Pure religion, undefiled before God and the Father is this,
to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from them.
- Yes, soul-winning is important.
Yes, soul-winning is the most important ministry
a church can do, but soul-winning is not everything
that a church should be doing.
And soul-winning is not the only thing
that a church should be doing.
So let's think of some examples.
How about the nursing home?
I'll read for you James 1.27.
It says, "Pure religion and undefiled before God
and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction
and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
You know, I guarantee you that Jesus has pleasure
when we go to those old folks who their family has,
you know, ditched them in some home.
They don't have a lot of fellowship.
I guarantee you that God has pleasure
when we go and actually spend time with those people
and actually preach them the word of God,
teach them doctrines, get them saved.
You know, yes, we get them saved too,
but there's more than just soul-winning going on
at that nursing home.
You know, there's friendships,
there's talking to people that need someone to talk to,
and not everything is about soul-winning.
Sometimes we get this bad balance, this false balance,
and sometimes in our movement,
we could apply this to our movement
where people get so zealous for soul-winning
where they think it's the only thing that matters.
It's like, oh, why are you doing anything else
other than soul-winning?
How dare you spend time with your wife?
Forsake your wife.
You know, go soul-winning, 24/7, no.
There's other works that a church should be doing
than soul-winning, and honestly,
if you're only doing soul-winning
and you're not doing any other work, that's wrong.
If you're forsaking all of your Bible reading
just so you could go soul-winning all the time,
you're wrong.
You have a bad balance.
And if a church did nothing but soul-win,
we just met Monday through Monday,
and every night we went soul-winning, we did nothing else,
that's not the best church.
That's not what God wants for us.
Yes, it's the most important work,
but God saw more in the Church of Ephesus
than their soul-winning,
'cause they were going soul-winning,
we'll get to that later, but he still said,
I know your work. I know your labor.