Matthew Stuckey here, and in this video I want to talk to you about the importance of looking for somebody in the house to preach the gospel to.
And what I mean by that is when you get somebody saved at the door, one thing that I think is a great idea,
especially if you happen to see somebody else in the house, is asking that person,
is there anybody else in the house that I could talk to about this?
And so I'm going to give you some Bible verses that talk about this.
I'm going to give you a passage that talks about this, and I'm going to give you a personal testimony.
And this is something I very often do, that when I get somebody saved, I will ask them at the door,
Oh, I mean, is your husband home? You know, do you have a brother or sister home?
You know, depending on who I'm talking to.
And sometimes that first person I talk to will then get their relative or friend or whatever,
and then I have an opportunity to preach the gospel to them as well.
And let me show you an example of this in Acts 16.
Very famous story, where it says in Acts 16, verse 30,
And brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
Now, when you're reading that, of course you're preaching the gospel,
you're often focusing on believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
But it also says, and thy house.
That does not mean that everybody in the house will automatically get saved if he gets saved.
What it's saying is, the same thing is true, not just for you, but everybody in your house,
that they must believe on Jesus Christ to get saved.
But I believe the reason why Paul mentioned that,
is because he's trying to basically get an opportunity to go and preach the gospel to this person's family,
and it ends up working.
And it's something that you can actually do as you're preaching the gospel.
You can kind of set it up before the person even gets saved,
and just as you're reading Acts 16, you can explain.
And by the way, the same is true for your family.
If they believe the wrong thing about getting to heaven,
if they're trusting in their works, then they're also going to go to hell.
They must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved.
I believe that's why he mentions, and thy house in verse 31,
because he's not just trying to get this person saved,
he's thinking, maybe this person has some relatives and friends that we can talk to and get them saved as well.
So it goes on in verse 32,
And they spake on him the word of the Lord and all that were in his house.
And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized,
he in all his straight way.
And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced,
believing in God with all his house.
This is a very exciting story where Paul and Silas do not just get this one man saved,
they get the entire family saved.
And then they get them baptized.
What an exciting story.
And you know what?
This is the sort of situation I'm talking about,
where basically you get one person saved,
but also think about, is there anybody else inside the house that I could get saved as well?
So one thing that you could do is this,
set this up during the conversation.
You can mention specifically in Acts 16,
how, hey, the same is true for your house as well.
Anybody, any of your relatives, your wife, your husband, your son, your daughter,
if they don't believe, then they're going to end up going to hell,
because you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved.
And so you can kind of set it up during the conversation,
where if that person ends up getting saved,
it might be something that's kind of stuck in their mind.
So one thing you want to do is kind of set this up during the conversation
if you want to have a goal to try to get that whole family saved,
or that whole house saved.
But also, you can specifically ask them afterward at the end of the conversation,
hey, is there anybody else inside the house that would be open to talking about this?
And what you have to realize is that when you talk to someone and you get them saved,
and they go to their brother or sister,
that person is more likely to listen to you because of the fact,
it's their relative that's basically recommending that they listen.
So I want to give you an example of this.
A good friend of mine in the United States, brother Jeff,
we went soul winning.
First time we met up was a long time ago at this point.
We were going soul winning in this random neighborhood,
and it was just not receptive.
We were knocking for several hours, two and a half, three hours,
and we're getting to the point where we're thinking about ending,
because it was starting to get dark, and we thought,
man, maybe we should just try another time.
It's just not going to work out.
But we're both kind of like, let's just get one person saved.
I don't want to stop until I get one person saved.
And so I ended up just talking to these two people
that are actually sitting outside their house,
and I talked to them, and you know what?
They did not look like they would be receptive.
They just looked like someone who just wouldn't be interested in the Bible,
and they ended up getting saved.
And then I asked them, is there anybody else inside your house
that we could talk to, anyone who would be interested?
And the woman said, well, no,
but I'd really like you to talk to my neighbor.
And I said, well, that's great. We'd love to talk to your neighbor.
I said, but it's already kind of dark outside.
I mean, maybe if you went over and asked her to come talk to us,
she'd be more likely to talk to us.
And this person was kind of like, well, okay.
And then she went, and she brought out her neighbor,
and then we ended up preaching to her, and she got saved.
We asked if there was anybody else inside the house,
and then the daughter ended up getting saved as well.
So we ended up having four salvations,
and it didn't look like we were going to get anybody saved.
And it's because we didn't just get one person saved,
but we asked, is there anyone else that we can talk to?
Anybody inside the house, they led us to the neighbor,
and we got the neighbor saved, and then her daughter as well.
So it was a very exciting time.
Now, I will say this, that you would think that when somebody first gets saved,
they would love you to talk to all of their relatives.
But unfortunately, that's not always the case.
So I gave you an exciting story.
Act 16 is an exciting story, where basically they said, okay,
and they bring somebody for you to talk to, and they end up getting saved too.
But sadly, I've seen many times where I've gotten somebody saved at the door,
and I said, hey, was that your wife back there?
And they said, yeah.
I said, yeah, do you want to see if she'd be interested in talking about this?
And they're like, no, I don't think she wants to talk about it.
I was like, are you sure?
You sure don't want to just ask?
I mean, maybe she'd be willing to listen.
I mean, this is important, right?
And they're like, yeah, but you don't know her.
It's like, but if she doesn't believe she's going to go to hell,
I mean, isn't that important?
And they're like, yeah, but she just wouldn't be interested.
And for some reason, there's a lot of people.
They just don't have a lot of love in their heart.
And even though they got saved,
they're just not that interested in their relatives here in the gospel.
It's a very strange thing to me, because when I first got saved,
the first thought I had was, what about my friends and family
and people that I know?
What do they believe about this?
And so, look, I encourage you to try this,
where basically you get somebody saved and you ask them
if there's anybody else you can talk to.
And you know what?
You're going to end up having some exciting stories,
because from time to time, there's going to be some times
that you got to get several people in that house saved.
Sadly, though, oftentimes, and actually usually the case,
even if you get somebody saved at the door,
they're just kind of too nervous or scared
to actually bring their relatives out for you to actually talk to
or at least give it a chance.
But sometimes you do have some exciting stories like Acts 16.
Anyways, thank you and God bless.