Friday, May 16, 2014

Spectrum Evangelism - One size does not fit all

We are to be wise in our efforts when reaching out to those who need Jesus.  While I believe it is possible for anyone to be saved, there is a spectrum of people we encounter every day who's capacity to hear is unequal.  One size does not fit all when talking to the unsaved. 

In the American populations this is what the unsaved Spectrum looks like:

1. The Impossibles:
Those who are anti the Gospel.  Some are avowed proud atheists.  Some have been hurt.  Some are members of religions who have been taught that the Word of God is not Jesus.  Your approach to them must come IF the Holy Spirit instructs you to do so.  Like the Saul (Pre Paul) Jesus may appear to them in a dream or in a confrontation.  When we try to reach them without this calling of the Spirit, we are not doing good evangelism.  Let's figure out what God is doing and follow Him in HIS venture.  Sometimes in can result in reaching these impossibles.

2. The Lost Sheep: 
These are those who may have been brought up in the church.  May at one time gone to Sunday School.  But for various reasons, sin, loss, anger, frustration, bad teaching, declining health or relationship problems no longer have anything left.  Many turn to drugs, promiscuity, bad relationships, violence, crime and some even end up in prison. Some end up homeless.  Some end up in poverty.  While reaching them in their pain seems to be easy, if the root causes that drew them into this state is not dealt with, your evangelism to these lost ones is going to be a revolving door.  It's why working with prison populations is so frustrating.  The root must be dealt with FIRST.   Our evangelism must begin with healing the pain.

3. The Distracted Apathetic:  This group is most difficult to reach.  They really don't care.  They fill their lives with distractions.  Music.  Sports.  Entertainment.  They keep busy at nothing and then they die.  Life is stuff and busy.  They can be reached in moments of crisis, health, marriage, financial trouble.  The problem in converting these is they have no idea what you are talking about.  Think the jaywalkers from the Leno show.  The people who are cool but profoundly ignorant.  The education system and pop culture is their religion.  They work but without meaning.  Life is aimless.  Some even do well financially, but they have no concept that or if there is an Eternal God.  The one true way to reach these is find them in crisis and show them that GOD is the way out of their mess..  Unfortunately sometimes in our effort to be relevant and a friend we manage to reinforce their distractions.  Our monster truck enthusiasm we feign masks our passion for Jesus which should be contagious.

4. The Lukewarm Semi-Annual Church Attender: These are sometimes Jokingly called Annual members by church leadership.  You see them Christmas and New Years.  They are marginally more spiritually sensitive than the distracted apathetic.  They believe they are going to heaven.  Have very strange theologies which include reincarnation, works salvation (I'm a good person) and thousands of new age ideas that warp their minds.  Yet twice a year family kicks in.  They think they need to go to church, hold a candle and get a warm feeling.  These people have no hunger for God.  Yet, if the spit hits the fan they will be prepared to pray.  They will want some holy man or woman to come see them.  They will want to come back.  To minister to them and bring them into the fold will take brute truth.  They are prepared to hear because deep down they have a respect without commitment.  They need to be told the truth, not just about heaven and hell..but about all their family.  They are willing to hear... but you will need to be insistent and clear.  Lukewarmness is a disease cured only by full on apostasy or the fire of God. The middle ground is death.

5. The Seeker in Church:  This is a person who is seeking after something.  The Holy Spirit has called them. An empty hole is present in their life.  They know it.  They will float from church to church. Tune into a Christian TV or Radio program.  Will buy and read a book like "Heaven is for Real".  Will go to the movie.  This is NOT low hanging fruit or easy.  They will have a lot of questions.  A manifested move of God will cause them to take notice.  In truth they are still unbelievers.  These are the ones who answer your altar calls.  The first four categories aren't going to.  The problem for evangelism is what happens after the altar call is answered.  Follow up.  Discipleship. Integration.  Assimilation (resistance MUST become futile).  Unless we help the seeker find a real relationship with Jesus and help them come to reality...   The Holy Spirit has called these and we are responsible to steward them well.

Unfortunately we spend too much time on the four most difficult, arguing, debating, persuading and in the end as Paul in Athens discovered.. with little affect.

Let's do what we can with those the Spirit of God is Calling and placing in our path.. and allow him to do his work... being available to step in when crisis hits.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Yea about that texting and driving stuff....


Sign up

Alert! There's a new term for global warming. Again.


Just so you are not ever lulled into accepting Islam as just another religion.. Its a demon


SANTA TIP

I have not read his children's book series.. but from what I have heard they are exceptional. I think I know what will be in the grandkids Christmas stockings. Well done sir...

27,000

Of these, 36,000 released, 27,000 were serious criminals, 193 homicide convictions, 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, 1,075 aggravated assault convictions, 1,160 stolen vehicle convictions, 9,187 dangerous drug convictions, 16,070 drunk or drugged driving convictions, 303 flight escape convictions.

A story from the Garden of Eden I heard the other day:



Eve was wandering around, talking to God. "I love the garden, the animals, the birds, the beautiful flowers, but sometimes I get lonely." God says, "I could make you a man, but I need to warn you, he'll be self centered, clumsy, smell bad sometimes and can be a real pain. But he will be able to open a pickle jar if you need him to." Eve thinks about it and says, "I think that will be OK". God gets busy forming some mud and says, "Oh by the way, he is going to need to think I created him first".

This is the truest graph I've seen in a while!


I don't know why this works... but it does... strange It took me a bit, I admit.


Stupid

Just so you are prepared, right after the election in November HUGE, I mean HUGE increases in Obamacare premiums are being scheduled and MUCH higher deductibles are slated. It's already in. It is amazing that people thought that free healthcare wouldn't cost anything. It is going to cost you much more than you ever thought.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101664437

When you hear the voice of satan




Pig Sing

You can't train a pig to sing. When you try, you waste time for the trainer and annoy the pig. Such it is with some people who are constantly in training to do something for which they are never going to be willing to pay the price to accomplish. This is what happens when people try to train others to become entrepreneurs. It is much more a temperament and mindset thing than information and knowledge. In a thousand people there may be less than 50 who are willing and able to succeed in an entrepreneurial marketplace. Train the trainable.

Funky Talk

I was having coffee with a friend in business. He needs to hire people to take care of customers by phone. Those people will be giving their credit card numbers. Fairly large amounts. One qualification is the ability to instil trust and confidence on the phone to remove reluctance to do the deal.

Here's the rub, he has a big heart. He would love to hire someone from the community to do this job. The problem is language. A strong Spanish accent will not work. A Slavic accent is going to be problematic. An urban sounding person will not make it. That means that unless the person can speak in high english without any discernible dialect at all they are not going to make it. Yet I know many who could never do this.

If Morgan Freeman, Dennis Haysbert and James Earl Jones can speak high english and get paid really well for doing so... I think it might be time for others to unlearn some really bad speaking habits and begin to move up in the world. It might sound cool to you to talk all funky and all.. but you will starve to death being funky.

Learn to properly conjugate verbs. For instance the conjugation of to BE is not BE (I be, he be, she be, they be). I know how easy it is to fall into this. I am around it so much I do this sometimes. It's death in business.

This sounds like criticism, its not, this is a public service announcement is for those who want to make real money in business. It is also for those I care about. I care enough to point this out and encourage diligence. We can do better.

So you know


Can you find at least 1 difference? I found 5


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Dr. King spoke these words in 1965.


Just in time for the Summer of 2014!!! OMG!!!


If you have it, I want it. If you do it, I'll control it. And if I don't get my way about everything, I'll whine like a five year old.


How about door number ONE... REAL capitalism works every time it's tried - we don't have that in the USA right now


IT doesn't have to be this way


Woman Drivers

This is a video.  Click on it.. hillarious

lol


The market is efficient. Government is not.




Did anyone in the White House consult a history book before they created Obamacare? Can Obama energy policy lead anywhere other than scarcity, waste and want?

Time for a change

At first I thought this might be a joke but apparently it's not John Kerry is really that stupid


This guy used to visit us all the time

Working on it

Note how many come from the Germans

I'm Hungry


You are judged no matter what you do, so you might as well just live


Mothers day tribute

This is the woman, My aunt who took the role as Mother 55 years ago when our parents were killed in vehicular accident. We were able to stay together, My brother, Sister and I due to the selfless effort. She is now 96 years old. Her mother died at 104 so she may be with us for a while if history is any instruction. She deserves and I give tribute on Mothers day to this good woman, and her late Husband Earl. Blessings on Mothers Day to Ruth R Redlin.

When this whole thing crashes.. your life will change a LOT


Nothing to worry about.. unless

Liars in Science and the Glaciers


Sometimes the truth is more difficult to receive than the fiction some of the liars in the global warming cabal. I remember that we talked of glacial retreat. Some of that is true... but less than you imagine. Now this historical record of ice in the north arctic makes me wonder where they get this stuff. More interesting is the Antarctic region has never been colder or more frozen than it is now. Something is fishy here... Smells like rotten Gore. Nice to see you are back from FLA. The lake missed you. Bet it's a bit cooler than you thought it would be too. Still 30% ice cover on Lake Superior. Most ever.




 Nothing, it appears, is black and white...
http://nsidc.org/.../why-is-there-so-much-antarctic-sea-ice/
nsidc.org
| Contact Us Even during the Antarctic summer, heavy sea ice conditions are not uncommon. But why was there so much sea ice around Antarctica to begin with, and why was it so thick?
 
There is no question that sea ice is greater than a long time in Antarctica. Not the same as glaciers... but cold none the less. http://wattsupwiththat.com/.../antarctic-sea-ice-at.../ wattsupwiththat.comFrom The Australian, 12 May 2014 Graham Lloyd Antarctic sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres. The...
 
 
 
he seas are NOT rapidly rising anywhere. 6" in the last century... http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/.../sltrends_station...
tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov
The rate of sea level rise or fall has been determined for long-term U.S. water level stations. Monthly sea level data were used to obtain linear trends, seasonal cycles, and interannual variations.
 
 
 Glacial retreat seems to have a few flaws in the data -- not so much: http://wattsupwiththat.com/.../melting-by-2035-hardly.../ wattsupwiththat.comWUWT readers may recall that the IPCC famously claimed (using fake data) that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. That date later turned out to be a blunder of epic proportions, requiring a retr..
 
 
  From the study that generated the hysteria about Antarctic Glacial Melt. " If the whole glacier system melts, Joughin says, it would raise global sea levels about 24 inches (60 centimeters), he adds. The process will take a while, roughly 200 to 900 years, Joughin and colleagues estimate, depending on how fast temperatures rise and how much snow falls in the area". That's a quarter to a whole millennium. A thousand years. HMMMM... 24" A thousand year timeframe. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/.../140512-thwaites.../
news.nationalgeographic.com
Scientists warn that the Thwaites glacier is sliding into the ocean and adding to sea level rise.

Death of Enterprise

Of course gun running, drug dealing, theft rings and government employment (including all government payouts) doesn't count. Only tax paying enterprises are dying. But who cares.. right?

Truer today


"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato



   

Sterling might be right

I heard part of the interview Sterling gave to CNN's Cooper. Here's a couple of thoughts. Sterling is jealous of Magic Johnson. The girl. His "racism" is more envy. BUT he asked a question. "What has Magic Johnson ever done? Famous for being HIV positive and playing ball. But what has he done for the community". I decided to do some research to support Magic. I know how to read a financial statement. Looked at the financials for his foundation. He is worth five hundred million dollars. His foundation net net net gave under a hundred grand and that was dubious. Mostly it's an investment vehicle. I am hoping someone in the community can speak well of what Magic has ever done. I'm not finding it. Is that old curmudgeon, Donald Sterling right? http://magicjohnson.org/about-us/overview/

Protecting Hillary

This is insanity. When you hear lies, know the father of lies is speaking.