So the late great Billy Graham was on his way home to north Carolina from one of his last speaking engagements and when he landed in charlotte north Carolina, he was great. His plane was greeted with a limousine for a ride. And as he walked down the steps from the plane to go to the limousine instead of going to the back, he actually went to the front and he said, kind sir, I'm 87 years old and I've never gotten to drive a limo, but I've always wanted to, would you mind, well if you have connection to Billy Graham, he is seen as one of the greatest evangelists in all of history, high character and everything has been around the world and changed countless lives. And so if Billy Graham asked you to drive the limo, you say, okay, go for it. And so this driver did and let him drive. And so he's driving down the road and um, he started having a little bit too much fun though And so he was driving on the highway and he was going 70. But then there was a speed trap that dropped to 55 and sure enough there was a rookie state trooper ready to catch him. And so the state trooper pulls out, pulls the limousine over, it's not sure who he's gonna give the ticket to walks up to the driver's side window, the window goes down, he recognizes that it's reverend graham. And so without saying a word, he says, alright, he just goes back to the car, he doesn't even say anything, he goes back to the car and radios in and says, I know I'm I'm new at this, but um, and I know we got to keep the law, but I know we also sometimes make exceptions for very important people. And I think I just pulled over a very important person and so back over the radio and said, well, who is it? Is it? The governor said no, someone more important than that. He said, is it is it the president or something no more important than that? Well, who is it? He said, I'm not sure, but I think I just pulled over jesus because Billy Graham is his driver. And while Billy Graham is seen as one of the greatest evangelists in all of history, someone who could stand up and share his faith in front of millions of people. The truth is, is that evangelism or sharing your faith is not just meant for the few, but actually meant for all who claim to believe in jesus, But yet when you say the word evangelism or sharing your faith, sometimes people cringe or they're not sure how to respond. See, we've been walking through a series entitled christian atheists, which defined means that when you say you believe in God, but you live like he doesn't exist. And there are times where you say, okay, God, I trust you, but not with this part and we start making decisions based on our own strength and our own power and sometimes we find ourselves trying to fight our own battles and so each week we've taken a look at different topics or different battles and barriers that people face when it comes to not only believing in God, but actually living out their faith. And so this morning we're gonna jump into the topic of when you say you believe in God, but you don't share your faith when you say you believe in God, but you don't share your faith. Now, in research for this morning's message, I came across a february 2019 barna research study, so it just came out this year in the differences in generations when it comes to the understanding of evangelism and so really we looked at a couple different generations, but the strongest contrast was actually between what's known as millennials. So millennials are people who are born in 1984 to 2000 and then also boomers, so people that were born alright, boomers who were born Between 1946 and 1964. Um Now the gen xers, the people were born in between actually in the survey, actually kind of scored somewhere in the middle between this and so looking at the extremes, it was kind of interesting to actually see the similarities and the differences between the older and younger generations. For example, when asked the question, do you believe it's important to the christian faith to be a witness for jesus, 96% of millennials are Christian millennials, so people who actually profess to believe in Jesus and are involved in the church and and start living it out, 96% said yes and 95% of the member generation of Christians who were surveyed also said Yes. So that's that's pretty encouraging the next one here is the idea that do you believe that trusting jesus are coming to know, jesus is the most important thing, or the best thing you can do in this life? And again, it was pretty similar. So 94%,, I said yes for millennials and 97 of boomers said yes, So, well that's encouraging that, that the younger generation still believes in God, the younger generation still believes it's important to tell people about God, but this is where we start to get a drastic, drastic difference and change and you can see how society and culture is impacting the younger generation. So go ahead and pull up the next. Well, actually, no, one more thing positive here is that um actually, when asked, do you feel confident that you are gifted enough to share your faith? And in fact the younger generations felt that they are more confident and 73% said they could share their faith versus 59% of boomers. Now, part of that might be just the confidence that the millennial generation tends to have, and then also it might be from a good investment in the next generation because um in the nineties and early 2000, there was a heavy emphasis on evangelism and so you have to learn this program, learn this first, you have programs in college like navigators and others who do a great job of teaching people how to go verse by verse and share their faith. But this is where things start to change within our culture. So the next one here, let's go ahead and bring it up. And so the next one here is says, do you believe that it is wrong to share your faith with someone of a different faith for the purpose of conversion? And this is where it gets crazy is that 47% of the younger generation actually said they think it's wrong to try to share your faith with someone who differs from you vs only 19%. And then another telling statistic is that they said, if somebody disagrees with you, do you believe that that is being judgmental? 40% of the younger generation said Yes, we're only 9% of the boomer generation said yes. And so while there's a high belief in God, there is a high belief in the value of jesus. We live in a culture that has changed the definition of tolerance. That used to read that the acceptance of the existence of differing viewpoints, we took out the word existence and now we say it's the acceptance of differing viewpoints Tolerance. Used to have an assumption that you disagree, but you respect the person now. We live in a culture that if you disagree with me, you're judging me everyone is right. Even though we make different claims, different objective claims. Our culture is one which says you have to do everything subjectively. What's right for you is right for you, right for me. So you can't you have your belief but don't don't challenge mine. And instead of actually having a discussion about what is right or what is true, we live in a culture that says leave me alone and let me post on social media and rant on the other side, right? We've lost the sense of civility and this idea of discourse. And so how do we share our faith when it comes to a culture that says don't judge me. And in fact, they actually preach things now, in in the public settings of we'll just have a private faith. Just don't make it public. But faith really by definition, really is public. We walked through an entire book called the Book of James that said, Faith without Works is dead. And we discussed that faith isn't so much about getting you into heaven. Faith is about getting heaven into you. Mhm. Think about it for a second. You don't need a lot of faith if you make it into heaven dear, jesus, help me believe. Wait, you see him face to face. So when do you actually need faith? It's here, It's now it's living, it's active. And so we want to actually talk this morning about really the idea of changing or shifting the understanding of what does it mean to evangelize? Because let's be real, the word evangelism sounds super churchy. As soon as I said, evangelism, some of you sitting in this room went and some of you lean forward like, yeah, all right, get him right, but we want to change both those mindsets and understand that we've actually been equipped to share the good news of jesus and that evangelism is the merging of private and public faith and it's I don't want you to think of it as private and public faith, I want you to think of it as living faith. And so in order to do that, we got to start off by identifying what is it that keeps people from sharing their faith. And I believe there's five barriers that keeps people from sharing their faith. Number one is that people don't share their faith simply put because they don't know, jesus, there's a difference, we talked in week one of the series, there's a difference and knowing about jesus and truly knowing him, one is about being informed, the other is about being transformed, and so you can't give what you don't have and you can't share what you don't know. And so some people don't share their faith because they don't actually know, jesus secondly, people don't share their faith because they're afraid of rejection. There's a lot of weird out there, okay, there's some and it's not just Christianity, there's a lot of unique religions and every culture has got their own weirdness to it, okay, and then there's some people in the room, I'm just gonna be real. You might be seen as a little bit too christian if you know what I'm saying, not not bad, I'm just, I'm saying, hey go for it, but like the person that almost scares the person in every single comment is about it, right? Like man, It's hot outside, Gosh, what is 120, I'll tell you what's hot, you think this is hot, let's have a conversation, right? And then they were like, well that's okay, it's a little weird, okay, there's a little bit of weirdness and everything, we're gonna address that weirdness in a moment, so stick with me, but let's just acknowledge the fact that there's some weird claims and weird stuff in religion in general, Okay, can we acknowledge that that that's weird. So some people are afraid to share because they don't want to be rejected at work or in the community, but then they also just like, man, I don't really want to be weird, I'm not that guy, right? Everyone has that guy in their head, they don't know what that guy is, but like you have somebody that you saw sometime somewhere you're like, I don't want to be that person, Okay. And so they're just like people are afraid to be rejected. 3rd I believe people don't share their faith because they don't feel worthy. They don't feel worthy. Maybe they have a past or a struggle and they think to themselves, you know what God can't use me or my friends aren't going to believe me. They've seen the real me, They saw what I did on friday and saturday. So why would they come with me on a sunday, right. They've seen all my mess ups, Why would they trust me now? I don't want to be called a hypocrite. Don't feel worthy. # four people don't share their faith because they don't feel prepared. Maybe you're ready to have a conversation. But what do you actually say? And then number five people don't share their faith because they don't have urgency. And this is why I believe SATan has come in and created a stronghold, especially in american culture. Is that the truth is this is that if you believe that jesus is your Lord and savior, it teaches us in the bible, the holy spirit comes and dwells inside of you. It's called as the paris Carlitos or the helper. And so if you have the spirit of God the same spirit that conquered death that Rose jesus from the dead that created the universe, if you have that spirit inside of you, then satan cannot beat you. So if satan cannot beat you, he's going to just try to keep you busy. Satan can't defeat you, but he can't get you distracted. You can't take your eye off the ball, you know, off of, I don't know if it's Nickelodeon or Disney show, I don't know, but I'm very frustrated that one of the shows, I forget which one gave my son Jackson the song. This is the distraction song, distraction song, distraction. And so like when we play a game, he just starts shouting that and I'm just like ah and um and it's frustrating for the whole point is to keep someone from competing in the game, that's kind of what satan does that time. He says, hey, hey, put your mind over here, put your mind over here, do this stay busy. You know, you don't need to connect to God, you just have all this noise over here Because if you hear 1000 voices, how do you picked out the one that's truly from him, right? So while satan can't, may not be able to defeat you, he can try to distract you. I think it's what keeps people from having an urgency to share their faith. But imagine if you got a new smartphone or a new device or a new computer and you never really took it out of the box and you just left it in and then pretty soon just started complaining about how bad the services on the phone, it's not working. May I use it as a coaster but it's not helping me out. And you would call in and maybe you call in to coach. Summer servants say hey on a different phone and says his phone is not working. Great. Well if you turn it on. No. Okay. Well how do you expect it to work if you haven't turned it on or imagine if you've got a brand new car, maybe you use the carbon. I like car vending machine. I want to do that someday. That just sounds fun. I like vending machines. I like cars. Let's put it together. It'll be the ultimate crane game. Right? Be sweet. Mine also went just now to toy story three. The claw. Okay. Anyway, now imagine you get delivered a brand new car and then they give you the keys. It's in your driveway. You're all excited, but you never take it anywhere. And then two weeks later, a friend asked you how how do you like the new car? It's okay. I mean I thought it would be better than that. Well, have you taken it for a spin? We'll know but I just thought it would do more. Well it sounds foolish but I think we do that sometimes with Faith. We've been given this gift, this power this tool and what I think some of us have not done yet is that we have not taken our faith out for a spin. We're not taking it out onto the roads and say, let's see what this faith can do, not tested it. We've not put it out there to see what kind of experiences we can have when studying for this morning's message. It came across a passage that I believe actually gives us the key, gives us a new framework or a new paradigm that could radically change the way that you view evangelism and sharing your faith. It comes from the book of 1st Thessalonians chapter two. And if you don't have a bible, we'll have the verses on the screen as well as we have bible to give to you at our guest services table that you can take one home with you today. But this idea of this letter that was written to the Thessalonians was really this town of Thessaloniki to that received its name. Um it was really Therm a that was really in reference to a hot spring that was adjacent to the city. And then in 3 15 Bc um the name changed the Thessaloniki by alexander the Great. And so this is seen in Greece and it was there. And then, and I want to get the dates right here. It was 1 68 Bc. That when Rome conquered what's known as Macedonia, They took over and they actually made Thessaloniki to uh, and really now in present day it's still there kind of seen more as Thessaloniki. There is that really a town of 200,000 people at the time was seen as the capital or the main thoroughfare for uh for Macedonia or in present day Greece. And so you have this city that still exists, that still a vibrant city and active city that currently has 300,000 people in it. And so Paul comes in their sets up camp for a little bit does ministry. And now is writing to a church that's focused on the return of Jesus. And Paul used the word of God to proclaim the Son of God, shone through the love of God. And he gives us notice just the heartfelt reality of what his words to these people in chapter two, starting in verse five. Let's read this, paul writes. We never came with words of flattery as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is our witness. Nor did we seek glory from people whether from you or from others. Though we could have made demands as apostles of jesus, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother, taking care of our own Children. So now here's the key verse. That's why I highlighted this. This is the change if you're going to Mark a verse, Mark this verse here says so, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you, not only the gospel, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us for you remember brothers, our labor and our toil, we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we were proclaimed to you the gospel of God, you are witnesses and God also how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct towards your you believers. So it's outside the church and inside the church, he says for you now know how like a father with his Children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. So we were like a nursing mother or a loving father. We cared for you like our own. I love the concept that he said, not only did we share with you the gospel, we shared with you our lives growing up in a conservative, you know, religious home like evangelism was something you did, you do this, you have to say this, do this. And it was kind of a program and I'm grateful for all the verses that are memorized in church and in school and and a lot of those have stuck with me and made me who I am today. But what happened in the process of teaching Children and students versus I thought Evangelism was a program that you did and not a lifestyle that you live. And I thought, oh, it's a checkbox, You do this, you say this, you go here, you say this, you go here and now I've realized that it's actually much bigger than that. And so I would define evangelism this way, evangelism is sharing what you love with whom you love. Evangelism is sharing what you love with whom you left. You can evangelize things other than the gospel. We do this all the time. If you go to a new restaurant or you try a new product or you have something that you love, what do we do? We immediately share it when you love something. It's not difficult to talk about. Okay, have you ever asked a harry potter fan of question, You laugh because you know what comes afterwards, It's just immediately spewed out and before you get to, you know, anti harry potter, okay, everyone's got something, whether it's Star Wars Lord of the Rings, sports home decor, like repair, whatever, fishing. What everyone's got their thing that as soon as that comes up, you're like, oh and you just jump in and you started like spouting out random facts. Well, did you know this? And, and like we just started jumping in, is that difficult to do? You know why? Because you love something? And when you love something, okay, you talk about it when I love, I love my family. And so if someone asked my family, I don't like put my eyes down and like, okay, I got to talk about first, okay, I'm married, yes, I'm married. and then what's next? And like, I don't go through this program thinking like, oh my God, I was I have to talk about my family, you know, like with uh the only thing that's sad about smartphones is now you don't have to have the really fat wallet that has all the photos that drop out. Does anyone you don't? Okay, if you want to? I'm just curious. You're raising it, Does anyone still have the wallet with the photos that drop out because you're the man or the woman? If that's the case anyone they're afraid to to share that. Okay, You know what I'm talking about, right? So like you have a conversation with someone at work or a stranger like and family comes up like, oh, let me show you who and why? Why is that so easy? Because you talk about what you love and when you love something or you love someone, you share that. And so when you understand that evangelism is not a checklist or a program to go through, but really using the ability to share what you love with whom you love, it changes things. And so if you think, I think of those two categories and you're not sharing your faith, the question is which one is not true right now in your life? Because if you're not fully in love with jesus, why are you gonna share him? Right? But to know jesus is to share jesus and to love jesus, right? And the other thing that we're gonna dive into in just a moment is that who did jesus love, John 3 16 for God, so loved the world. And then who are we told to go make disciples of all nations. And so if we truly love God and we are motivated by loving others, that is evangelism, because when you love someone you want what's best for them, Charles Spurgeon put it this way, he said, evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread because we all need spiritual food for our soul. So when you share your faith, it's not, I'm right, you're wrong, you're gonna listen to me, I will, I will beat you into submission until you tap out and say, ha now you have to believe, like it never works that way. Say man, God changed my life, right? When you want what's best for the people you love? You share it. If there's an urgency or if there's an issue there, it's like you you want to help people, I'm not trying to convert people in the sense of I'm gonna win, you want to help If your drive, imagine driving along and during a difficult storm or earthquake and a bridge goes out and you happen to be the first one that is there, What are you going to do? Glad I made it, bye bye people by by just let him go? No, hopefully you step out and you want to get in the way and wave your arms, hey, slow down now, Is that weird if people don't know the bridges out? Yeah, you don't want to be there like, hey, right, I used to mess with people when I was a student cause I'm just a weird person. You're starting to get to know me a little better. But um, I used to scare my friends because we were, we'd be walking down the hallway and just out of the blue, I go watch out and they like jump like this. I was like, no, I just want you to watch out where you're going and I just keep walking and they just get all mad. But um, like when you, when you say something abrupt, like maybe the bridge is out or you say watch out, that might be a little awkward, that might be a little weird, right? But you do it why? Because you're motivated by love and you're motivated to help and you're motivated to serve and so you're gonna get past any awkwardness that comes because you're motivated by what you love, who you love and who you want to share that with. So let's go back through some of these barriers, you know, number one barrier of not sharing your faith is you don't know, jesus well man over and over and over again when you find people that come into contact with jesus, they cannot help but just go and spread that, right? If if you've like met somebody famous or you met somebody that like you've looked up to for years, what's the first thing you do when you're done? You call up? Oh, you'll never believe it because who I just saw, guess who I just met, right? We went to the Sun's game and uh, and Jackson, my son, one uh, like a contest and he won DeAndre Aiden's size 18 shoe side. And so all next week, every conversation we had or Jackson had, it was like, oh, we got a shoe and we were like all excited, but that's a weird, that's weird. Okay, that's weird, right? But why? Because we're so excited. Okay, when's the last time you've honestly been excited about what God's doing in your life? Just just dive into the scriptures, turn on worship music, go for a walk, think through and just fall back in love with jesus and as you do, it naturally comes out and overflows. But next, next you think of this idea that people are afraid of rejection and I just want to clarify, you don't have to be a jerk to share. Um, I was driving down downtown Orlando and I was um, somebody was picketing something, I forget what it was, he had a huge sign that said every, you know, you're going to hell and he had a megaphone and he's just shouting at cars driving by, just you're going to hell. Like I drove and I was like, does that guy think he's like being effective? Like, like if someone gonna drive by be shouted at and be like, wow Yeah, I do. I need to self reflect at this point from the man with the megaphone and a giant sign with flames on it. Like that's that's what I need to do. I'm like, does that really work? And so you think of that guy, you're like, well I don't wanna be that guy and then we don't do anything, but again, you don't have to be a jerk to share. Like paul in that passage. He says, look, we worked hard day and night, we toiled. We worked hard to show you that we were not trying to be greedy, we were not trying to just be right. We were not trying to be judgmental. We not only gave the gospel, we gave you ourselves, we loved you. Okay. Another reason that we see this in the Gospel as we're starting to wrap up here and the band is going to be coming up on stages that really this idea that you know, I don't feel worthy, I'm not good enough. Can I just run through some of the people that jesus shared with john chapter one Yeah, john the baptist, that's his cousin, john chapter two uneducated fisherman, Okay, John Chapter three The religious and educated, A guy named Nicodemus john chapter four the samaritan woman who had a shameful past john chapter five was the guy that was lame, couldn't walk, had illness. We have John Chapter six he preached to the crowd John Chapter seven It was the idea of religious people, John Chapter eight is the woman who was caught in adultery John Chapter nine It was a blind man who started telling people about Jesus and I love what he says actually when asked about Jesus, he says, I don't know. But the one thing I do know is that I was blind, but now I see, see when you don't have an urgency, like when you fall in love with jesus, you gain an urgency because now you have an eternal perspective and you see this idea that really, ultimately it's about love, evangelism is sharing what you love with whom you love and so how can we evangelize for taking notes? I want to give you a couple of things to walk away with. Is that # one start by just praying, Are you praying intentionally for the people that are in your lives? Do you believe in the power of God? There are people that are in this room right now that I've been praying for, that have come in, there are people that I'm praying for by name that have not yet come into this room, are you regularly asking God to bring people into your life secondly though, are you inviting people to check it out? Not saying, inviting people to church is the same thing as fully sharing your faith, But sometimes it's an awkward conversation and you're not quite sure what to say and you have limited time, but if you love what's going on here, just invite him to check it out, because I guarantee when someone comes, they will be loved, they'll be reached out to they're going to experience jesus, they're going to hear the word of God and have an opportunity to respond. Number three. Think about this idea of just sharing your story, to share your story. Has God helped you through a difficult time? Has God helped you through a situation? Have you overcome something? Have you walked through something to share your story? 4th, if you ask questions and have conversations, just asking questions is not offensive And you're ready to respond, let me just give you one simple response. Here is that. And that comes from John 3 16 for God, so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And so, if you think about one verse, you can share your faith in eight words. God loved loved the world. God gave he gave his son to die on a cross for our sins. So we can receive forgiveness, Then when we believe that jesus is both Lord and savior, we get to live for all eternity. There are a lot of other ways to share your faith. But you don't have to over complicate it when it's honest and real. And the last thing is this idea of just serving to meet a need in the name of jesus look for a need and meet it is one of the strongest ways that you can evangelize today. And as we close, I want you to think about this idea that evangelism isn't just the A. B. CS of the gospel, as tim Keller puts it, it's not just the A. B. CS, it's the A through Z. That ultimately what Evangelism is is that we share what we love with whom we love and God loved the world. And so we're called to do the same. And the best way to do that is to share the truth that comes from him. I just want to bow your heads and close your eyes for just a minute. I just want to ask the question of you don't have to raise your hand or anything, but have you ever received jesus into your life? And if not I want you to pray with me. And if you have what's stopping you from sharing that faith with somebody else this week, let's pray definitely father God, I just thank you for your son God, I thank you that Mhm. You give us salvation. We cannot make it to heaven on our own. But God, that through you we can receive forgiveness and freedom and power. God, we trust you as Lord and savior. God help us to fall more in love with you because evangelism is about sharing what we love with whom we love. So God help us to love you more every day and to love others. The way that you have loved us build our lives. God give us the strength, Give us the boldness to share our faith. This week, we love your God and your son's name. We pray Amen.