The joy of soul winning.
There's no greater joy than you personally winning somebody to Christ.
There's nothing greater in the world.
You say, oh man, for me joy is riding a roller coaster.
I just love doing this, or I love going to the movies, or I love going to a rock concert
and get down there in the mosh pit.
I love to go out, look, once you are a soul winner, all that stuff is going to seem boring.
It's the truth.
I mean, look, I grew up, I was a worldly teenager, I was at the rock concerts, and I was a Christian,
I got to say when I was six years old.
Okay?
I mean, I know I was saved when I was six years old.
I promise you that.
But I'm going to tell you something, all throughout my teenage years, I was at the rock concerts,
I was out there with the movies, and the friends, and the fun, and the worldliness, and I'd
stop in at church on Sunday morning, but the rest of my life just didn't really have a
lot to do with church.
But I'm going to tell you something, when I was 17 years old, and I walked into an independent
fundamental Baptist church, and I looked a whole lot different than I look right now.
I'll tell you right now.
I had my bleach blonde hair all punked out, I had my worldly clothes on.
I walked into that church, I didn't agree with half of what the pastor said, and it
was all the half about all the sin that I was doing in my life, I didn't agree with
any of it.
And I didn't change.
You know, I mean, I still did all the same stuff, but I'm going to tell you something,
within two weeks of going to that church, they had me out soul winning.
And they paired me up with somebody that I just watched them, and I watched them, you
know, give the gospel, and I watched them win somebody to Christ, and I went with them
for a couple hours, and after two hours, I said, hey, let me get the next door.
And he thought I'd done this before I had, you know.
But I was just memorizing what he said, and so I knocked on the door after two hours of
watching him, I knocked on the door, and I did the best I could.
I tried to do what he did, and you know, I failed at it, you know, I mean, I tried to
give the gospel, and I didn't do a very good job, and I said, well, you know, just come
to church tomorrow then.
And that girl that I was talking to, I was talking to like a ten year old girl, she came
to church the next day, believe it or not.
I mean, it was my first time, so I advised this girl, she came to church and somebody
else wanted a Christ.
And I was thrilled, I was happy, because I said, boy, I had a part in this, you know.
This girl came to church, somebody wanted a Lord, because I invited her.
But you know, I didn't want to stop there, I wanted to be the one to get somebody saved.
And so I kept coming, and I kept coming, and it took me months of going with other people,
and I watched them, and I tried to learn from them, and after a few months, I got somebody
saved myself.
And I'm going to tell you something, nothing had changed about my life except that I had
become a soul winner.
I was still into all the wrong things, you know, the sin, and the whatever, but once
I got into soul winning, once I started seeing people saved, it was so much more fun, it
was such a more real joy to win somebody the Lord, than just the frills and the cheap thrills
that the world has to offer.
It just wasn't the same anymore, and I mean the rock concert wasn't the same, the movie
wasn't the same, the music wasn't the same, it all just got boring to me, in comparison
with winning somebody to Christ, and they're going to go to heaven, and then to see that
person get baptized, and to see that person begin to read the Bible and live for God,
hey that's what changed my life!
And that's what's going to change your life!
My life didn't change just from coming to church and listening to preaching, my life
changed when I went out soul winning, that's the truth.
And I went out soul winning and I started realizing, I'm spending a lot of time on soul
winning, I'm not getting a lot of people saved.
And God began to work in my heart and said, you know what, if I'm going to use you, I
need a clean vessel that I can use.
And I began to realize that the sin in my life was hindering me from seeing people saved,
because I knew I wasn't filled with the Holy Spirit.
I knew that I hadn't put off the old man, and put on the new man, okay, and I realized
I was soul winning in the flesh, because I was just a fleshly, worldly Christian.
And I got to the point where I said, I feel like my sin is hindering me from winning people
to Christ.
I feel like I'm going out alone and God's power is not with me like it ought to be.
And I remember I prayed and begged God that He would help me to win more souls.
This is when I was about, probably at this point about 19, you know I'd been in church
for a couple of years, and I'd just been recently married, and I was just young married,
and I was just feeling like God's just not using me like He should be, I don't know what
the problem is.
And I started realizing, you know, it's all this music, and the movies, and the sin, and
I just have too much junk in my life, too much sin in my life.
And I remember I slowly began to purge my music collection, you know, first I got rid
of the music that I knew was really bad, and I said, okay, let's just get rid of this.
And then I started just kind of throwing more and more of it away, more and more away, and
I got down to kind of the last of it, you know, that was, it was the wrong music, I
mean it was just total worldly rock and roll, everything that's wrong music, and I just
had the last of it, and I was just hanging on for dear life for the last of it.
And I remember one night, I was all by myself, and I took the last of the records and CDs,
and I put them in my car, and I drove down to the church, Regency Baptist Church in Orangeville,
California, it was on a weeknight, I drove down to the church, and nobody was around,
there wasn't a soul winning night, there wasn't a church night, I drove down there, and I
looked up to heaven in front of the dumpster, the Regency parking lot, I looked up to heaven,
and I said, God, I said, God, I said, this stuff means nothing to me compared to getting
people saved, you know, I don't need this stuff, I want you to use me, God, I want to
be maximum for Jesus, I took this stuff and I just said, I'm just going to throw this
away right now, God, and I want you to do something for me, I want you to use me to
win souls, and I threw that stuff in the trash, and I just went by myself solely, you know,
usually I went two by two with the church, but I just went by myself on this night, and
I knocked on the door, and the first door I knocked on, nobody was home, I knocked on
the second door, and I walked in, and it was a family, it was a man and his wife and three
children, there were about, you know, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, you know, a few
different ages because there were three of them right around that age, and I walked in,
and I invited this guy to church, and I asked him if he died today, if he knew for sure
he would go to heaven, and he was saved, it turned out, he was actually saved, but his
young, his kids weren't saved, and they were, you know, they were twelve, thirteen, ten
around that age, and I sat down at the table and I won those kids the award, and that was
a great victory for me, because I'd seen very few people saved in my two years of soul,
and just a couple people saved, and so this was a big deal to me, that just the first
door I knocked, you know, here I got a couple people saved, and then the next night they
came to church, this was, I think it was a Tuesday night, they came to church on Wednesday
night, and the whole family came to church, and the kids got baptized, you know, and this
family had been out of church, the parents hadn't been in church in years, the dad was
saved, and the mom was saved, but they just hadn't been in church, and they came to church,
those kids got baptized, and that family became faithful in church, and brother Roger, he
met us here tonight, he remembers, we used to take those two boys that I won to the Lord
on that night, and we took those boys soul winning with us, I had one as my soul winning
partner, and Roger had one as his soul winning partner, we'd go soul winning for four hours
every week, you remember that, we'd have them with us, up and down Sayonara Lane, and Citrus
Heights, then the Ghetto, and we went soul winning every week with those kids, and you
know, that's when I believed that was the turning point in my soul winning, I'm not
kidding, I mean after that I started having a lot of people saved, and me and brother
Jimenez would go on soul winning, we'd have a lot of people saved, and that's when God
really started using me, you see, the thing that changed my life wasn't just church, it
was the joy of winning people to Christ, and what changed my life, that's what motivated
me to get the sin out of my life, that's what motivated me to clean up my act, that's what
motivated me to get in the Bible and read it, and read it, and study, and study, I said
I want God to use me to win somebody in the Lord!