This workshop will cover the A,B,C’s of personal evangelism and soul winning, how to be an effective communicator and distributer of Biblical truth in a secular and skeptical society. Christian Karlsson will be sharing from his experience of working with the post--‐modern mind in an interactive, practical and relevant discourse.

ASI Scandinavia 2013: Transforming Grace

<p>This workshop will cover the A,B,C’s of personal evangelism and soul winning, how to be an effective communicator and distributer of Biblical truth in a secular and skeptical society. Christian Karlsson will be sharing from his experience of working with the post--‐modern mind in an interactive, practical and relevant discourse.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

ASI Scandinavia

Christian Karlsson

A Heart Reaching For Hearts

I was privileged to be given the subject of personal evangelism.

Now, it's not a very easy topic, I think.

So, I won't be telling you exactly how to do it.

I won't be telling you this is the facts.

I'll be telling some of what I've learned from studying the Bible, from studying the spirit of prophecy.

And I think it would be very helpful, practical things.

So first, let me tell you quickly about a little bit of who I am.

There's something wrong with the date there.

My name is Christian, which is an appropriate name for a Christian.

I wasn't always very interested in God, wasn't always very inspired to work for him.

I grew up in a place where I was the only Adventist, I was the only 1 who was a vegetarian, went to church on Sabbath, all these strange things, people felt I was very strange.

So I have 3 brothers, Jonathan, 1 of them, you see him around, but I felt very different and I didn't like being different, you know, so I decided when I when I grow up I'm not gonna continue with this thing, I'm gonna find my own way.

As I grew up, became teenager, youth, I kind of left the church, left the ideas and the principles and really headed out into darkness I would say during this time my my brother went to Arise you know what Arise is yeah And so he came back.

And he used to be a very good friend of mine before.

And then he became very different when he came back.

So I was very angry with God and I said what did you you know I didn't talk a lot to God but I was angry that he had taken away my brother from me in a sense.

We couldn't do the same things anymore in the same way and so on.

So I said I'm never gonna become a Christian like that you know so radical and on fire like he is.

What happened is that he gave me, it was a summer, you know how God he leads your life in so funny ways.

I was really heading in a different direction, I felt like I was the black sheep of the family.

But God, he kind of like Jerry Page's story yesterday, he led me into difficult situations and troubling conundrums that appeared in my life.

I ended up being disappointed with what I was doing, with my friends, my girlfriend, my relationship, it all just was useless, it felt useless.

So I came to the point where, I don't want to tell you the whole story, but I went to this 1 party and a couple of guys beat me up, completely unprovoked.

If I ever heard God's voice, It was that 1 time when I was lying there in my blood and puke and everywhere and God kind of spoke to me and he said, look at your life, Christian.

I left my school, left my friends, and went to the Adventist high school in Sweden.

You know, you carry a lot of the luggage with you.

But eventually, I was given the Desire of Ages for audiobook by my brother.

And I had always had this picture of who Jesus was, but something really dawned on me.

I thought he was this weak little Mother Teresa, kind of nice, goody-goody, but he dawned on me like this real man, like this inspiring individual that I just wanted to know more.

I wanted to be like him and I wanted to have the control that he had, the self-mastery, the vision, whatever.

So I was really inspired by this picture of Jesus that I found in her writings and I said I want that.

So I decided I wanted to study the Bible course at Eckeboeum, did that for half a year then worked as a Bible worker for a while and just wanted to know more, learn more.

So I decided to go to Newbold College to study theology.

I came there with this mindset that I just want to milk out all the knowledge I can get about God.

I remember reading this text in Exodus 33, 11, which says that God spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

And I said, I looked around in Christianity and Adventism and I said, I don't see people having that relationship.

But if there's anything that is worthy to have in this Christian life, That's what I want.

So I pursued that relationship and I just wanted more and more from God.

So I went to Newbold and during that time I got to know a lot about God, a lot of challenging things and so on and so on.

And by God's grace, it's a great experience for me.

And I haven't reached the end of the line anywhere.

I'm young and inexperienced, but I think God is leading me.

And during the time that I've worked as a minister I've had the privilege of studying the Bible with children, with youth, with elders, with agnostics, atheists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Baha'is, Jews, Muslims.

So I have found that the Bible, like Ellen White, she put it like this, the Bible contains a simple and complete system of theology and philosophy.

I have found this to be true and as I'm sharing to you today I hope this will, some of this will come out as well.

Let's have a prayer before we go deeper into the message.

Dear God in heaven, I just praise you and I thank you for how you have led my life in the past and how you are leading the people that are sitting in front of me.

Lord, I am not here to tell anyone how great I am or how much I know, but I'm here to tell them about you, about your lovely personality, about your character, the 1 that I have found to be the cheesest among 10, 000, the 1 altogether lovely.

And I pray that they will see some of the beauty of who you are, that they will be drawn to you and that they will learn how to share some of that beauty with others.

All right, Do you all know each other here?

So what I wanted us to do is to have a little icebreaker with each other here.

And we're going to answer some questions.

Because I think it is important to ask some questions before we go into evangelism.

What's the product that we're merchandising?

So if you divide up into, how many are we?

And just go through these questions for 5 minutes trying to answer them.

They'll be on the screen here so just take the people right next to you 3 and 4, 3 and 4, maybe back and forth and just 5 minutes spend that time.

Sorry guys I know we could, it's good to share.

Now you know a little bit more about each other and what you think and, but we have a tight schedule here so we're gonna try to not be too late here.

I would like to hear a little bit from you guys.

What about the group in the corner there?

We have some key words that are important.

We mentioned forgiveness, new life, meaningful life, everlasting life, being with the Kingdom.

Back to Menu

A Heart Reaching For Hearts

Transcript

Description

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine