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1 Thessalonians 2, the Bible reads, and I'm not going to read the whole chapter tonight like we usually do, but let's just go ahead and start reading verse number 13 of 1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians 2, the Bible reads, For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God, which he heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. For you also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have executed us, and they please not God, and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles, that they might be saved, to fill up their sins all way, for the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time, in presence not in heart, endeavored the more abundantly to see your face with great desire. Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul once and again, but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing, or not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is coming. For ye are our glory and joy. Let me just, let's just bow our heads and I'll say a brief word of prayer and get into this tonight. Father, we thank you so much for the great preaching that we heard from Brother Smith, and we thank you for his fellowship and his stand, and God bless him over there in Fort Worth, Texas, and the great work that he's doing for you over there, and the blessing that he's being to members of my family over there. And I appreciate and love him, and I'm glad he's here. And Father, I just pray that you would bless me now as I preach this sermon and give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying, and in Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Now the title of my sermon tonight is this, The Joy of Soul Winning. The Joy of Soul Winning. Now, I love to preach on Soul Winning. I like what he's saying. Is that all there is, is Soul Winning? You know, there's a lot more to our church than just Soul Winning. And anybody who comes to our church knows that there's a lot more to it than that. And Soul Winning's not everything, but it is the main thing. It is the number one thing. It is our favorite thing. Now, it's not everything, but it's the biggest thing. And so I want to preach to you tonight on this, though. The Joy of Soul Winning. Now, we live in a time where people don't have a lot of joy. I mean, people are popping pills tonight, and they're taking drugs, and they're drinking, and they suck on the end of the cigarette like it's a pacifier, because they don't have any joy. They need something to comfort them. They need something to make them feel better. And we live in a time where people are sad and depressed, and they're taking antidepressants, because life is just such a depressing thing to them, and it's sad. And you know, as God's people, though, we ought to have joy. The Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy. The second thing that's listed there. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. God wants us to have joy in our life. We go through troubles and hard times and sadness, but we ought to live our life with joy. Not be down in the mouth, not be negative as Brother Smith was talking about, but have joy and be positive. I'm going to tell you how to have real joy in your life. Paul was a man, and this is true, we're reading the words of Paul here in First Thessalonians. Paul was a man who went through a great deal of suffering in his life. I mean, he'd been beaten, he'd been thrown in jail, he'd been persecuted, abused, lied about, and he'd been through a lot of trouble. But he said, I have joy. You say, well, what is your joy, Paul? Well, he said it right here. He said this, for what is our hope? What is our joy? Our crown of rejoicing. Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming, for ye are our glory and joy. Okay. He said, my joy, and let me just quote to you a few other verses where it says in Third John, for example, you don't turn there, but in Third John, John said, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. He wasn't talking about his physical children. He was talking about Gaius, who he wrote Third John to, a man that he won to Christ. He said, my greatest joy is to know that Gaius is on his way to heaven, and not only that, but that he's living for God. That's where I derive my joy. I think of Paul writing to Timothy. He said, my own son in the faith. Timothy was won to Christ by Paul. It was his spiritual son. He said, my son in the faith. He said, greatly desiring to see thee, this is in Second Timothy chapter one, greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy when I call to remembrance the unfaith faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice, and I am persuaded that in thee also. He said, my joy is to think of the people that I've won to Christ. Timothy, Gaius, these different people that they've won to Christ. But he said, the real joy is one day in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming. My joy is going to be in those that I've won to Christ, that are there with me in heaven, because I won to Christ. He said, that's going to be my glory. That's going to be my crown of rejoicing. And you say, are you going to get any crowns? My crown, when I get to heaven, is the people that I've won to Christ. I want to talk to you about the joy of soul winning. Now you see, we at Faithful Word Baptist Church believe very strongly in soul winning. And you say, well what is soul winning? What are you talking about? You're not going to understand the sermon if you don't know what soul winning is. So what I'm talking about is we go out and we do it the old fashioned way, where we go out and knock on doors and preach the gospel to every creature. I mean, we don't go out and hand out a flyer and just invite people to church. I mean, we go out and take our Bibles and the members of this church, I'll tell you one thing about the members of this church. Anybody who's been coming to this church for more than three months, come on, am I telling the truth? Anybody who's coming to this church for more than three months that comes consistently is a soul winner. That comes to the service is always released. And you say, why is it so important? Why don't we just bring people to church and you can preach the gospel to them and they can get saved in church? Why is it so important to go out and get them saved and knock the doors? Now I preached a whole sermon on it this Sunday morning, I'm not going to re-preach the sermon. But I'm going to say this, the reason why it's so important for us to go out and knock those doors and win the souls, you say is it just to get people saved? Yes, that's part of it. But you know the greatest thing is that if you went to a church where you just bring people to church and the pastor preaches to them and tries to get them saved, the pastor is going to be the only one who has that joy of soul winning. And that's the title of the sermon, the joy of soul winning. You know 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 saved when I was six years old. 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 worldliness and you know 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 figure it out. 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. 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 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 hadn't. 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 I failed at it. 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. And it was my first time so I invited 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. This girl came to church and somebody wanted a Lord because I invited her. But 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 movies weren'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 out on my way. I'm not getting a lot of people saved. And God began to work in my heart and say 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. 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. 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's the problem. And I started realizing it's all this music and movies and 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 really bad. 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. It was the wrong music. I mean it was just total worldly rock and roll, everything was 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 week night. 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 in the Regency parking lot. I looked up to heaven and I said, God, this stuff means nothing to me compared to getting people saved. I don't need this stuff. I want you to use me God. I want to be maximum for Jesus. And 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. 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 10, 11, 12, 13, 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. He was actually saved. But his kids weren't saved. They were 12, 13, 10 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 had seen very few people saved in my two years of solo. Just a couple people saved. And so this was a big deal to me that just the first door I knocked, here I got a couple people saved. And then the next night they came to church. I think it was a Tuesday night because they came to church on Wednesday night. And the whole family came to church. And the kids got baptized. 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 Jimenez is 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 soloing with us. I had one as my soloing partner and Roger had one as his soloing partner. We'd go soloing for four hours every week. You remember that? We'd have them with us up and down Sayonara Lane, Citrus Heights, in the ghetto. And we went soloing every week with those kids. And you know that's when I believe that was the turning point in my soloing. I'm not kidding. I mean after that I started having a lot of people saved. And me and Brother Jimenez would go out soloing. 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 it. I said I want God to use me to win somebody in the Lord. I mean the whole time I was a teenager. I used to pray and beg God before I went to Regency Baptist and learned how to win souls. I used to pray and beg God if I could win one soul in my life. And if I could just win one person in life with the Lord in my whole life, that would make my life worth living. That would mean that if I died and went to heaven, I could get there and I could have a crown of rejoicing. I could have some joy. I could have some glory in the presence of Jesus Christ. And I'm here to tell you, once you get that taste, are you listening tonight? I'm telling you the truth. Once you get a taste of what it is to be used by God. Once you get a taste of what it is to see somebody who is unsaved and on their way to hell and now they're saved and going to heaven. Once you get a taste of that, what the world has to offer, it's nothing. It's worthless. What do they have to offer? A rock concert. A mosh pit. And to us it seems silly, but when you're out in the world, that is the coolest thing out there, man. Going to that rock concert. Going to the mosh pit. Watching the new movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and all the stars. And it's so fun. I'm going to tell you something. I just don't think it's fun. Now you think it's fun, perhaps, because you don't know what I'm talking about solely. And so you say, well, I still don't know what you're talking about. You're never going to know what I'm talking about. Listen now. You're never going to know what you're talking about until you jump on board with one of us here. I mean, there's plenty of people here who is the soul winner. Get on board with one of us. Come be our silent partner. You go out and watch us win, people of the Lord. You're not going to be content to watch. Because a few months down the road, you're going to say, get out of the way, Brother Anderson. This is my door. And you're going to see your first soul saved and it's going to be unlike anything else in your life. And then when you can see some of the, and you know, it's not everybody you, uh, when the Lord's going to walk in truth. But John said, I love it when my children walk in truth. And you know, when you see somebody that you want to Lord get baptized, join the church, live for God. Watch, maybe they're, maybe they're on the verge of divorce. Watch their marriage put back together. Hey, there's nothing like it in the world. There's nothing like the joy of solar. Jesus said, the joy that I give you, no man take it from you. You can have the world's joy. It's fun tonight and then the next morning. So, but you know, soul winning is something that's a real lasting joy where you can, you can think about those people that you've wanted the Lord and really at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ is coming. That's going to be some joy. And I can't wait. You know what heaven is to me? You want to know what, you know what I think of when I think of heaven? My biggest thought about heaven is yes, I'm going to meet Jesus Christ face to face, but when I think about heaven, I think about meeting everybody that I want the Lord. That's going to be the greatest joy, the crown of glory, the rejoicing, right? But it's only going to be for those who've won souls. And so why do we talk so much about soul winning? Because we want you to grow in your Christian life. And we know that the preaching is great. Church is great. Singing the songs is great. You've got a missing piece to the puzzle. If you're not outsold, you're missing a big part of it. And the biggest thing you're going to miss in your life is joy. Going to church may, you know, eventually going to church is going to get old. You ever see people get excited about church and then it just gets old. Like when you're a soul winner, it never gets old. You know, Christians go through life, they're worldly. You're living a sin. You get tired of hearing preaching on sin. I'm tired of the world's garbage. I'm sick and tired of a bunch of smut and filth on television. I'm sick of being crammed down my throat when I go to the gas station, the grocery store, everywhere I go. Everybody's just trying to show me a bunch of naked bodies that are not my wife. You know, they're trying to hurt my marriage. They're trying to mess with my mind. It makes me mad. It makes me sick. But you know what? You'll never take a stand against sin. God's never going to purge the sin out of your life until you bring forth fruit out on the streets. Daily in the temple and in every house, they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. And you go out and bring forth fruit and win people to Christ. That's where God's going to purge the sin out of your life. And I'm going to tell you something. If you don't know the joy of soul winning, you should decide right now, in your heart right now, say, you know what? I don't even know what Brother Anderson's talking about. I'm going to find out what I'm talking about. And on Sunday after church, I'm going to grab a sandwich. I'm going to grab the croissants that they have. I'm going to grab a glass of orange juice. I'm going to eat the light lunch that's provided after church on Sunday mornings. I'm going to hop in the car. And who knows what's going to happen. But Brother Anderson talks about it every week. Let's just do it. You know, let's go win souls. And you know, those of you that don't know, let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls. Let's go win souls.