| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Great Commission Guidance
00:03:05
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| For our generation, David, could you speak into us, the baby boomer generation and the seniors regarding what's going on? | |
| Well, there's, excuse me, there's there's some things going on that I think, first off, we have to take responsibility for what's happening in the streets right now. | |
| Where did those kids learn this stupid stuff? | |
| From their parents and from their schools. | |
| And that happened on our watch in our generation. | |
| So these kids didn't come up with dumb ideas all by themselves. | |
| Somebody taught them dumb ideas. | |
| We have known for 30 years that what's going on in schools wasn't good. | |
| And we've all lamented it and said, tist, tist, tist, it is terrible what they're teaching in schools. | |
| Yeah, well, we should have done something about it 30 years ago because Jesus talks in Matthew 13 about how they had this field, great, great field, great wheat in it. | |
| And the enemy came in and sowed the tares among it. | |
| And all these weeds started growing up with the wheat and it made the harvest really, really bad. | |
| So this has been going on for 30 years. | |
| And first thing off, we got to raise our hands and said, you know what? | |
| This is our responsibility. | |
| These kids did not learn this on their own. | |
| We weren't paying attention to the textbooks. | |
| We weren't paying attention to the professors. | |
| We were too busy living our own lives and saying, it's all going to be all right. | |
| This will correct itself. | |
| We did not get involved. | |
| The second thing I would point to is that we, particularly we in the older generation, we need to understand the great commission that Jesus gave. | |
| And the great commission is go and make disciples of all men. | |
| It is a discipleship commission. | |
| If you want to use the word, it's a mentoring commission. | |
| If we would take what we know and take a young person and develop a relationship with them, get coffee with them, go get coke, go get ice cream, just talk to them, learn what they're thinking. | |
| Why are you guys thinking this about statues? | |
| If we develop a friendship relationship where they trust us, then we can start mentoring them. | |
| And one of the best ways that Jesus mentored his disciples was to ask them questions. | |
| If you look in the gospels, over 300 questions Jesus asked. | |
| Now, he could have answered any question, but he often did not. | |
| He just asked questions to guide their thinking, to guide their directions. | |
| And so if you say, oh, wow, socialism, you guys really like that. | |
| Yeah, here's why. | |
| I can't remember of any nation where socialism's ever worked. | |
| Can you name me a nation where it's worked? | |
| They've never thought about that. | |
| They've never looked at that. | |
| I don't have to teach them. | |
| I can ask them questions that lead them. | |
| Or they might say something like, well, we know over in like the Scandinavian nation, socialism works there because they have socialized medicine. | |
| And it's as if we don't realize socialized medicine and a socialized economy are two very different things. | |
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Engaging One Christian At a Time
00:03:28
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| But again, nobody's really challenged their thinking to understand those are different things. | |
| But you're right. | |
| Asking those questions where they have to defend their positions is not is not something they do very often. | |
| And most of the positions that my generation holds are not very defensible. | |
| We just don't realize it because we've never had a mentor ask us those questions. | |
| And so being a mentor and asking questions. | |
| And by the way, in the summertimes, training youth leadership, one of the things we teach them to do is ask questions. | |
| Ask questions to their professors. | |
| Their professors have never had to think through most of this stuff. | |
| They're simply repeating what they were taught. | |
| And so when you start asking questions, it changes the narrative. | |
| Now, our problem is we see a massive national movement think, I can't change the nation. | |
| Don't worry about changing the nation. | |
| You change one person at a time. | |
| And I'll point out something from the Christian faith standpoint. | |
| Christianity, we believe, is the best faith in the world. | |
| That's why we adhere to it. | |
| We believe that following God's word and his standards is beneficial for us. | |
| It gives us a really joyful life, helps us to get along better with others. | |
| We just think it's the best religion out there. | |
| So, we want everybody else to enjoy what we enjoy, which is why Christians have missionaries and we have evangelists and we send people across the world. | |
| And for the last 2,000 years, we've been sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ across the world. | |
| And today, Christianity is the largest religion in the world. | |
| 32% of the seven and a half billion people in the world, 32% are Christians. | |
| The next biggest religion is Islam at 21%. | |
| We've taken 2,000 years to produce 32% Christians. | |
| Here's the thought: What if the 32% of Christians in the world today said, you know, my only objective for next year is to reach one person? | |
| I'm not going to reach the masses. | |
| I'm not going to reach crowds. | |
| I'm going to find one person and share Jesus with one person and make sure they know Jesus. | |
| If we did that at the end of next year, 64% of the world would be Christian. | |
| We would double it in one year if every Christian just picked one person. | |
| And at the end of next year, if 64% of the world that was Christian said, I'm only going to get one person, we would be 100% Christian two years from now if everybody just chose one person. | |
| We keep looking at the crowd and saying, I don't know what to do with all the statues and with all the riots. | |
| Don't worry about that. | |
| You find one person and mentor one person. | |
| And if every one of us does that, we can change the nation. | |
| And one thing, too, with that is that a lot of people who are involved in this movement would be self-professing Christians. | |
| And one of the challenges is that you have a lot of people who love God, but don't know what the Bible says. | |
| They don't think biblically. | |
| They don't always live biblically. | |
| And so what we know is from polling is that maybe of the 70% of Americans that profess Christianity, really only about 10% of Americans think biblically. | |
| But the same system applies. | |
| If the 10% of Americans who are biblical thinkers even could train other Christians to be biblical thinkers, well, now we have 20%. | |
| The next year you have 40%. | |
| The next year you have 80%, right? | |
| The system still applies. | |
| It's just if we can engage and reach one person, and sometimes it's even Christians who they know God, they love God. | |
| They just, they don't really think biblically. | |
| They don't really know the Bible, study the Bible, or live according to the Bible, but we can help show them what truth is from the Word of God, help shape their thinking and lead them down the path of righteousness, right? | |