Ideas For Evangelism - Way of Life Literature

The power to change one’s life is from God, but thesinner must surrender to God’s working.Dealing with sinners according to repentance is oftenneglected today. There was an Independent Baptistchurch campaign in Maine a few years ago in which thepeople were taught to go house to house and say, “If Iwere to tell you today that you can be saved and go toheaven and you won’t have to change anything, wouldyou be interested?”That is not biblical soul winning or biblical gospelpreaching. That is cheap religious salesmanship.Consider Christ’s dealings with the woman at the well inJohn 4. He faced her squarely with the immorality thathad controlled her life. He also faced the Rich YoungRuler with his sin of self-righteousness and covetousness(Luke 18).This is the way God always deals with people, and this isthe way we must deal with them, too, if we want tofollow the Bible in our gospel work. To preachrepentance means to deal with glaring sins that peopleare holding onto and to tell them plainly that they mustrepent of sinning against God; they must yield their livesto Him; they must change directions; they mustsurrender. God will do a new work in their lives but theymust be ready for that to happen. They must have achange of mind about God and sin that will result in achange of life.It appears that many soul-winning programs try to “slipthe gospel by the sinner” and get him saved before hereally knows what is happening! That is not possible. TheLord Jesus Christ said, “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye194