person. Didn’t agree with what I said. Didn’t agree that you could bow your head and accept Christ sitting in the bleachers. Oh no, you got to come forward and raise your hand and go backwards and go sideways. You got to get baptized. You got to give up smoking, give up drinking. That’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So the attacks I faced have been religious attacks and it’ll be yours too. Someone will disagree with you and argue with you. They can’t get saved by just telling them to bow their head and pray a prayer. Oh yes, they can. The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that antagonism you’re gonna face will come from religion. Now don’t forget, you and I have two areas of responsibility when we witness for Christ. First of all, we have the witness of our life. People need to be able to see it in us. the need to be able to know that what we talk about, we live. You know, I think there’s a saying, he said, you walk to walk, you talk to talk and walk to walk. In 2 Corinthians 3, 3, Paul wrote this, being manifested that you are a letter from Christ having been served by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of the human heart. You are a letter from Jesus Christ having been served by us. That’s the witness of the life. And then there’s the witness of the lips talking about it, giving the word out of your mouth. So this unbeliever is going to look at how you live and listen to what you say. Because witnessing is a royal family communication. It’s you and I giving the gospel to an unbeliever on a personal basis. It’s personal evangelism. That’s what it is. Personal evangelism. rather than mass evangelism. It’s not you speaking to thousands, it’s you speaking to one. Just one. And it’s informal, conversational, and at that point in time, one individual communicates the gospel to another individual. So who do you know that’s lost? Who do you know that’s not saved? Who do you know that does not have a ticket to heaven? Are you praying for them? Are you asking God to use you to talk to them? Have you talked to them before about it and they rejected it? Okay. Do you pray for them on a daily basis that God the Holy Spirit would convince them and convict them of their need to be saved? Don’t argue with them. Don’t beg them and don’t try to persuade them. Just let him make his own decision. And avoid false issues such as salvation by works. You know, you got to give up your Coca-Cola’s if you want to be saved or observing certain taboos. You know, you can’t be saved if you wear long hair, you have tattoos or all these false issues, some other legalistic standard. Nothing is accomplished towards salvation by persuading an unbeliever to give up something. give up his sins, change his behavior, change his pattern, join the church, be baptized. You don’t try to force a decision for Christ. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit. Your job is to simply give the good news, give the information, and make it accurate. Let me give you some pitfalls in your witnessing, okay? Number one, avoid arguing. If you’re gonna give information, don’t argue over the validity of the information. I see a lot of this on social media where there are preachers that go out on the street corner and argue with people about the gospel. If someone doesn’t want to believe it and doesn’t accept it, you don’t have to convince them that they’re wrong. Just say, okay, have a nice day. You know, that’s all you got to do. Okay, didn’t mean to intrude. Have a nice day. Good luck. But don’t be sidetracked by this, arguing with people. Stay away from that. You don’t have to prove anything. Don’t get sidetracked by false issues. You know, like, is the Bible really the word of God? If you start giving the gospel, they’re gonna take all kind of detours. Is it really the word of God? And then they may come up with this one. What about people they’ve never heard before? Would God really send them to hell if they haven’t ever heard the gospel? Then you get into that argument with people. And then to deal with an individual alone whenever possible. Don’t do it in a crowd. Because witnessing in front of others creates false issues by producing embarrassment, sometimes a loss of prestige, or even heckling. I also encourage you to avoid getting into a rut by always using the same approach. You have to learn how to be flexible with people. I have people come into my home all the time to do certain work on air conditioning or putting up some shades or fixing the shower, you know, whatever it is. And I’m always looking for an opportunity to talk to them. about the Lord Jesus Christ and to see if in fact they know whether or not they’re even saved. So avoid these false concepts of getting into certain number of people every day, that an evangelist must have a large audience. He doesn’t have to have a large audience. And remember this, your witnessing is not spirituality because you don’t have to have a high IQ to be a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about that, talks about how it takes those that are not as great to confound those that are great. So it’s not about how great of IQ you have, it’s about the power of the gospel, if you will give it, if you will use it. And your motivation must come from the word of God in your soul, not by bullying somebody. Not by pressuring somebody. Not by trying to witness for approbation lust. Trying to get somebody to say, whoa, good job. You talked to 25 people this week. You must be a really great Christian. That’s a joke. So avoid bragging about your experiences in witnessing and don’t judge other believers for their apparent failure to witness. Apply the privacy of the priesthood. Let God use someone the way he wants to use them. But here’s something you have to be very careful of. Look out for false systems of salvation. I see this all the time. Commitment salvation, commitment salvation. You ever heard that one before? That says you must believe in Christ and commit your life to him. That’s not true. Faith is receiving a free gift from God. It’s not about you making a commitment to make Christ Lord of your life. Jesus said it very simply. You need to be born again, Nicodemus. He that hath a son has eternal life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life. He didn’t tell him he needed to be committed. And then you gotta watch out for the Lordship Salvation Crew that says you must believe in Christ and make him Lord of your life. At the moment you and I believed in Christ, God the Holy Spirit automatically enters us into union with Christ and that makes him Lord, not us. It’s not something we do. God the Holy Spirit does it for us. And then there’s also the Morality Salvation Crew. It says you must believe and you must be moral in order to be saved. You know, if you’re immoral, you can’t be saved. That’s not true. That’s called legalism. An immoral person can be saved and still continue to make mistakes. Good deeds of the unbeliever does not provide salvation. So don’t fall into the trap of saying, now, if you’re going to accept Christ, you’re going to have to clean your life up. That’s not true. You just believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. The Bible clearly says these things are written so that you might know that you have eternal life. He that has the Son has life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. It doesn’t say anything about commitment. It doesn’t say anything about being moral. It doesn’t say anything about making him Lord. These are all man’s deals. And then there’s ritual salvation, the ritual. You know, you must believe and perform certain religious rituals like being baptized. Paul said, I thank God I didn’t baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius and the household of Stavonis. And he said, if there’s any others, I don’t know who they are. Yes, Peter did baptize Jews as a sign that they were believers. But Paul did not baptize Greeks. That was not his mission. And you remember that. Ritual salvation says you must do these things as I’m talking about. And then there’s emotional salvation. What about that one? Well, that says you’re not really saved unless you get a feeling. You must believe and have some kind of feeling. I’m reminded of a story I heard years ago of some guys witnessing to a man. They were praying, kneeling down in the woods over a rock. And this guy kept saying, I don’t feel anything. I just don’t feel anything. I just don’t feel anything. And this big guy that I knew reached over and slapped him on the back and knocked his breath out of him and said, you feel that, brother? That’s not how you get saved. You don’t have to have some kind of emotional experience. didn’t have an emotional experience i just knew that i wanted to believe in christ and receive him as my savior and i was willing to believe that he did what he did he did for me and i wanted my life to be cleaned up start again psychological salvation what’s that well it says you must believe and perform some sort of bodily demonstration such as you know if you accepted christ today raise your hand And then we want you to come forward to the front of the church weeping tears at the altar. That’s fine, but that’s not how you get saved. That’s what scares people away. They don’t have to go forward to get saved. They can get saved in their seat. Out of the hundreds that I know I have led to Christ personally, I have never invited people to come forward. I’ve invited them to believe in Christ where they sit, to pray where they sit, to admit their sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ where they sit. and then encourage them to find a pastor and tell him what they did. Let’s notice a few key verses you need to understand before we wrap it up today, okay? In 1 John 5, 11 through 13, this is the deposition that God has given to us, eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has eternal life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. But these things are written to you who believe in the person of the Son of God in order that you may know, know that you have eternal life. How do you know you’ve got it? If you have the Son. How do you get the Son? Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You must explain that to people. You must let them know for sure. You don’t want them saying, well, I think I got saved. No, you didn’t. You did what the Bible said and God wouldn’t lie to you. In John 6, 40, for this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up at the last day. It didn’t say everyone who beholds the Son and gives up smoking or who beholds the Son and gives up does this or gives up and goes forward or raises their hand or makes a commitment. It didn’t say that. believes in him. That’s all you have to do. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s called faith alone in Christ alone. Do you believe he died for you? Do you believe he took your place on the cross? Do you know you’re a sinner and you’re separated from God? Then go to the Father and pray and tell him, I believe Christ died for me and I’m willing to accept him as my savior. That’s what salvation is. In John 6, 44, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Remember that. John 6, 47, truly, truly, I say unto you, that he who believes has eternal life. There it is. In John 3, 18, he who believes on the Son has eternal life, and he who does not believe on the Son shall not see left the right of God about on him forever. then in philippians 3 9 that we may be found in him in christ not having our righteousness of our own but that which is through faith in jesus christ the righteousness which comes from god on the basis of our faith and then in romans 4 5 but to him who does not work for salvation but believes in him who justifies the ungodly his faith receives credit for righteousness So, do you have the attitude of being ready to witness your faith to another individual? Do you have that? Or are you shy? What about it? In Romans 1.16, Paul said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel. Are you ashamed to talk to someone about it? He said, I’m not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes it, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. You must not ever be ashamed to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ. You should pray for people to have the opportunity to hear the message and to be able to respond without fear of reprisal. Paul prayed in Romans 10, one brother in my heart’s desire and prayer for God for them is for their salvation. So here’s my final thoughts for you. And these thoughts came from my very own pastor as he taught me years ago. Don’t try to get the unbeliever to live the Christian life or meet the standards of God’s protocol plan before he or she even gets born again. And don’t try to superimpose Christian standards on unbelievers. And don’t try to get the unbeliever to give up something. And don’t make an issue out of the Christian way of life or commitment or lordship or baptism or joining a church because you never put the cart before the horse. Someone who accepts Christ may want to join the church. Someone who accepts Christ may want to be baptized. And that’s fine. That’s not how you get saved. Remember these things. And I want you to go out tomorrow and I want you to ask God to use you as a witness to give you an opportunity to give the gospel to someone, make it very clear so that they understand they can have a ticket to heaven based on what Christ did for them. You got the ticket. You want to give it to them? Give them the truth. Give them the good news. Jesus Christ loves you, died for you, took your place, offers you forgiveness through faith in him. Is that clear? I hope so, because I want you to be an effective witness for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. God’s counting on you, and so am I. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you for listening to The Floodline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
