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Hey guys, it's brother Peter James. I want to give a soul winning tip and this is probably the most important soul winning tip I will give. It's of the utmost importance and that is this fact that soul winning is learned by doing. The way you become a proficient soul winner is by going out soul winning and just doing it and getting your feet wet and getting the experience. Now I've identified what I think is probably correct in that I think there are about five stages in a soul winner's life. So I think there's about five rungs on the soul winning ladder when it comes to different types of soul winners. And I think the first stage in a soul winner's life is the silent partner phase. Now most people I know who learned how to go out soul winning, this is how they learned. First they were a silent partner, meaning that when you go out soul winning, you don't preach the gospel yet. You go out two by two accompanied by somebody who knows what they're doing and you learn from them, whether it be for weeks or whether it be for months. You go out with experienced soul winners and you glean as much information from them in their presentations as possible that you can later on learn to apply to your own presentation. I didn't have the luxury or the opportunity to be a silent partner really when I learned soul winning just because of the fact that the church that I was going to at the time wasn't a soul winning church. That's just the fact of the matter. Sadly, it wasn't a soul winning church. So everything I learned from soul winning, I had to learn from people who went to other churches. I had to learn from YouTube tutorials and soul winning demos. And I eventually had to start going out soul winning by myself and suffering through all the awkward beginning phases and do as well as I could with it. But I would have benefited from going out soul winning as a silent partner, which is the recommended first stage of a soul winner's life. That's when you go out and you learn from other people and you simply watch how they present the gospel and you learn from them and then you apply what you've learned from them. Your job is to pray for them while they're preaching the gospel and also pray for the person who's receiving the gospel. It's the silent partner phase. The second phase of a soul winner's life is the novice phase or what I might also classify as the mimicry phase. The novice phase of a soul winner's life would be when basically you're just parroting what you've heard other soul winners say and you're sticking to a very fixed presentation of the gospel that you've mapped out for yourself in your Bible. You might even have a map of the scriptures that you go to in your Bible. You might have written down, I'm going to go to this scripture. Then after that, I'm going to go to this scripture. Then after that, I'm going to go to this scripture. Really all you know how to do is stay on that fixed course of giving the gospel the way that you have memorized it from a silent partner and what you've learned from them. You're basically just repeating the best you can what you've heard. You're preaching the Romans road as best you can. You don't really deviate much and you're not really experienced in fielding questions and learning how to quell people's objections. You're not really experienced in fielding a wide variety of questions from people out soul winning. You really just stick to that main fixed presentation that you have either memorized or that you've learned precisely from somebody while you were in your silent partner phase. That's the natural progression when you become a novice from the silent partner phase. The next phase I would say is the intermediate phase. The intermediate phase of a soul winner's life I would say is when you're really starting to get comfortable in your skin as a soul winner and you are beginning to learn how to deviate from your fixed presentation. You're learning where certain scriptures are in the Bible and you're really starting to embody the characteristics of a proficient soul winner in a lot of ways in that you are winning souls frequently and quite regularly and the awkwardness is kind of dying off when you're knocking the doors and you're becoming more comfortable in your skin as a soul winner. Your presentation is becoming your own presentation. It's being formed into something that would almost take on your personality. It's not just robotic anymore and it's becoming your own presentation. You're an intermediate soul winner. The next phase would be the advanced phase or the proficient phase of a soul winner's life. That's when you're just really comfortable giving the gospel and you can really speak very authoritatively based on knowledge that you feel confident about that you've acquired from reading the Bible and that you've learned and you've taken great soul winning advice and tips and illustrations and ideas that you have gleaned off of other people and that you have incorporated into your own presentation and you're an advanced soul winner. You can wield the word of God successfully and powerfully and skillfully and you know how to use the Bible and you know how to field the questions that are coming from the Pentecostals and from the Catholics and the concerns that are coming from the Jehovah's Witnesses and that's coming from the atheists and you can use the whole Bible at this point to preach the gospel and to tie it all together. You know how to allay their angst and whatever their problems are that they have with the gospel you can very proficiently respond and retort whatever it is that they have to say. And I would say the last stage of a soul winner's life would just be the fifth stage which is you are a soul winner. That is your identity. It's your it's your person. You are a soul winner. You win souls. You know you don't just go soul winning anymore. You win souls. You are a soul winner. You win souls in your personal life. I would say that would be a major attribute of somebody who's reached that level and that that phase on that on that ladder of a soul winner's life to where you're winning souls in your personal life. The gospel is something you're you are not worried to bring up in conversation with your friends and your family and it's just part of you. It's who you are. You're a soul winner. You preach the gospel. It's your identity. And the only way to advance through these stages and to get to a point where you're very proficient soul winner is to just do it is to go out and go soul winning. You have to be pragmatic and hands on about your soul winning or else it's just for naught. All the information that you are pumping into your mind about soul winning the sermons that you're listening to the soul winning tip videos that you're watching and all the information that you're laying up in your mind and that you're storing up for yourself. It's not going to do anything for you until you go out and do it. That's the way you learn. That's how I learned. I just went out and did it and I just trudged through all the awkwardness of not knowing what I was doing. It was bad at first with me. I didn't know what I was doing, but you learn by doing. The Bible says the doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed, not just the hearer of the word, but the doer of the work shall be blessed in his deed. That's what it's like with soul winning. You have to go out and be hands on and proactive about your goal of learning how to go soul winning. You just have to go out and do it. Whatever little knowledge or maybe you have a lot of knowledge about soul winning. The rubber meets the road where you have to get out and go apply it. That's how you learn to be a proficient soul winner. You have to just suffer through the difficulties, the awkwardness of you have to suffer the shame of not knowing exactly how to answer questions sometimes. That's how you learn. The most important tip I could give about soul winning is to go out and do it. You have to be proactive about it. You have to take the bull by the horns and just start knocking doors. It's not that hard. You find some verses about what the Bible says about sin. You find some verses about what the Bible says about hell. You find some verses about what the Bible says about faith alone, salvation, and you explain them the best you can and you compel the person to believe it. You give them the message. You give them the opportunity to believe it, but the only way that you're going to advance through those stages to get to the top of that structure of being a proficient soul winner is just by doing it. That's really the only way. It's not by laying up all this knowledge for yourself. What you're really going to find works is when you go out and you just preach the gospel, you take what you know, God will work with you, and he expects you to do something with what you know. God doesn't expect you to do anything with what you don't have, but he does expect you to do something with what you do have. He expects you to go out and use that knowledge. Soul winning has been on my mind a lot lately. This is just something that I was thinking about, you know, what are the stages of a soul winner's life? What have I seen from people who they got to the point where they're just, man, they're just a soul winner? And you know, what did it look like for them to get there? And no matter where they are on that, you know, on that ladder, no matter where they are in their journey of soul winning, they got there by being proactive and doing it. And you need to get in a soul winning church if you're not. When I wasn't in a soul winning church, my soul winning was nothing like it is now. It was a drudgery to force myself to go soul winning. I knew I had to, but I wasn't being provoked under good works the way I am now that I'm in a great, great soul winning church. It's very important you get in a soul winning church. I mean, that's just of the utmost importance. That's another video in and of itself. But you have to get a soul winning church because you're not going to flourish as a soul winner unless you are surrounded by soul winners and people who are able to cultivate that desire in you by, by feeding you good information and good encouragement. You know, otherwise it's like, it's like a fire, it's just, it's like a fire. You know, a fire needs certain things to burn effectively. It needs oxygen, it needs fuel. And without those things, it's not going to burn no matter how much it wants to burn. And you know, you need to get in a soul winning church for starters. So that's another video, but yeah, go out, be pragmatic about it. Take the bull by the horns and go soul winning. That's the tip for tonight. All right guys, have a good night.