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Then your prayer should be "Lord help me be obedient to your word in the great commission." Otherwise there is nothing left to do except do it.

 

Not to be contrary but it should be "Lord send me wherever you want me to go." There is no command in the word of God for sinners to come into the church. There is a command for us to "GO".

 

John 4:37. "For in this the saying is true, 'One sows and another reaps.'" Brother, do not be discouraged. So long as you are doing open-air evangelism, it will be hard to make disciples. But Mark 16:15 is as true as Matthew 28:19. You are doing a work commanded by the Lord Jesus. Every tract that you give out may be used by God to save someone, but you may never know about it. You are sowing; someone else is reaping.

Most of my evangelistic work is done with the Gideons. In Britain, we are allowed into schools (with the teachers' permission) to take an assembly, speak to the children and offer the New Testaments. We are not allowed to preach to the children, but we can tell them some of what it says, tell them what it means to us and encourage them to take one. More than 90% do so. One of the schools I visit with my colleagues is in a small town called Uffculme.

A while ago, a friend of mine visited Uffculme Baptist Church. on a Lord's Day. There was a young chap of about 19 being baptized. In his testimony, he said that he had received a Gideon Testament at school at the age of 12. He had not looked at it but thrown it into a draw and forgotten about it. A while later, his parents got divorced, he failed his exams and his girl-friend dumped him. He remembered the Testament in the draw, looked it out and began to read it. He was convicted by what he read and felt he ought to go to a church, and there he was, being baptized, seven years after receiving the Testament. Now I didn't save the lad; clearly my words had no impression on him save that he didn't actually refuse to take the book. But if the Gideons had not visited that school that year, the lad, humanly speaking, might never have been saved. If my friend had not visited that particular church on that particular day, I would never have heard of this. Who knows what effect your words and your tracts may have had on people over the years?

Next week, I and my Gideon Colleagues are going to the local University to speak to the students and hand out Testaments. I would absolutely love it if a youngster stayed long enough for me to explain the Gospel to him and lead him to Christ. that would be wonderful! But mostly the students are hurrying to lectures, and all I have time to do is show them the helps at the front of the Testament and encourage them to read it. Sometimes I can get a bit of a conversation going, but I've never led anyone to Christ in those circumstances. BUT last year, the University Christian Union had more than 50 new people turning up to their meeting the week after we were there. We are sowing; the C.U. is reaping, and God is giving the increase.

If you want to get involved with reaping, then why not hold an evangelistic Bible Study series in your home and invite your neighbours? Get your church's agreement first and maybe it will provide some help and lay on some food.

 

When I was in Colorado Springs, our church was 4 blocks away from a same-sex bar. Talk about a rough neighborhood. We always had homeless people sleeping in the church bus. One of our bus kids came in crying one morning; we asked him what was up, and he said his little brother had found their dad's crack pipe, and burned down their house, and now he didn't know where they were going to live. That was Colorado Springs; then there was Biloxi, where my son and I witnessed to a man on his doorstep, surrounded by Buddha and Mary statues in his neighbors' yards. Or just these past few months, a group of men in our church has been going out on Monday evenings, only for an hour at a time, to ask people in the neighborhood around our church if there's anything we could pray about for them. Several of those have started coming on Wednesday evenings. One young man came to our men's meeting a couple of Fridays ago, and (in his words) was so blown away by how we just hang out and fellowship before and after the devotions, that he was convicted and asked how to be saved.

And yes, everywhere I've been, we've had a discipleship plan; although, in my current church, it needs some work. But we're working on it.

Just a few stories of oh-so-many that ALL of us could tell.

 

Just a quick point, a person cannot disciple another until the person has been discipled. First learn, then teach. For example, in the military, first you take orders, before you can give orders. And to be discipled means you submit to the authority of your discipler. I remember a line from Ben Franklin, concerning his progress and improving his humility. He said he never made much progress, but that was just as well, because if he had, he was sure he would have been proud of it.