Jesus and the Samaritan woman - the value of a soul

Glory to the Lord. I want to invite you to go to the Gospel according to Saint John, chapter 4. To the well-known text of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. There says the word of the Lord:

“When the Lord understood that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus makes and baptizes more disciples than John, although Jesus did not baptize except his disciples, he left Judea and went back to Galilee. And it was necessary for him to go through Samaria – an important detail –. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the inheritance that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. -We are talking about a very important archaeological place because it went back to the ancient history of Israel, to the patriarchs, in this case Jacob and his son Joseph -.

And the well was there, – that Jacob's well called – then Jesus, tired of the journey, sat down like that by the well. It was about the sixth hour – that is, about 12 noon in terms of the Roman time calendar – and a woman from Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink,” for his disciples had gone to the city. to buy food The Samaritan woman said to him, “Since you, being a Jew, are you asking me to drink because I am a Samaritan woman? Because Jews and Samaritans did not treat each other. Jesus answered and said to him, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that tells you to give me a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living water."

The woman said to him, “Lord, you don't have anything to dig it out with and the well is deep. Where then do you have the living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well from which he and his sons and their cattle drank?" Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst, but the water that I will give him will be in him a fountain of water that springs up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Lord, give me that water so that I don't thirst and come here to draw it." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here."

The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus told her, “You have said correctly that I have no husband, because you have had 5 husbands and the one you have now is not even your husband. This you have said truly." The woman said to him, “Sir, it seems to me that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain and you say that Jerusalem is the place where one should worship." Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You Samaritans adore what you do not know, we Jews adore what we know because salvation comes from the Jews, but the time is coming and now is when the true worshipers will adore the Father in spirit and in truth.

Because the Father also seeks such worshipers to be worshiped. God is spirit and those who worship him in spirit and in truth it is necessary that they worship. The woman said to him, "Well, I know that the Messiah called the Christ will come, when he comes he will declare all things to us." Jesus said to him, "I am the one who speaks to you."

May the Lord bless his holy word. What a nice passage, right? I want to expose this passage in light of something very important and that is the urgency of winning souls for Christ. The urge for each of us to be a winner, a soul winner in a personal way. The urgency that we all get involved in the work of personal evangelism and you know that we have been getting more and more involved in an evangelistic effort where as I said before, we have gone out into the community as an evangelism exercise because I believe that there are many other things that we can do and as a way to launch ourselves in faith and to validate this format of preaching the Gospel as we see it done in scripture, an intentional way of doing evangelization.

And I want to make sure that all of us receive that call from the Lord because God has been impressing me more and more every day about the importance that once we have finished these construction efforts that we have spent 20 years building buildings, that now with That extra energy that we have, let's dedicate it now that… I say, we have been building buildings now we are going to build souls for Christ. We are going to conquer, we are going to bring souls, temples, because the Bible says that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and we want many people to become the temple of the Holy Spirit out there. And now we want to use this time that God has been little by little as leading us to accelerate that process and finally we have launched ourselves in the name of the Lord and we now have this effort of hope.

We want all of us to have that same urgency, that same evangelistic mentality, that we feel that call from God because if you don't feel the call of God, if you don't know, brothers, that our main identity is to share the Gospel with others, that it is the raison d'être of the church and each of us has to feel that inspiration and that obligation in a sacred sense and that privilege to share the Gospel with others.

And I want us to begin to reflect a little bit about how we as a congregation can become an effective church in the area of evangelism. And I realize, the first thing that must be recognized is that doing evangelism and personal evangelism in this time in which we live, in this culture that is so reluctant and so difficult, is difficult and there is a lot of resistance to the preaching of the Gospel.

I realize brothers that it is very difficult to preach the Gospel in this time. People are like sometimes so arrogant, so proud. People are often difficult, everyone is very protective of their privileges, of privacy, nobody touches me, nobody talks to me, I have my own faith, I'm on the street, I don't want anyone to get close to me. At work, it is sometimes difficult to reach people and that is why I believe that many of us have been intimidated about sharing the Gospel, but I believe that once we understand that this is something urgent and that we have to do it because there is no alternative, I believe that God then begins to flow and to solve many of the obstacles that we find along the way.

I think that no matter how difficult it is today to preach the Gospel, I can't imagine that God up there in his heaven, Almighty God, would say, you know what? Since it is so difficult in the 21st century, well, we are going to abandon the effort of evangelism and we are going to simply resign ourselves to having people come to church however they can and simply as there are many out there who preach, that simply what we have to do It is preaching the Gospel with our lifestyle, with our way of being and that people come to us when they feel the call to seek God. But it's not like that.

The Bible is very clear that we have to be personal soul winners. All the scripture especially Matthew in the New Testament until the end tells us about the importance of going, not waiting for people to come to us, but going and preaching the Gospel. Amen. That verb to go is absolutely important.

We have to take initiatives to reach souls. I think sometimes we Christians have become too sophisticated for this idea that we have to do evangelistic work, that we have to birth new believers through evangelistic effort.

However, the Bible should be the model that we use to see what God wants us to do in preaching the Gospel. And we could learn a lot from the quintessential evangelist who is our Lord Jesus Christ. And this text of the Samaritan woman teaches us in a very graphic way how the Lord did evangelism and how we too can do it in a very effective way.

One of the things that I see in this text is the extreme value that the Lord assigned to a single person, to a single soul. The Lord preached to multitudes and he came to save all humanity with his work, and yet what moves us is to see the Lord on many occasions of his ministry speaking with only one person. I think, for example, of Nicodemus when he approached Jesus at night to talk with him and the Lord told him how he could be saved.

I think of the book of Acts when Philip, the evangelist, who is preaching to a large crowd and the Holy Spirit calls him to go into the desert and preach to only one person, this politician, the Ethiopian. And Felipe leaves his work and the Holy Spirit miraculously transports him to the desert where he finds this man who is in his car. And then the Holy Spirit takes it and puts it back in its normal place of activity.

The Bible gives a lot of importance to a single person, be it Plunder, be it this Samaritan woman, be it Bartimaeus or the blind man, the Lord always stopped his action to attend to a single soul. And I believe that we have to take our own guidelines as to how the Lord positions himself for that encounter with that woman.

The Bible says that he was on his way to a mission and yet in order to get where he was going he had to go through Samaria. The writer clarifies that because the Jews did not pass through Samaria, they hated the Samaritans because they considered them impure people. The Samaritans were like cousins of the Jews, they came from Jewish blood but had mixed centuries ago with the pagan tribes that were in the area, and so their religion became like a mixture of Judaism and other religions and the Jews despised them. for that reason and they avoided as much as possible to have contact with the Samaritans.

The interesting thing is that Jesus does not do as the other Jews do, the Lord says, I have to go through there, that is where I am going to go. And I think he saw that there was an evangelistic opportunity in that place. The Lord knew everything. That same Jesus who knows the moral history of this woman, knew that this woman was also going to get to where he was. And he sits exactly where she has to arrive.

I think that seeking a position to facilitate an evangelistic meeting is something very revealing for us as well. Because we, too, must position ourselves that way so that the Lord will use us to reach others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

In fact, one of the things that we did 20 years ago was to look for a position. We relocated from Cambridge to reposition here in Boston with great inconvenience in order to better preach to what we believed was the call to preach only to the Latino community in Boston. I always thought that we could more easily reach Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Villa Victoria, the areas where the Latinos were.

And we got to this central place, when we got here the Lord revealed to us that he wanted us to reach much more people than just Latinos. And if you come to the morning service, you will find about 20-odd nations, not just Latinos, but Africans, Asians, Europeans, Caribbeans from different parts of the islands that speak English in the Caribbean, a number of people that God provided for us and we have been able to reach many more people. And God expanded our ministry in extraordinary ways because we located ourselves, we positioned ourselves in a place where it was easier to reach those people.

And I believe that we also have to position ourselves to preach the Gospel. How can you do that? I believe that acquiring an evangelistic mentality first, recognizing that God wants to use you, that the Holy Spirit is within you, that the Lord has commanded you to share the Gospel, and that you have a duty and it is your privilege to share the Gospel. So, you have to be alert to the possibilities. We have to be taking advantage of every opportunity.

How many times do we have neighbors around us and we don't go near them and although they sometimes look at us when we pass them in the street, sometimes when we leave the house they are leaving theirs in the morning and we can say a word of greeting even if it is to position ourselves and we do not. Sometimes at work someone comes up to us when we're getting a little bit of water from the water machine and there's an opportunity to just introduce ourselves and we don't even do that. And the person greets us, 'hello, who are you?' and perhaps there is an entrance to start establishing a connection and since we do not have that evangelistic mentality we do not take advantage of it.

There are opportunities many times to invite someone to a special activity at church. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving are very nice times to invite people, look, my church has a special activity, we have a worship concert or whatever. They are opportunities. You can position yourself or position the person to attract them to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

We have to do different initiatives, position ourselves to be able to share the Gospel with others. We have to pray for opportunities to evangelize people. Identify 3, 4, 5 people at work or in your social area, write their names and start praying for them so that the Lord gives you an opportunity to share the Gospel.

I think that one of the things that slows us down the most is frankly fear. The fear of being rejected, the fear of reaching out and being told, 'I'm not interested,' but again, we have to get over that fear and go further and in the name of the Lord cast the net. Amen. And may the Lord do the rest.

Ultimately they are not rejecting you, they would be rejecting the Christ that you are presenting, so it is important that you position yourself, that you find a way. The Bible says that Satan blinds people's understanding so that the light of the Gospel does not shine on them. Pray for the Lord to remove the veil that covers the understanding of many people. Intercede for the people around you, ask them to anoint you and give you opportunities and be alert, take steps of faith, even baby steps to bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

I don't know if there are people here, I remember years ago when a sister who is already from our congregation and who God has touched in a very precious way, God led us in a difficult family situation that was happening, risking her thinking that we were nosy and that we were interfering in his life. It was very easy in that situation to be rejected and we dared. I dared, I went to where she lived because I realized her situation, I knocked on her door and asked her if I could help with something, that I was a pastor, we were close here and brothers, it was like they openly opened the door for us. her life and to this day she is a sister who has progressed and prospered so much in the Gospel and who has been such a blessing and blesses me with the enthusiasm with which she talks about her relationship with Jesus Christ. And it has been of great benefit and has brought others to the knowledge of Jesus.

So we have to overcome fear. We have to spread out in the name of the Lord. God is always providing opportunities and what I want is to encourage you to position yourself as the Lord did to speak to this person about the Gospel.

This passage shows how urgent that soul was for Jesus. If you think, this woman, first she was a woman and the Lord as a rabbi and as men and as a Jew exposed himself to the fact that people could gossip around, what is he doing talking to that woman who has such a bad reputation in town? But the Lord did not let any of those things stop him from reaching out to her. He stood there and reached out to her and stepped above the limitations of ethnic, social identity and ministered to this woman.

The Lord knew something very important and that is that if that life did not have an encounter with him, it could not be saved, it could not have communion with the Heavenly Father. That woman who seemed to have a dubious and very immoral life had within her the essence of God that needed to be rescued. The Lord knew that if that woman did not have a personal encounter with him, she would go to eternal perdition and that is why he takes advantage of that moment. It is the urgency to share the word of the Gospel with someone.

And I've been meditating on that and I want to underscore this fact for a moment. How many of us believe that if a person does not have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, they will be lost forever? In other words, he's going to hell. Because that's something that many of us find hard to believe. However, if you read, for example, in the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus that is in chapter 3, you see something that when Nicodemus... Look, Nicodemus is a respectable man, he is a religious man, he is an official of the Sanhedrin, a extremely decent man, fearing God, approaches Jesus Christ recognizing a number of virtues and a certain degree of exceptional relationship with God and yet look how the Lord stops him in verse 3, chapter 3 of John says:

“Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly I tell you, unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

Not being born again, and how is one born again within the Gospel system? Through a recognition of Jesus Christ as savior of the world and savior of our soul. It is what is called the new birth, being born of water and of the spirit. Then the Lord says to him, "Truly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God."

This to a religious, decent, God fearing man. The Lord explained to you, Nicodemus, your salvation is not because you give me compliments, nor because you recognize a certain degree of special character in me. How many people think that because they fear God, go to church from time to time, give an offering, help others, do no harm, that this is enough to be saved? The Lord says, it's not what you do, it's not your reputation, it's nothing to do with time and space.

The Kingdom of Heaven is mystical, it is supernatural, it has nothing to do with the earth. There is a different dimension and nothing human penetrates that dimension, it has to be through a change of physiognomy, a change of chemistry, of chemical composition so to speak. There has to be a divinely facilitated transaction in order for a human being to ascend into the divine eternal dimension. And for that, a change of nature is needed, and that is what a personal relationship with Jesus Christ allows.

So, many people say, well, but I am generous, I do good works, but that does not allow you to enter because the transaction that is required to give you access to that dimension is not that, it is another, it has to come from God, it has It has to come through the system that God has established. And that is what Nicodemus receives from Jesus Christ.

And there we have the famous verse of 3:15/16 where Jesus tells Nicodemus, verse 14:

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so it is necessary that the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

If you don't believe that people get lost, then that's fine, you don't have to preach the Gospel to them. But what if you believe that people can get lost, go to hell – a word we don't like very much – if they don't know Jesus Christ? If you know and are convinced that only a person who knows Jesus and who has received him has accepted him as Lord, owner of his life, as savior, only through that transaction can that person go to eternal life. Wouldn't you do everything possible to make that information, that knowledge accessible to them?

I tell you, if each one of us were convinced that it is the only way that a person can be saved, I believe that it would revolutionize our lives. I believe that many of us know perhaps intellectually but that has not transcended our hearts and what I ask the Lord is to make us tender to that recognition. It doesn't matter how good a person is, how decent, how sincere he is in his religion. How many of us can believe that a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, even if they are more decent than many evangelicals, that there are, you know? If you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you can't go to heaven.

That is frankly scandalous to me to think that an individual who lives a respectable life does not have a relationship with Jesus Christ – but that is what the Lord says in his word, if the Bible did not say so, then I would go after my own way. to see, because I would like everyone to be saved. And they can be saved indeed, but by the method that God has established. And if we do not do it through that methodology then we are lost.

But this idea that if a person does not have Christ – because he said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no one – underline no one – comes to the Father if it is not through me. And there are so many passages that are very clear. Because there is only one mediator, says the Bible, between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.

So if we are convinced of that, brothers, and I believe that this is where the center of the matter resides. You have to ask yourself, do I truly believe that a person who does not know Jesus Christ, no matter how honest and convinced of his religion, if he has not made that deal with Jesus, will he be lost forever? Do you believe that? And if you believe it, we have to ask the Lord, Father, seal us with that conviction.

I believe that one of the things, before going out to preach the Gospel, what we have to do is simply ask the Lord to convince us that only through Jesus Christ a person... that is the passport, that is the visa to enter to the Kingdom of Heaven, through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And that is what the Lord understands. One sees through all of scripture that fact that the Lord, he practiced it and told his disciples that they practiced it too. Bring people to the knowledge of him as a savior. And here we see that this is what he does with this woman. He stands there knowing that she is going to arrive at any given time and when she gets closer he begins to pull the net little by little, like the skilled fisherman that he is, he begins to bring it little by little.

He doesn't start from scratch, telling you, I am the Son of God, receive me as your savior. No. look at the first thing he does, he says:

"Give me a drink." In a culture given to hospitality as it was at that time, that was a very nice way to approach. She had the means to do it, she could put her receptacle, her vessel, take a little water and pour a little water on it and give it to this foreigner who surely asked her for it in a very nice way. But he knew that it was going to intrigue her, it was going to tickle her in terms of her curiosity.

And then she responds, How is it that you are a Jew – because obviously he was able to identify him racially as a Jew, he was not from the town, a small town, one knew who belonged to the town and who was not – How is it that you being a Jew… That causes her some intrigue and also some sympathy because normally what she expected was a rejection from him.

The first thing he does, he approaches her. How many opportunities do we have to do the same, brothers? To win someone to Jesus Christ. There are very nice ways that you can win over a person by making some kind of approach, nice approach, making yourself fragile, like they are going to serve you more. There are nice, nice ways to win people over to Christ.

So, she comes in… she knows that one of the things that they deal with… we're working on a new website right now and we have a company that we've hired to do that and they have great ideas on how to make this page not only visually appealing but also they say, it is important not only that people enter the page but that you have to catch them so that they stay on the page. Because many people go to an electronic page and they click, they entered, they saw it, they weren't interested and they passed. 99% do that.

So, they tell us, you have to find ways to get people to stay on the page and from the moment they enter, offer them something that grabs them and invites them to keep going. One of the things he says is, it's important that you get people's email addresses so that you can invite them for other things, for other activities, etc. How do you get people to give you their email address to make other contacts? Well, you offer them something of importance, you invite them if they want to listen to a sermon to give their address, etc., but the idea is to involve them.

And I think that one of the questions that we have to ask ourselves is how can I make friends? How can I engage in conversation with people so that I can then enter into conversation with them and can go beyond just a superficial relationship? Ask yourself that. Invite someone to have a coffee with you, throw a net on the train and whatever, are you from such a country? Wow, I love her dress or whatever. There are many ways to start and then establish…

He tells her, "give me a drink," and she is intrigued, "how can you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink?" And look at what he tells her, "If you knew who is speaking to you and who is asking you to give him a drink, what's more, you would ask him and he would give you eternal water." That's where the conversation begins.

Interesting that he doesn't say if you knew me. I think he did that to make the idea of the personal, of him a man and her a woman, more distant. But that intrigues her, makes her curious. And so she is thinking in material terms. "You would ask him and he would give you living water."

Because? Because the water from the well was static, dead water, it is there put into a well and there it stays. It simply rises by gravity to the well and there it is, calm. And he tells her, "I would give you living water," leaping water like the water of a river or a stream, water that moves, that makes noise, that is effervescent water. And then she, intrigued, asks him, "Well, how is that?" Because she doesn't have a symbolic mind. She thinks he is literally speaking to her. Continue the conversation.

"Lord, where are you going to get water like a stream? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well?" In other words, she is already beginning to think about other things and the Lord uses this dialogue to continue and tells her: "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will not thirst." never."

Offering him something of great value, he says, "Don't you want to never thirst again?" and evidently she is left intrigued, “How is it possible to do that? of course. Give me that water that quenches thirst." Now, of course, he is speaking in spiritual terms. He is saying, “Look, the world if you go to a disco it satisfies you for a while, if you have illegitimate pleasure for a while it satisfies you, but you come back to feel depressed again. The next day you are completely burned out and you have to take 2 aspirins, a tranquilizer and 3 energy pills to keep going. But whoever drinks the water that I am going to give him is always satisfied because he has it inside, he has peace in his heart, he has Christ, he has God, he can seek him, he can pray, he can go to the Father at any time. ”

And she says, "well, Lord, give me that water, I want it." See how he goes little by little. And I believe that we have to learn from that, brothers. I believe that having to say, Lord, give me wisdom, how to reach others for the Gospel, give me courage to look for opportunities, give me prudence to do it at a time when the person is receptive and adequate. Lead the way and help me be nice to people, help me reach them.

I believe that if we start asking the Lord, God will do the work. Amen. I am asking the Lord that as a church he begin to anoint us specifically for evangelism and that he open a thousand ways for us. And I believe that simply by getting involved in efforts that will make something happen, that the Lord himself will then establish a dynamic that souls will flow. God is going to start giving us opportunities because ultimately it is about something spiritual. The Lord ultimately, when we dare [inaudible] to see something that is very important and it is the power of the Holy Spirit for others to come to know Jesus Christ.

Because one of the things that he does is that when the time comes and he's established a relationship with her, he kind of goes in deeper and says, "Go, call your husband and come here and then we're going to do the transaction of I will give you water so that you will never thirst." He knew what she was going to tell him, he knew her life. Jesus had supernatural knowledge of this woman's life. In a sense it is a miracle. What he has there, he is using the gift of knowledge perhaps or the gift of science that knows the secret things of the heart that God gives him. And then she tells him, "I don't have a husband." "You're right, you've had 5 and now you have another one that you're not married to either."

But how interesting that the Lord has already won the conversation with her first. And I think he didn't say it in an accusative way, he said it in a sympathetic way almost because she's sensing that this man has some authority. It tells him something that is real, how would he know that. So, here what I see is something very important and it is that God wants us to testify and he wants to give us supernatural resources because when I see the scripture I continually see that the Lord provided supernatural means for the preaching of the Gospel.

When he sent the 12 to preach, when he sent the 70 to preach, the Bible says that he gave them authority over diseases and demons. And in the same book of Mark, I think Mark 13, the Lord says that these signs will follow those who believe. Remember that famous passage from Mark 13 towards the very end? Mark 16, sorry:

"And these signs will follow those who believe, in my name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new languages, they will pick up serpents, if they drink deadly things it will not hurt them, they will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover."

And when we see in the Book of Acts how the Lord poured out his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, it caused a din in the city of Jerusalem that the whole world flocked to see what was happening, they spoke in new tongues. Right away in the Book of Acts one sees signs and wonders, the healing of the lame man, miraculous catches, thousands of people being converted in a moment, miracles of different kinds in the Book of Acts.

Because I believe that God gives his gifts to a church that does evangelism. I sometimes believe that we are putting the egg before the chicken and we want the gifts to later evangelize. And what if God wants to say no, first evangelize and then I'm going to give you the gifts. You have to start with faith.

The Bible says that if you have been faithful in a little, I will put you in much. And perhaps what the Holy Spirit says is, look, I am going to give my gifts to those who are working. Why am I going to give my gifts? Because the gifts are made precisely as a support for the preaching of the Gospel.

So, I believe that one has to start with faith, start with what we have at hand. Ask the Lord, use the opportunities that you have, collectively I believe that there are at least 50 potential opportunities here right now, or 100 opportunities, in this mass of people.

I know that if we could X-ray there are hundreds of people that we could potentially reach for the Gospel in some way. And if we started with that and those who come to the Lord bring others and those bring others, it's like a pyramid, like Shaklee, you sell to one and he sells to two and those two to four, four to 8, 8 to 16, 16 to 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, it can be done, brothers, if we dare, we start looking.

But it is a matter of us starting with the little. If 4 of you, 8, put on God is going to do the work. We have to start small. Look how the Lord started with just one woman. And what happened to that woman? She receives Christ and God makes her an extraordinary evangelist. She leaves and while she is there sharing the blessing that this man has been, the Lord is speaking with his disciples.

And it is interesting what they say to him, "Hey, what were you doing talking to this woman who is a Samaritan?" I didn't read it but, they told him, “Rabbi, eat, here we have food for you.” And he told them, “I have food to eat that you don't know about. My food is to do the will of the God who sent me and to finish his work."

In other words, look at this, that the Lord equates evangelizing souls with eating. It is so important to him. He knew that his only reason for being was to serve as a means of salvation for people. How many of us think that? that it is more important to evangelize souls than to eat. Do not answer me because I know what they are going to tell me. But that's what the Bible says.

That is the reason for being, the identity of a child of God. and then he comes out with this great expression, "Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, look at the fields for they are already white for harvest."

I want to tell you something, brothers, that all this mess that we are seeing in the United States and in the world at this time, terrorism, hurricanes, earthquakes, threats of nuclear war, national division, crisis of political leadership in this nation and other things that we will see in the future, should rather be reason in a sense for us to spiritually rejoice knowing that they represent opportunities to preach the Gospel.

People are scared, people are unanswered, people feel insecure, humanity is going to come to a point where it recognizes that all of its technology, all of its diplomatic efforts, all of its scientific knowledge, all of its knowledge of the human gene of Human genetics, of its neurology, of the brain, of space, of the ocean, of intimate matter, none of this is capable of solving the problems that humanity has at this moment.

And that something different is needed and that difference is made by the Son of God, Christ Jesus alone. The devil wants you to think that this time is impossible to preach the Gospel. And the Lord says, look, this is the best time, this is the best time, begin to discern opportunities.

I believe that we have to launch ourselves, brothers, and look, I am… it is that God is motivating me in an extraordinary way that I say, there is no turning back, for me and for this congregation. We have to become an evangelistic church and I am frankly asking the Lord for a second conversion, for myself and for our congregation, that we convert again. This time in soul winners, let this church change its identity.

Look how the Lord has blessed us, look for many people this is a great church, enviable and all those who are not here, who come at one time or another during the year, but this is nothing compared to what we could do. This church could bring thousands of people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, thousands. And everything consists of adopting a sense of urgency, like Jesus Christ, understanding the call of God, giving courage to souls, daring in the name of the Lord.

I believe that just as there is a veil that covers the understanding out there, there is a veil that covers the understanding of the church as well. And you have to tear off that veil, as one would tear off a fictitious and superficial and false skin that the enemy has put on. It is the skin of fear, the skin of indolence, the skin of inertia, the skin of thinking that this is the business of the pastor of ushers or deacons or specialists in evangelism, instead of thinking that this is for us too. , for you and for me. That by their fruits you will know them, says the Bible, that God has placed us so that we bear fruit and fruit in abundance. And that we assume that call.

So in this time that we are beginning I want to give you that challenge. Look, here's an opportunity, I wish 20 more people this afternoon would conceive of the desire to participate in this effort. And if you need help, as I told you, if you have clients, we are going to provide you with the method and the help.

Some may have knowledge but do not have clients. Others have clients but have no knowledge, let's unite the two. Inviting two or three people, it doesn't have to be many, praying for them, praying for the next 3, 4 weeks, I believe that God can do something well, very important.

We are going to lower our heads for a moment and we are going to conceive in our spirit that call to reach souls for Christ. Ask the Lord to fertilize you right now there. Say, Lord, create in me a sense of urgency about evangelizing souls, about bringing souls to Christ. Think about it.