Join Rick Hughes in this enlightening episode of The Flatline as he delves into the essentials of being a soul winner. Explore what it truly means to share your faith, navigate the complexities of witnessing, and avoid common pitfalls that can lead to misunderstandings about the gospel. With a clear emphasis on faith and commitment in daily life, Rick guides listeners through scriptural truths, offering inspiration and actionable insights for every Christian dedicated to evangelizing effectively.
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.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. 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 solicitations, nothing like that, because we’re not going to try to sell you something, 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 we’re able to do that and you want to orient and adjust to the plan, that’s up to you. I hope you will. But my job is to be accurate every Sunday morning here on the Flatline radio show that plays across America in all 50 states. Each one of all 50 states we do broadcast in. So thank you for giving us a few moments of your time. I remind you of our website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. There you can order our latest books. They’re all free. We have many great books, especially God’s Grace in Aging. It’s a great book for you, the older people. Also, the book on Christian Problem Solving and Practicing Your Christianity, another book. These are all available free of charge and most of these books you can play them from our website. Our announcer Jack Steele will read them to you if you click on that particular link. So we have so much information to offer you and we’re so grateful that we can do that. Our Father has provided all the finances that we need as we trust Him daily, and He’s done that. He’s never, not one time, ever let us down. We’ve stepped out on faith, not asking for money, not trying to sell anything, and He provides every need we have. So grateful for those of you that have prayed for us and 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. Can we do that? This is sort of a different outlook I want to go into with you today, something I haven’t talked about before. I want to talk about being a soul winner, S-O-U-L, a soul winner. I mentioned soul, not body. Doesn’t do any good to save the body because the body’s going to perish eventually anyhow, but the soul will never perish. And 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 the tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise. Another passage that I love is Luke 15 7. I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. So whenever you win an individual to Christ, when you win a soul, you deliver that soul from the lake of fire, then there’s 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? A challenge to, as you know, I’ve always encouraged you to study under God’s word, God’s word under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor. And in doing so, I’ve used illustration of a flat line in your soul to stop the sources of outside adversity from becoming a source of stress-related sins on the inside. And those sins like worry or self-pity or even fear can neutralize your spiritual life and cause you to be unproductive. Your spiritual life is designed by God to be self-sustaining and reproductive. Hear that word? Reproductive. The physical life and the spiritual life are totally different, but both share many of the same traits. And one of those traits is the ability to reproduce. Just as a husband and wife have the ability to produce children, the believer, you and I, we have the ability to reproduce as well. Notice what Paul the Apostle said in 1 Timothy 1, verses 1 and 2. He wrote, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ our hope, to Timothy, a true son in the faith. Although Paul was not the individual who led Timothy to Christ, he did consider himself to be the spiritual mentor and the 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, on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made and we sat down and spoke to the women who we met there. A certain woman named Lydia, by the way, that’s the name of my wife, Lydia. Lydia heard us and she was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. The Lord opened her eyes to heed the things spoken by Paul. And so Paul led Lydia to Christ as an individual soul winner. Again, in Acts 18, we find Paul witnessing to Aquila and to his wife Priscilla, whom he led to Christ. These two eventually witnessed to Apollos in Acts 18.24. Apollos 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. And so if you read Acts 18.24, it says, Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos from Alexandria. He was a very eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, although he knew only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him to the side and explained to him the way of God so he could be more accurate. In my early days as a new Christian, I was encouraged to witness to people, encouraged to witness to my friends. I even went to retreats where we went out on the streets and we witnessed the strangers with the intent of leading them to Christ. We used a little pamphlet from Campus Crusade for Christ called The Four Spiritual Laws, and we were supposed to take an interview with people and then eventually go through the four spiritual laws with them. And this is something that I did in the early days of my Christian life. There was actually more emphasis on witnessing to people than Bible study and the need for spiritual growth. When I got saved, that’s kind of the way it was. More emphasis on witnessing than Bible study. But I was really never comfortable doing 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 that it’s amazing to see a lost person ask God to save them. If I wouldn’t violate people’s privacy, I could just name them off to you and tell you who they were. But it’s been some amazing opportunities. But let’s go over some important things for us to understand when it comes to witnessing. When this study is concluded on witnessing, 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. In Acts 1.8, the Bible says, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. I heard someone talking one time, said, Jerusalem, Judea, that’s your house, that’s your neighbors, and that’s the bad part of town, Samaria. But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, happens at salvation. One of the ministries that God does is indwells you with the Holy Spirit, seals you with the Holy Spirit, and fills you with the Holy Spirit. And so you have the ability to be a soul winner based on the power of the Holy Spirit in you and the dynamics of the Word of God in your soul. So let’s give you some principles about being a soul winner and what it means and what it doesn’t mean. One, every believer in Jesus Christ is in full-time Christian service. Every one of us. It’s not a matter of dedicating to full-time service, but 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? And I’ve seen people go up and 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. They go up and say they’re going to give their life to full-time Christian service. But actually, we are all in full-time Christian service once we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re mandated. to share the gospel, to give the word of God, to lead people to Christ. We are mandated to be soul winners. Two, Christian service related to your royal ambassadorship. You are an ambassador for God. You are. You may not think of yourself that way, but you are a royal ambassador. And every believer, every one of us, is an ambassador representing God to a lost and a dying world. Where could I come up with a concept like that? 2 Corinthians 5.20. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf to be reconciled to Christ. That should be your testimony. You are an ambassador for Christ. Your job is to win people to the Lord Jesus Christ, to reproduce. That’s why God left you here, not just to take up time and take up space, but so that you personally can lead individuals to Christ. And don’t think you can’t do it. All you have to do is ask a person one simple question. If you died today, do you think you’d go to heaven? And off you go based on what they say. Point three, the church-age believer, that’s you and I, has two areas of responsibility in witnessing, two. One is the witness of our life. In 2 Corinthians 3.3, the Bible says, being manifest, that you are a letter from Christ having been served by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, and not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart. 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’re being observed. And when you fail, when you blow it, when you talk about you love the Lord and you’re a Christian and you’re gonna obey God and then you go out and do something wacky and people see you do that, you lose your testimony of life. But there’s also the testimony of the lips or the witness of the lips. That’s the second area of responsibility. And that 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. Now, I’m an evangelist. I have spoken many, many places. And I have had the privilege to give the gospel to thousands of individuals in thousands of meetings, assembly programs, school assemblies, churches, whatever. That’s mass evangelism. but I’ve also had the privilege to have personal evangelism. You might not have the gift of evangelism like me, but you do 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. That’s your job. As a soul winner, you are to witness for the Lord Jesus Christ and to win people to Christ so their soul will be delivered. Four, there are many false issues related to the gospel. False issues. Here’s one, don’t fall for this. Sin is never an issue in salvation. You have to remember that. You don’t get saved because you quit sinning. All sins were paid for on the cross, compliments of the grace of God. That’s why the Bible says, he that knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God through him. So your sin is not an issue. Or you say, I’m a drunkard, I’m addicted to pornography, I’m adulterer, whatever. It’s not an issue in you getting saved. In Colossians 2.14, the issue is Jesus Christ. He’s the issue. And the gospel is the only way, the only thing that’s pertinent to the unbeliever. Don’t make an issue out of their sin. Don’t make an issue if you’re talking to someone. Don’t tell them now, no, brother, you’re smoking and you’re going to go to hell if you smoke that cigarette. That’s dumb. That’s stupid. That’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. Your sin, my sin, even if we quit sinning today, we would not go to heaven without Christ because he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me. So telling someone they need to quit sinning is not going to get them saved. Don’t make an issue out of that. And secondly, another false issue related to the gospel is don’t argue and don’t beg or 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. You know, you want to get saved and you got to give up something or observing some sort of taboos or some other legalistic standard. That’s not how people get saved. Nothing is accomplished towards salvation by persuading an unbeliever that he must give up his sins or change his behavior pattern or join a church or be baptized. That’s not what saves you. That’s why Paul said, God didn’t send me to baptize but to preach the gospel and not with wisdom of words lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. He said in Romans 1.16, I’m not ashamed of the gospel of God Because it’s the power of God unto salvation to all who believe it, to the Jew first, also to the Gentile. 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 it. When a man understands what Christ did for him, when he understands how God loved him, God so loved the world, remember John 3, 16, when a man understands that, when you share that with him and you tell him he can have a new life, If any man is in Christ, he’s a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things become new. People will need that. They want that. They rejoice at that if you tell them that. If you will do that, 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. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit. You just avoid the gimmicks. You avoid any emotional begging them, any emotional public invitations, and remember to respect a person’s free will. I have led hundreds of people to Christ in public assemblies without giving public invitations. I have been in meetings. One time I was out of school speaking. I’ll share this with you. And the principal asked me, could I give up one of my days? I was speaking five days, and I did. There was a local evangelist in town speaking at a local church, and he came and he spoke. I was in the gym listening to him. And he gave a public invitation and got kids to come forward and promise they’re never gonna sin again. Publicly come down and invite Christ into their life. You don’t have to do that to lead people to Christ. Many of those kids went back up into the bleachers and continued to be the same person the next week they were before I got there and before he got there. Public invitations don’t save people. What saves people is believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you make that clear to people, they will respond. But you’ve got to avoid the pitfalls in your witnessing. You can’t argue with people. You’re not here to argue. You’re 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. Good luck. Hope you do okay. You don’t want to listen to me? you know you can make your decisions based on pisticism which is faith or you can make your decisions in your life based on empirical data or you can make your decisions in life based on some sort of rationalism But when you rationalize that you’re smarter than God, smarter than the Bible, and when you say the Bible is disproved by some kind of scientific data, okay, don’t argue with them. You’re not going to change their mind. Just give them the gospel. Let the Holy Spirit do the work. You planted the seed. Get out of the way. Have a nice day. I hope you enjoyed talking to me. Sorry I couldn’t make sense to you. Maybe next time. But don’t argue over the validity of the truth. And 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, that’s what you need to do. Because witnessing in front of other peoples creates false issues. You can even embarrass people and they’ll lose their prestige or they’ll be heckled because you preach to them and you cause 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. And 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. That’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 about somebody 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 that. I’ve been around people that say, well, I witnessed 15 people today, and they brag about it. They brag about who they talked to. Oh, I talked to a guy in a restaurant and made him, he was my waiter, and I made him quit waiting on the table when I gave him the gospel. I’ve seen that happen. Don’t brag about what you did. Just give the word of God. If it’s in a printed form or personal form, whatever way you do it, give that and get out of the Holy Spirit’s way. A lost person who’s not a Christian, a lost person is spiritually brain dead. Spiritually brain dead. Romans 8, 5, for those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh for the mind set on the flesh is death. An unbeliever is spiritually brain dead. Only the Holy Spirit can enlighten him. Only the Holy Spirit can overcome the spiritually brain dead individual. And we have a word for that in theology. It’s called common grace. Once a lost man hears the gospel, understands the issue, that his choice is to accept Christ, if he does it, then that’s called efficacious grace. So common grace and efficacious grace take place at the moment of salvation. But the Holy Spirit requires you to give accurate information, giving to the lost individual in order to do his job. He needs you to give the accurate information. In John 16, 8, when he comes, that’s the Holy Spirit, he will convince the world concerning sin because they do not believe in me. That’s the problem right there. The sin of unbelief. That’s the unpardonable sin. If you reject Christ as Savior, there’s no way to be pardoned from that. But we and you and me, 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. 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 to be as a part of the gospel, but it 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 got to dress like the English people dressed. Now that they’re saved, you got to quit dressing how you 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. I mean, unbelievers can give up all sorts of things and still not be saved. And another thing you need to remember, there’s false issues in salvation. I’ve heard this from many different people. Commitment salvation. People tell you you’ve got to believe in Christ and commit your life to Christ. That’s not true. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved is 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, and 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 and you think it didn’t really work. And then there’s this thing called lordship salvation where people say you’ve got to make him lord of your life. He’s not lord at all. He’s not lord of everything. You’ve got to make him lord of your life. He is Lord whether you make him Lord or not. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. When you believe in him, that’s all that’s necessary. And there’s no such thing as morality salvation. Being good, earning it, doesn’t work that way. There’s no such thing as ritual salvation. You know, believe and perform certain rituals. Or emotional salvation. You got to get emotional and cry and feel sorry. I remember a story about a guy one time praying with a friend of mine. He said, you know, I just don’t feel anything. I just don’t feel anything. And my friend whacked him in the head. He said, why did you do that? He said, did you feel that, brother? Now pray. I thought that was cute. He wanted to feel something, so he felt a whack on the head. But walking down some mile, inviting Christ into your heart, anything is a distortion of the gospel because a distortion of anything that spiritually dead unbeliever can do is not the way to salvation. Unbelievers can give up all sorts of things and still not be saved. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. John Revelation 3.20, you don’t invite Jesus into your heart. That verse is written to unbelievers out of fellowship. The scriptures verify what is necessary. And what’s necessary is 1 John 5, 11. This is the deposition God’s given to us. An eternal life, and this life is in his son. He that has a son has life. He that does not have the son of God does not have life. That’s the issue. In order to be an effective witness for the Lord Jesus Christ, you must lift him up. And that’s where John 12, 32 says, if I’m lifted up, I will draw all people to myself. So the true issue for you and for me as we talk to people is Romans 4, chapter 5, verse 5. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, then his faith is accounted for righteousness. That’s all it takes, faith alone and Christ alone. A mature believer may find opportunity in leading a young believer to the source of accurate Bible teaching. That’s true. And a good bit of the people that I witness to is trying to get them, like you, to get 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. So sometimes we witness to give the gospel, sometimes we witness to give the importance of spiritual growth, spiritual stability. God wants you to be a soul winner. I hope this has made sense. If it didn’t, let me know. We can send you the transcript and you can read over the notes. I hope you’ll pray with me. I hope you’ll 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 Flatline. I appreciate it. We’ll come back next week, same time, same place. Until then, we appreciate your prayers. Thank you for listening today to The Flatline.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
