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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Gary Gibbs: Winsome Witnessing

Gary Gibbs

Winsome Witnessing, Part 1

Father in heaven, we do want to thank you now that we can come, and I just want to ask, Father, that you'll bless as we open your word, as we study together, that you'll give us your spirit, and may we sense that when we leave this place tonight we ask in Christ's name, Amen.

I'm a convert to Adventism, convert to Christianity as well I might add.

I was 17 years old and I was well in the world.

I wasn't a member of any other church, but I was interested, I was seeking, I was looking for Bible truth.

And it was a time in, it was 1979, so I can tell you how old I am if you can do higher math real quickly, but in 1979 we would wait in mile-long lines to buy gasoline.

Some of you were born in 79, I know, but mile-long lines to get gasoline.

And I think there's kind of a parallel in our day today, not with the gasoline lines yet, it's just what they're charging us.

But you know with with the turmoil in the world, there was turmoil in the world back then, especially in the Middle East.

You see that today, and all the storms and the chaos that we have today.

And what that does is that stirs up people, and they start thinking, what's happening in our world?

And if you listen to people, that is the conversation now.

Why are we having so many catastrophes and why has nature gone berserk and why do we have all these problems right now?

And some people would like to blame it all on George Bush and I'm sure he has his finger in it somewhere along the line, but I don't think he can control the weather and as much as he tries to settle Middle East conflicts, he's not going to settle that 1 either because the Bible says they'll be fighting until Jesus comes.

But back then I was searching and I was thankful the Lord brought me to him and he brought me to him through a series of meetings that the Adventist Church sponsored, an evangelistic series of meetings.

And of course as a new convert I was all excited about what I was learning and I had to go out and tell everybody.

And you know 1 of the first things you tell everybody is the Sabbath is on Saturday and then you know what the second thing is you tell everybody?

Hope we don't have any Catholics here, sorry if we do.

And then the third thing, you know what the third thing is you tell everybody he's a new convert?

The mark of the beast is Sunday and everybody's going to hell who goes to church on Sunday.

Well that's not winsome witnessing and I found that out very quickly.

It took years to undo some of the damage I did but you know it was this type of witnessing.

This gentleman's out in the local shopping mall witnessing.

He says, sir, while your wife finishes her shopping, perhaps you would like to get ready to die.

And sometimes that is our method of witnessing.

You know, we're telling people, you know, get ready now or you're going to die.

You're going to get the 7 last plagues or you'll get the mark of the beast.

He says, that man looks like he needs a track.

And this guy's over there smoking and drinking his beer, thinking shallow thoughts, you see.

The guy jumps up, bonzai, and lands on him.

Believe or die, believe or die, and he wrestles him to the ground.

The guy fights his way free and runs off and the guy is still shouting, you must believe!

But I like the bottom line here, he says, well at least I sowed some seeds.

You know there is a way to witness that is winsome, and it will win some to Christ.

But there's another way to witness that I believe is actually inspired by the devil himself.

And I think it's mentioned right here in Acts 16.

Remember the demon possessed young lady that followed Paul, and I believe Silas, along behind them?

And she said this, these men are the servants of the Most High God which show unto us the way of salvation.

Now let me ask you a question, is there anything wrong with what she said?

Nothing wrong, she said these men are the servants of the Most High God which show to us the way of salvation.

Now think about it, back there in Paul's day, you couldn't send out handbills to advertise your meetings.

You couldn't buy television ads, newspaper ads, billboard space.

This lady following along who had a reputation in town as being someone connected to the gods, and it was not a foreign god to these people, it was the type of god that they worshipped.

And so she's got instant credibility and she's going along and she's saying, hey, these are people from God and they're going to show us truth.

They're going to show us the way of salvation and you'd think you would want that.

I know as an Adventist evangelist and preacher, if I went into town and the pastor of the largest non-Adventist church in town got up in his pulpit and said, you've got to go hear that guy over there, he's gonna show us the way of salvation.

I'd like that, that's gonna bring me a crowd.

Even though there was nothing wrong with what she said.

But Paul being grieved, turned and said to the Spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And he came out the same hour." There was a demon in her, wasn't it?

So her witness was a negative witness because God did not want Paul and his message to be associated with this demon-possessed young lady.

It didn't matter if she said the right thing.

Her influence and who she was was all wrong.

And even though she said the right thing, it would all lend itself to a wrong witness.

Volume 4 of the testimony says this, the manner in which truth is presented often has much to do in determining whether it will be accepted or rejected.

You see, she didn't talk about what you say, she said what?

The manner in which you present truth often determines whether it's going to be accepted or rejected.

Now, I've met people that I know, and I have done this myself, where my manner was not right.

But some people make that their whole method of evangelism, to go browbeating people over their head with the truth.

I know none of you would do that, would you?

In fact, Winsome Witnessing actually grew out of a church that I pastored, and it grew out of a lot of experiences, but some of my best illustrations come out of a church I pastored where the conference president told me, he said, you know, you pastor this church here, you do well here, you can do anything.

I did not have a clue what he was saying.

What he was saying is this church eats pastors for breakfast and spits them out.

I was new and young and that's what he was saying.

He was saying, if you survive here, you'll do anything.

Because it was spitting pastors out every 2 years and had been for about 30 years.

In fact, we had a reunion of pastors and none of the guys wanted to come back.

They'd ask me, they'd say, well so-and-so there?

They still doing what they were doing back when I was there?

Yeah, well yeah, they're still doing that today.

This describes 1 of our dear members in that church.

Winsome Witnessing, Part 2

About Hope Channel a little bit more later.

Let me ask this, how many of you were not here last night?

Shame on you, what were you doing last night?

We actually started last night, this morning I preached a regular sermon that's not connected to Winsome Witnessing, so you really didn't miss a whole lot last night except the foundation of Winsome Witnessing.

But here it is, let me give it to you in a nutshell.

When I became an Adventist Christian, and let me ask another question, and be honest with me, you wouldn't be anything other than that.

How many of you are Seventh-day Adventists, members of Seventh-day Adventist Church?

How many of you are not members of Seventh-day Adventist Church?

That helps me because then I know some terminology.

I grew up in a, half my childhood was spent in a Baptist family.

And then the other half of my childhood, which my wife says I'm still in, but actually I'm not, but the other half of my childhood was nothing.

We didn't go to church and I was anything but a Christian.

And then I encountered Seventh-day Adventists as I began studying Bible prophecy.

I was very interested in what was going to happen in our world.

And that was 1979, I had just graduated from high school, 17 years old.

You don't have to do the math, I'll be 44 years old very shortly, so I did that for you.

But at 17 I was studying the word of God to understand what's happening in the world.

79 was a very tumultuous period, you had hostages overseas, you had a mile to get gas.

I had a motorcycle so I'd bypass them all and fill up that way.

But anyway, I think it's very similar today.

We don't have the mile-long gas lines, you just have to bring your wheel barrel full of money to the pump and then you're okay.

Because when I first became a Christian I was so excited about everything I'd learned, I went out and I started telling everybody everything I had learned without them asking.

In fact, I'll share with you in a minute, in just a very short second here, what I was doing.

What I discovered later though as I matured in my Christian walk is that if you're going to win some people to Christ, you need to present Jesus' message in the same way that Jesus would do it, in a winsome manner.

And so that's basically the foundation that we laid last night.

But before we begin today, let's bow our heads and ask God's Spirit to be with us.

Father in heaven, we do want to thank you for your love, your grace, the salvation that you've provided through your Son, Jesus Christ.

And as we come here together this afternoon, Lord, we want to pray for your Spirit to be with us, that you'll bless us, quicken our minds and our hearts, and teach us.

I pray, Father, you'll give me the words and the say that will be practical and useful for us here gathered today.

Now what I'm going to share with you today can be applied to any faith community but because we're, I'm coming from a Seventh-day Adventist background and most of you are Seventh-day Adventists, I'm really going to be talking using Seventh-day Adventist illustrations and that type of thing but yeah, I've presented this seminar in other situations with other people, denominational backgrounds and the same principles apply but if you'll indulge me on that I'd appreciate it.

Here we're going to skip through that, I'm going to come back to that.

This is it, winning them without killing them.

Unfortunately, nobody told me that when I first became a Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

And I spent the second part of my childhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

And when I became a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, my stepfather, with whom I was still living, he was a lapsed Catholic, a very lapsed Catholic.

So far lapsed that he was an alcoholic, never attended Mass, and he had a number of personal issues going on.

Well, I wanted to win my lapsed Catholic stepfather to Christ, and all these new truths I'd been learning in the Scripture I thought were the perfect thing to help him.

You know, Daniel 7 is very interesting for a lapsed Catholic when you get into the little horn and the power there in Revelation 13.

And so I proceeded to share that with my Catholic stepfather.

He didn't find it as intriguing as I found it.

I had to pull out the big guns, those were the small guns, I had to pull out the big guns.

And I figured my stepfather, his real name's Harry, in my book Winsome Witnessing, I think I gave him another name to protect the innocent, me that is, to protect me in case he ever reads the book.

But I wanted to help Harry and I figured Harry's going to be 1 of those people that accepts Christ like at the last moment, you know, the last few minutes of mercy.

You know, hopefully it all comes together for him.

And so I thought, well, the way to tell him that is I've got to get into prophecy and I've got to show him what's going to happen in the last few moments of time, you know, when the Antichrist powers are deceiving people and all this.

So Harry and I were seated in the living room, my mother was there, and I was trying to win my alcoholic stepfather, whom I didn't really grow up with.

My mother married him right before I left the house, thank God.

I had a hard time in the beginning to get along with, which you'll shortly see, and no small part due to my faith in Christ.

So I was witnessing to Harry and I said, you know, Harry, what's going to happen here in the end time is religious leaders, and in fact the leader of your church, the Pope, is going to play a very important, crucial role in this, they're going to deceive the world.

And I had a little, I had it kind of wrong in Revelation 13.

I say, you know, they're gonna call fire down from God out of heaven.

And so as Christians, whether we're Catholic, Baptist, Adventist, whatever, we need not to follow man, we need to follow God, right?

You know, even in the Adventist church you can make that mistake.

You follow leaders instead of following the leader, Jesus Christ.

And so we were talking about this and talking about how it's all going to come together in the end.

And when I told him this, that he'd call down fire from God out of heaven, Revelation 13, I have a little different understanding of that today, but he said, you know what, if I see anybody call fire down from God out of heaven, I'm going to go up and shake his hand and tell him you must be from God." Well, he totally missed the point.

I said, wait a minute, that's not the point.

What are you, some type of idiot or something?

Now here I was witnessing to him, you see.

Nobody told me about winsome part of witnessing.

I was just going to hammer the truth home.

Well we got into a very, very heated argument.

And I'm actually ashamed to say we started threatening each other's lives.

Now I don't know who started that, me or him, but I'm the 1 with the new shotgun that said I'll go get my shotgun and kill you if you're going to be that stupid.

I don't know how you get to that other than eating all the hot pepper sauce that we used to eat back in Louisiana.

Joe, be careful, I know you're Texan, you need to be careful with that hot pepper sauce.

My mother pried us apart and said, go to your room.

And when I went to my room conviction came over me the Holy Spirit just came in and you know I've never heard God's voice audibly, but I heard his voice.

I heard his voice and he was telling me you were wrong You are the Christian.

Winsome Witnessing, Part 3

Well let's continue here and let's bow our heads for another word of prayer.

Father in heaven in our last session here we want to pray for your spirit to be with us that you'll guide our thinking and that you'll bless us that we might utilize the concepts we're learning here to win someone to you in Christ's name.

Joe, I'm sorry I forgot I've got something for you.

I want to give you a Hope Channel pin, and then if you'd like to keep up with the ministry of Hope Channel, just raise your hand And Joe will give you a card and then you can fill it out and give me the card back.

And we'll send you our newsletter and if you'll pray for us we would appreciate that.

You realize that what I'm presenting to you here is actually a 13-hour course at the Amazing Facts College of Evangelism.

It takes me usually about 13 hours to do this.

You're not going to get all 13 hours so you can relax.

You're going to get just what we can present in the next hour.

We do have this on DVD and we also have it in book form.

But let's talk about following frozen churches.

I think 1 of the most important aspects of winning someone is having a truly friendly church community to which to bring them.

Now I believe that this group here, the Advent Hope group, what I've experienced thus far, it's a friendly, warm, inviting environment.

Have you ever been to a cold Adventist church?

I'm not talking about the temperature gauge on the wall either.

You go in, nobody talks to you, they don't know how to do church.

Cold unfriendly churches are like the person with bad breath.

They're the only 1 who doesn't know, they're the only 1 who doesn't know that they have a problem.

You see, I had a church that was a very cold, unfriendly church, and I had some people that I was bringing to church who said, you know, your church is not that friendly.

And when I went through my board and I said, you know, we need to be friendlier, they said, what do you mean we need to be friendlier?

And as I started watching the dynamic, what I discovered is they were friendly.

They knew each other, they loved each other, and they were friendly.

But a stranger would come in, and if the stranger came in, they just ignored him and acted like he or she didn't even exist.

And I learned this in a very personal way when I invited a gentleman to attend church with whom I'd been studying for quite a while.

Tim was a successful businessman in town.

He belonged to a church just south of the city, a very influential church.

It was a church where the President of the United States at that time would go and attend church occasionally.

And Tim was the equivalent of an elder in his church.

So he was a leader in this very large influential church in town.

He came to some meetings I was holding, some prophecy seminars in our city.

He came, he could only come a few nights and he stopped coming, but I got acquainted with him that little bit of time.

While the meetings were just completing, I was walking through the downtown section and I met Tim on the street.

And we talked a little bit and he said, yeah, I'd love to come.

I'd love to learn what you're sharing there, but I don't have time.

I run my own business and I just haven't had time.

So I said, well, Tim, would you like to get together for lunch sometime?

And by the way, This is 1 of the best ways to begin witnessing, is just go out and do lunch with someone.

You know, Jesus says in Revelation 3 that when we get to heaven, he's going to sit down and dine with us.

There's no better way to witness to somebody I don't believe than just getting together and start eating together.

So I said, Tim, would you like to get together for lunch sometime?

I'd like to get better acquainted with you.

I'd like to learn more about you and maybe I can share some of the things that we've been doing in these meetings.

So we got to lunch, and out of that lunch, we began getting together for Bible studies and we were studying every week.

And we got to the point where Tim became convicted of the Sabbath, but Tim wouldn't take a stand for the Sabbath.

And I'm going to tell you this story now because I don't think I'll get to the place where I talk about this later in the seminar.

But he was racing cars on the Sabbath and 1 day as I was talking to Tim, I said, Tim, what is your goal, what are your goals for your life and especially for your walk with God." And he thought, he said, man, that's a good question, that's a profound question.

And he thought for a moment, he said, I'll tell you what, my goal is to be everything God wants me to be.

Whatever God has in mind for me, I want to cooperate with that and I want to be that." And I said, wow, that's a great answer.

I said, Tim, if your goal is to be everything God wants you to be and to follow Him in everything that He wants you to do, then why in the world are you breaking the Sabbath every week?

Now I talked to you earlier about winsome witnessing.

Let me tell you why I was able to say it that way because Tim and I had become like this, we'd become friends.

And he knew that my objective was to help him fulfill his goals.

You see, I asked him what his goals were.

And when he said, this is my goal, and I had already established that he had told me, I believe the Sabbath is Saturday, and I believe God wants me to do it, then it was very easy for me as a friend to say, well how are you ever going to get here when you're over here?

When I told him this, he said, what do you mean?

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Gary Gibbs: Winsome Witnessing

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