Join us now for the chapel hour coming
to you from the campus of Bob Jones
University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Our speaker today is Dr. Morris Gleiser, staff
evangelist for Burge Terrace Baptist Church in Indianapolis,
Indiana.
The title of his message is, The Need
of Our Needy World.
The text is from John chapter 5, verses
1 through 8.
John chapter 5 this morning, young people.
Great to see you again.
Day two of our time together as we
are looking at issues regarding this matter of
telling others about Christ.
And I look forward to continuing to discuss
with you and challenge you and hopefully do
some instructing to you that even this morning
regarding this matter of being the kind of
effective witness we really need to be.
Appreciate the opportunity.
I had to talk with several of you
yesterday and fellowship with you.
And I noticed almost consistently across the board,
everyone I spoke with, there's a little sense
of weariness physically.
Obviously, you sense the rounding of the bend
and coming to the end of this first
semester.
You've got a lot on your plate.
You've got a lot on your mind.
And that's good.
It's always good for us to face these
responsibilities.
And I just sense always a need to
ask you as you come in here, please
put aside all the thoughts of the pressures
of the hour and the pressures of these
remaining days of first semester and allow the
Lord and the Spirit of God to do
a work in your heart.
Collect your thoughts, how they want to run
away from you, how they want to take
off and think about other issues and things
that have to be done.
Allow yourself to hear from the Word of
God.
You've been doing it every day.
You come to chapel all the time during
the school year.
And as the week progresses, I'm convinced that
the Spirit of God wants to do a
work in each one of our hearts.
I said to you yesterday, Morris Gleiser is
sitting in this crowd and I am being
from the Word of God encouraged and challenged
and guided my own life.
As I speak to you on this issue
of telling others of Christ, may God help
each one of us to grab these fugitive
thoughts of ours and bring it into captivity
and focus on the Word of God.
So give me just a few minutes of
your time.
This morning, I want to speak to you
as I did yesterday and try to challenge
again and do a little bit of motivation
to urge you on and to encourage you
and exhort you to go forth in this
area of witnessing.
But I'd like to do a little, even
some more instruction with you this morning.
That's what this week's all about, a little
bit of both.
And I want to do what I can
today to help equip you and instruct you.
I found that most young people that I've
come in contact with and surroundings like this,
many times it's not further education that you
need.
It's more exhortation to get with it.
Now, I understand somebody and maybe several somebodies
in the crowd here today really has never
been instructed and taught as to how to
win somebody to Christ.
Well, I sure would like to be a
help to you.
And I won't give you step-by-step
and detailed account ways in which you ought
to witness.
I'd love to help you and you can
get further instruction.
Maybe we can talk later if you'd like
to.
But I would imagine many of you have
been instructed and have been told many ways
in which to tell others about Christ.
It's just important that you get a fresh
new vision of getting with it and get
going and doing what you know you need
to do.
I want to take you back to a
passage of time in which the Lord Jesus
was walking on this earth.
I love the Gospel of John and in
chapter 5, we read about the time in
which Jesus came back to the city of
Jerusalem.
And I want you to notice something probably
you've seen before.
Maybe you've heard taught before and preached to
you many times before, but let's go back
and walk across this familiar ground once again.
Beginning in verse 1 of John chapter 5,
the Bible says, after this there was a
feast of the Jews and Jesus went up
to Jerusalem.
Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep
market or the sheep gate a pool which
is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having
five porches, five pavilioned areas in which these
sickly people sat.
Verse 3 says, in these lay a great
multitude of very sick, impotent folk of blind,
halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the
water.
For an angel went down at a certain
season into the pool and troubled the water.
Whosoever then first after the troubling of the
water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever
disease he had.
And a certain man was there which had
an infirmity thirty and eight years.
When Jesus saw him lie and knew that
he had been now a long time in
that case, he saith unto him, wilt thou
be made whole?
The impotent man answered, Sir, I have no
man when the water is troubled to put
me into the pool.
But while I'm coming, another step down before
me.
Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy
bed and walk.
Lord said, Would you like to be made
whole?
And he said, Sir, I really would.
I need someone to help me.
I have no man.
I have no one to help me.
Scholars and commentators disagree and argue and somewhat
fuss about what this all meant, about this
pool of water that would be troubled at
certain times of the year.
And I don't want to get into the
details of all the different various teachings about
that particular passage.
The point is, here was a man who
was in need of some help.
And all he recognized in his own life
was a need for some physical help.
He had an infirmity that needed to be
helped.
And this man represents the need of our
needy world.
He represents the crowd of which we walk
and come in contact with day after day
after day.
A needy world.
And Jesus spotted him and spoke to him.
And he said, Would you like to be
changed?
Would you like to get help?
And this man said, I really would, but
I have no man to help me.
An elderly couple were driving in the state
of Louisiana, down in South Louisiana several years
ago.
They were just taking a leisurely country evening,
cool evening drive together, this man and his
wife.
While driving down this forsaken, somewhat left alone
country road, they drove until the shades of
the early evening were beginning to come across
the trees of that forested area.
And finally they decided they had driven along
together that far long enough and they decided
to turn around.
The man took his car and just made
a three-point turn there in the middle
of that old country road.
And as he did, the headlights of his
car went up into the trees of that
forested area.
And he saw something reflect white from up
there in the trees.
He looked at his wife and he said,
Did you see that?
And she said, Yeah, what was that?
He said, I don't know.
And they tried once again to get the
headlights to go up into the trees.
And once again, they could see something reflecting
from up there in the midst of the
forest.
They couldn't figure out what it was.
So he pulled the car over.
It was still somewhat light, but he grabbed
a flashlight out of the glove compartment.
The two of them walked up into the
trees and they found what they had seen.
Hanging from the limb of some giant oak
tree down in South Louisiana, tied to the
top of that oak tree, that limb was
a white bed sheet and coming straight down
and tied to the other end was the
body of a teenage boy who had hung
himself.
And that boy had a note up on
his clothing.
And here's what the note said.
Dear Mom and Dad, what frustrated me most
in this last year was that I have
built no ties to family or friends.
There has been nothing of lasting worth and
value in my life.
I led a detached existence.
I am a balm of frustration and I
should never marry nor ever have children.
It is safest to diffuse this bomb harmlessly
now.
Simply cremate me as John Doe.
He said, I've made no ties to family
or friends.
Every time I think about that teenage boy
hanging from some limb, I wonder how many
Christians knew that boy.
I wonder how many people he walked by
that had gospel tracts in their purse or
in their pocket, but they never gave him
one.
I wonder how many stores he walked into
after getting off his bicycle or getting out
of a car or taking a walk from
his local house.
I wonder how many parks he walked into
the presence of other young people who knew
Christ, who never invited him to church, never
invited him to know more about their Savior.
I wonder how many people really knew the
boy and yet never really saw him.
I'm not much into stats.
I'm really not.
I don't follow them much, but occasionally I
run across some that grab my attention.
And stats can be nothing more than just
empty numbers that I throw out at you
here this morning.
But I want you to listen to a
couple of things.
Young people hear me.
Did you know that in America today there
are 70 million individuals in America that are
under the age of 18?
Most of us understand that people who come
to know Christ for the most part usually
do so before the age of 18.
There are 70 million individuals under the age
of 18 in America today.
One out of three teenagers will consider suicide
this week.
And one out of seven will succeed.
Now that's just a number to you.
Let me be more specific.
Somewhere between 90 to 100 teenagers will take
their life this week in America.
Over 200 teenagers will die in car wrecks
in America this week.
And yet we don't read about that in
newspapers.
We don't hear about it that often, but
it's a happening.
It's happening every single day of our life.
It's occurring around us.
And yet we busily, quickly run through our
daily path and we never see people without
Christ.
Oh, we see young people with their strange
clothes.
We see them with their strange hairdos and
the spiked look.
And we see the body piercing.
And we're so repulsed by it that we
revolt away from it.
We get away from people with safety pins
in their eyelids.
There's nothing safe about that.
And something stuck in their tongue, some old
earring, some stud hanging in their tongue.
And I'm thinking to myself, how do they
eat?
One of the most important things of life
is eating.
How do you do that with that in
your tongue?
Why do you do that?
I wonder sometimes.
You see young people walking around with their
dark clothes, with some gang attire.
You see them in the mall.
You see them hovering around with their little
flock of friends.
And they all look alike.
They all dress alike.
Their makeup is alike.
Their hair is alike.
And you almost walk away and say, boy,
what strange people.
And we see them in that condition.
And listen to me, we don't see them
desperately in need of hope.
So often we'll see them in a strange
attire, but we don't see that they're looking
for a family.
They're looking for somebody who cares for them.
They're looking for somebody who will help them
find something that will fill that emptiness on
the inside, that will satisfy that longing inside
their own heart.
They're looking for it.
This paralyzed man sitting in a porch at
the pool of Bethesda in the midst of
a great crowd of people, Jesus walks straight
up to.
And here's a mark of the grace of
God.
Jesus walks right up to him and he
says, sir, in the midst of this crowd,
in the midst of all these people, do
you want to be healed?
Would you like to be made whole?
And he said, I sure would.
But I don't have anybody that could help
me.
What he did not know was the one
who could help him was standing there talking
to him.
Jesus had the ability to know who it
was that needed help.
And so frequently you and I, we don't
know who's searching so much.
We don't know who may be longing for
help at that very moment.
But our God knows and he knows where
they are.
And when we are available, listen to me,
he will put us in contact with those
very ones who are searching, who are saying,
I just need somebody to help me.
As Thomas said in Psalm 142, in verse
4, he said, I looked on my right
hand and beheld, but there was no man
that would know me.
Refuge failed me.
No man cared for my soul.
You know, people, let me tell you what
it is that you need, what this world
needs and what we need to help this
world that is in such need.
Let me give you two things quickly and
I'll be done.
Here are things you need to give to
this needy world that's in desperate need of
hope this morning.
First of all, we need spiritual eyesight.
We need to get to the point to
where we see what the Lord sees.
We need spiritual eyes, spiritual eyesight.
The first verse of John chapter 5 says
that Jesus was going to Jerusalem because there
was a feast going on there.
It had to be one of three feasts.
It was either the Feast of Passover, it
was the Pentecost, or maybe the Feast of
Tabernacles.
It was one of those three feasts.
The point is, hear me now, the streets
of Jerusalem, those little narrow streets were packed
and jammed with people.
They were packed with people, and especially men.
There was so much noise of laughter and
there was noise of conversation and there was
the talk of people interacting with one another
and people running into each other.
There was partying.
There was laughter.
There was eating.
And there was a fellowship of people who
got together in Jerusalem for one of these
three feasts.
It was the most crowded time in that
city.
And yet, here's a man who said, no
man sees me.
The streets are packed, but no man sees
me.
They're coming and they're going and I hear
them talking and they're having fun and they're
laughing and they're having their fellowship, but I
have no man.
They don't see me.
They're too busy.
They're too involved with friends.
They're too involved with family.
They're too involved with their responsibilities.
They don't see me.
May I remind each one here in this
room today that you need to get to
the point to where every day of your
life you say, dear God, put souls in
my eyes.
When I was here as a student, I'd
sometimes read a sermon.
I'd go to the library and read a
sermon that Charles Spurgeon had preached.
And I remember sometimes scratching my head and
say to myself, what did he say?
I'd read a couple of paragraphs and I'd
back off and say, no, wait a minute.
I'm not sure I can comprehend this guy.
What a brilliant man.
What a brilliant mind Charles Spurgeon was.
And I'd read those sermons and I'd say
to myself, am I sure I want to
enter the ministry?
There's no way I could ever do anything
like this.
And it's obvious I don't.
But as I'd read through those sermons, I'd
think, boy, what a brilliant man.
What a brilliant mind.
You know, one of the most brilliant statements
Charles Spurgeon ever said?
Here it was.
He said, I pray every day, Lord, put
souls on my eyeballs.
There's brilliance.
The man said at the pool of Bethesda,
yes, I need help.
Yes, I need someone to help me, but
nobody sees me.
I've been sitting here for 38 years, but
no one sees me.
Young people, do you ever see anyone else?
Do you ever see anyone else but your
own little group of friends?
Do you ever see anyone else except your
own needs and your own responsibilities?
Are your eyes ever open to see people
around you who are without Christ?
You say, yeah, occasionally when I go out
with my extension, I see souls.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
We're talking about every single day.
We're talking about every place you go.
We're talking about when you're sitting at a
restaurant.
We're talking about when you walk up to
a convenience store.
We're talking about when you, when you drive
through, uh, some, uh, a drive-through window
on the way home.
We're talking about at a gas station.
We're talking about everywhere.
You go souls that you see opened eyes.
I'll tell you what you need.
You need spiritual eyesight.
We all need it.
We need to get to the point like
Peter and John who were walking inside the
temple in Acts chapter three and a beggar
man was reaching up and saying, I need
arms.
I need help.
I'm a poor man.
Can you help me?
And the Bible says in Acts chapter three
that Peter and John looked at him and
they said, we do not have silver and
we do not have gold.
And everybody in this room can relate to
that.
Can we not?
I don't have money to give you, but
such as I have, I can give you
and I can help you have a life
that's changed right here.
If you'll listen to me and Peter and
John had spiritual eyesight, Phillip was out in
the desert, wondering why in the world did
God bring me to this desert?
When all of a sudden up drove up
on some caravan of wagons and people coming
from one place to another and he sees
a eunuch searching the scriptures and Phillip says,
I see what I'm supposed to see.
And he said, Hey buddy, do you understand
what you're reading?
And that eunuch said, how can I now
listen, except some man should guide me.
I have no man.
And Phillip said, scoot over pal, I'll help
you.
And he preached to him, Jesus, spiritual eyesight.
I was preaching in California about five years
ago at a camp, Christian camp.
And I suppose it was like Thursday of
the week.
And I had tried to meet all the
young people and then tried to get to
know them all.
But as I was leaving one night, I
think it was a Thursday night service.
I was walking out.
And as I did, I saw about three
or four boys sitting off to the side.
I went over and I said, Hey guys,
have I met all of you?
And I shook their hands and I saw
one boy that was sitting down and he
wouldn't even look at me.
He was staring straight ahead.
It was almost like he was in a
daze.
Finally, after I said hello to the other
guys, I sat down and I said, Hey,
I said, I said, have I met you?
And he turned and looked at me and
young people, tears were in his eyes.
He said, no.
I said, Hey, what's your name?
He said, my name is Alejandro.
I said, Alejandro, I said, where do you
live?
He said, I'm from Oakland.
He said, I said, it's nice to meet
you.
I said, Alejandro, what's bothering you, buddy?
What's the matter?
Young people, he looked at me and he
said one thing over and over again.
He said, they're going to hell.
They're going to hell.
I said, who's going to hell?
He said, my cousins.
He almost looked at me like, don't you
know?
And of course I didn't, but that's all
he could think about.
He said, they're going to hell.
My four cousins.
I said, where do they live?
Alejandro.
He said, oh, they live there in Oakland
where I live.
They live near me.
I said, Alejandro, God's put them on your
heart.
I said, you need to go home and
tell them about the Lord.
He said, no, no.
He said, they won't listen to me.
There's no way.
I said, Alejandro, God's put them on your
heart.
You need to go tell him.
He said, would you pray for me?
I said, I sure will.
I put my arm around him and I
said, now, Lord, help Alejandro.
He's got four cousins without Christ.
He says they're religious, but they don't know
Christ.
I said, Lord, help them to come to
know Christ and give him the courage to
say what he needs to say.
And I left it at that.
I prayed for him.
Young people, it was two years later, two
years passed, I was back out at the
camp.
Back there in California, I was preaching again
and I was re-meeting some of the
folks I'd met in the two years prior
time.
And I was finishing a service and after
the service was over with, I was walking
out and I saw a group of boys
sitting around talking.
I went over and introduced myself to them
and I noticed a boy sitting there staring
off again.
I sat down and I said, hey, I
said, have I met you before?
And he nodded his head, yes.
I said, did we meet last time?
He said, yes.
I said, give me your name again, buddy.
I said, I don't remember you.
And he said, my name's Alejandro.
I said, yeah.
I said, I remember you.
I said, sure.
I said, I remember us talking last time,
but I don't remember what it was about.
I said, Alejandro, what's bothering you, buddy?
He looked at me and he had those
same tears that I'd seen two years earlier.
He looked at me and he said, he's
going to hell.
He's going to hell.
I said, Alejandro, who's going to hell?
He said, my cousin.
He said, I got a 16-year-old
cousin.
He won't get saved.
I said, Alejandro, where does your cousin live?
He said, he lives near me, just around
the corner from my house.
I said, have you ever told him about
the Lord?
He said, sure, I tried, but he won't
listen to me.
I said, Alejandro, you need to go back
home and tell him.
I said, who else is going to tell
him if you don't do it?
He said, he won't listen.
I said, brother, I said, he will listen.
You need to trust the Lord.
He can use you.
He's putting him on your heart.
He's put him in your own mind.
Alejandro said, would you pray for me?
I put my arm around him and I
was about to pray, young people.
And just before I started, I said, Alejandro,
did we have this conversation before?
I said, man, this sounds familiar.
He said, yes, you prayed last time.
I said, well, I thought so.
I said, good, thank you.
I put my arm back and I started
to pray again.
I said, wait a minute, didn't you have
more than one cousin that you were praying
for?
He looked up and he said, yes, I
had four.
He dropped his head.
I said, well, what happened to the other
three, man?
I said, aren't you burdened about them?
And he said, he looked up, put a
smile on his face.
He said, oh, they're saved now.
He said, I was able to tell them
about the Lord.
They got saved.
I said, oh, Alejandro, may God help you
to keep that burden for souls.
Do you have anybody on your heart?
You have any souls in your spiritual eyesight?
You have anybody that you're thinking they're going
to hell?
They're going to hell.
Souls on your heart, souls in your eyes.
Not only do you need spiritual eyesight, but
number two, young people, we need spiritual equipment.
The Lord Jesus had exactly what this sickly
man needed.
And young people don't miss this truth.
You need what Jesus had.
What did He have?
He had His own Word.
Let me give you three things that I
want to quickly say to you.
You need a spiritual equipment as you head
home over the holidays, and even before you
go home and for the rest of your
life, here's the equipment that you need.
Now, for some of you, this is nothing
more than a reminder.
For many others of you, this is something
that maybe you need to learn for the
first time.
I don't know where you may be personally,
but we need, first of all, the Word
of God.
When we come to this matter of telling
somebody about Jesus Christ, don't depend upon some
creative personality trait about yourself.
Don't depend upon some gimmick of some creative
way in which to get somebody.
Don't get caught up in just methods.
Use the Word of God.
This is a sword.
Oh, how many times have I seen somebody's
life changed because of just a message from
God's Word?
Just from the expression of the quoting of
Scripture.
Just letting them see the Word of God.
It penetrated their heart and they saw their
need.
Use the Word of God, young people.
Jesus said, do you want to be made
whole?
Do you want your life changed?
And the man said, I sure do, but
I need somebody to help me.
He used the Word.
The Lord Himself was the Word.
He said, rise, stand up, take up your
bed, and start walking.
I'm going to tell you something.
The very Word of God can change somebody's
life.
Use the Word of God.
You say, Brother Gleiser, what Scripture should I
use?
Oh, there are so many passages.
You can almost turn to any passage in
the Word of God and find your way
to the cross of Calvary.
But you can use passages out of the
book of Romans.
Romans 3.10, Romans 3.23, Romans 5
.8, Romans 5.12, Romans 6.23, Romans
10.9, Romans 10.13. You can read
to them 1 John 5, verses 11-13.
I love that.
I use that frequently.
1 John 5, verses 11-13.
A powerful passage that tells us we can
know that we have eternal life.
You can turn to John 3 and tell
them about the Lord and about being born
again.
You can take them to all sorts of
passages and tell them about Jesus Christ.
I say to you, just turn the Bible
loose.
Use the Word of God.
Use Scripture.
But number two, you need the equipment of
prayer.
May I say to you, young people, don't
be guilty of just depending upon your own
creative ability and personality.
You need to pray for God to use
you.
Listen to me.
The Apostle Paul said to people all the
time in his epistles, he said, Pray for
me that an open door of utterance will
be given to me that I may make
the gospel clear.
Pray, young people.
Start praying right now.
Are you listening?
Start praying right now for the Lord to
open up doors for you when you go
home, as you drive home.
There ought not be a gas station.
There ought not be a fast food place.
There ought not be a place between here
and wherever you live that doesn't get a
gospel tract.
Give them the Scriptures and pray for God
to use you.
Does God use tracts?
He sure does.
He uses them all the time.
He uses His Word.
Get your hands on some good gospel tracts
and hand them out everywhere you go.
Souls on your eyeballs, use the equipment of
God's Word and pray.
And number three, you need the equipment, and
forgive me for using that word.
I'm just using it as a tool to
express what I need to say.
We need the power of the Holy Spirit.
If you depend upon your personality, young people,
you'll only get what your personality can give
you.
If you depend upon your intelligence, you'll only
get what your intelligence can give you.
Young people, if you depend upon money, you'll
only get what money can do.
If you depend upon your creative charm, you
depend upon your wit and your humor, you'll
only get what those things can give you,
and they'll only last so far.
But you hear me, you depend upon the
power of the Holy Spirit, and you'll get
what God can do.
The Lord Jesus started His ministry with the
anointing of the Holy Spirit upon His life.
In Acts 11 and verse 21, the Bible
says of the people of Antioch, the hand
of the Lord was upon them, listen, the
hand of the Lord was upon them, and
a great number believed and turned unto the
Lord.
What in the world would happen if every
young person in this school, if everybody under
the sound of my voice right now would
go home under the influence and the power
and the dynamic anointing of the Spirit of
God what could happen?
But ye shall receive power after that the
Holy Ghost has come upon you.
You say, I don't know what to say.
Get the power of God upon your life.
He'll tell you what to say.
You say, I don't know what verses to
use.
Have the hand of God upon your life.
He'll show you what passages to use.
I don't know where people are that need
to be saved.
You ask God to anoint you and guide
you, and He'll lead you to people who
need to be saved.
We need spiritual eyesight.
And the equipping of the Holy Spirit in
our life.
I was praying every day of my life
as a teenager, 18 years of age for
the Holy Spirit to come upon me.
I'll tell you something young people, I didn't
even know what I was praying for.
But I was praying for the Holy Spirit
to guide me.
And I was asking for the Holy Spirit
to show me what I ought to do
and to guide my life.
I was, I was just so hungry to
see something of God's anointing upon my life.
I didn't even know what I was asking
for.
I'm just saying, Lord, give me your power.
And one day I was driving around my
little town that I grew up in in
Texas and I drove up to a stoplight.
I looked over and I saw a card
on the floorboard of my car and I
pulled up and I picked it up and
I looked at it and there was a
name of a boy on there that I
didn't recognize.
And I remembered that was a name given
to me by my youth pastor of a
teenager that was from the local high school
who he had written down as a boy
for us as a church youth group to
go out and visit and invite to church.
And my thought was, that needs to be
visited later on.
I need to give that card back to
my youth pastor.
That boy's not been visited yet.
And then it dawned on me, maybe the
Lord wants me to go by and visit
this boy.
And then I tried, I said, no, Lord,
I can't.
No, no, I can't do this.
We always go two by two, and I'm
sure that's in the Bible.
So I'm by myself.
It won't work.
I tried my best to talk myself out
of it.
I picked that card back up and I
said, no, Lord, please.
Now I said, Lord, there's no way.
I said, you know, it's a Friday night.
Lord, he won't even be home.
No teenagers are home on Friday night.
He won't be there.
It won't work.
And I fussed with God.
Finally, I said, OK, I'll tell you what,
Lord, I'll drive by their house.
And if if there's a light on, that'll
tell me somebody's there.
But I said there won't be a light
on.
I'm sure I drove by there.
You thought they were shooting fireworks in her
house or so many lights on the house
is all lit up.
I said, Lord.
OK, I'll do it.
I walked up to the door and I
knocked on the door, a man came the
door and I said, is John at home?
And he said, yes, he is.
Just a second.
Man, he's home.
I can't believe this.
You know, while a boy came around the
corner and he stepped on the front porch
and I said, hi, John, I said, you
don't know me.
I said, let me just tell you why
I'm here.
I said, I'm here because I got your
name from my church youth pastor.
And I said, we're just out inviting teenagers
to come visit our church.
I said, would you like to come go
to church with me about that plane?
I said, would you like to come to
church with me this coming Sunday?
He said, no, Morris, I can't do that.
I said, OK, just thought I'd ask.
I said, before I leave, let me ask
you one more question.
I said, if you died today, do you
know that you'd go to heaven?
He looked at me and he said, no,
I don't know that.
Do you?
I said, yeah.
He said, can you help me?
He said, I was just in my room
thinking about that very thing, wondering what's going
to happen to me in my future if
I die.
Can you help me?
I'm gonna tell you, if there's some way
I could have kicked myself, I would have
done it.
Why in the world was I fussing about
going?
This guy wanted to be saved.
I said, yeah, I can help you.
I took my New Testament.
Long story short, I opened it up.
I took him to some scriptures and young
people.
He bowed his head on his front porch
and accepted Christ as his savior.
I said, John, as I got through, I
said, look, I said, I want you to
come to church with me.
You need to start growing in the Lord.
Can you come to church with me this
Sunday?
And he said, no.
He said, I told you, I can't come.
I said, well, how about next Sunday?
I want you to come with me.
He said, no.
He said, let me tell you, the reason
why I can't come is because he said,
I'm leaving in the morning, Saturday.
He said, I leave in the morning.
He said, I start my freshman year as
a student at Texas A&M University.
He said, that's why I'm home tonight.
I'm packing in my room, getting ready to
leave.
And listen, he said, you were just lucky
that you caught me.
I said, no, John, that wasn't luck.
That was the Lord's leading.
And young people, I drove away from his
home that night and I said, Lord, if
that's what it means to be led and
filled by the Holy Spirit, I want that
the rest of my life.
Young people, as we come to this conclusion
time, there's a world that says, I have
no man.
We need spiritual eyesight and we need spiritual
equipment.
May God help us.
Let's bow our heads for prayer.
I know you're about to rush out the
door, but before you do, take just this
quiet moment and say, dear God, help me.
Help me to see those lost folks.
And give me the words of Scripture and
the power of God.
Father, bless this short to the point message
and may these dear young people see the
potential of helping a lost and needy world.
And may the impact be great, we pray.
Give us your power and your leadership in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you.