Why Every Christian Must Share the Gospel
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Summary
In this episode of Real Christianity, I talk about our brand new gospel project, The Gospel Project, and the three reasons why 90% of Christians don t share the gospel and what you need to do to change that. Stay tuned as we look to scripture and learn about our Christian duty to evangelize.
Transcript
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In this episode of Real Christianity, I talk about our brand new gospel project,
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mailthegospel.org. But more than that, I talk about the three reasons 90% of Christians
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don't share the gospel and what you need to do to change that. So stay tuned as we look
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to scripture and learn about our Christian duty to evangelize. All that and more coming up right now.
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Welcome to Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge. Today's episode
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is titled, Why Every Christian Must Share the Gospel. Now, as you know, this show is an audio
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and video ministry of relearn.org. If you're watching the video recording of this episode,
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please be sure to subscribe or follow for more biblical content. If you're listening to an
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that are committed to biblical truth, but we are.
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In fact, last week, I posted an important post
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giving both the history and the foolishness
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I want to start us off with three passages of scripture.
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The Great Commission is where we're going to begin in Matthew 28, 18 through 20.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
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of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded
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And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
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Okay, we're going to be reading this passage of scripture as well as two more.
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Mark 16, 15, a shorter version of the Great Commission.
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go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation, end quote.
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So we're going to be looking at the gospel as duty from the perspective of Paul.
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it says, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call
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on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him on whom they have not
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heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they
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are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.
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Now we know that just a few verses later in Romans 10, 17, it says, for faith comes by hearing
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and hearing by the word of Christ. We know that the gospel is the midwife to new birth, right?
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It's the means of salvation. It's the reason that Paul said he's not ashamed of the gospel
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because it's the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. This is vital that
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we understand the seriousness of the gospel. Now I've noticed that a lot of people struggle
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with sharing the gospel because they forgot what it's like to be lost. They forgot what it's like
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to live like the world, to feel like the world, to do what the world does, to walk and behave
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in harmful and hurtful ways, to be addicted, to have problems of, you know, whatever it may be,
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and the bad thinking about just about everything. We have forgotten what it feels like and what it
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is like to be lost. And that's why we have diminished our desire to seek the lost like
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Christ seeks the lost. And so right now, the statistics are that 90% of Christians don't
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share the gospel. Only 10% of Christians share the gospel with another person once per year.
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Now, what that means is a lot of people share their testimony. A lot of people share their faith.
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A lot of people share a Bible scripture. A lot of people talk about Jesus, but those things are good,
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but they are not the gospel. We need to actually be committed to what's called a bad news, good
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news gospel. We have to remember that the good news is only so good because the bad news is so
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bad. And we need to be willing to share the bad news because without the bad news, you won't want
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the good news. And so people need to hear the bad news. And the bad news is that we were born
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sinners. We are born sinners. And we're born sinners. Sin is not just an act. It's also a
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condition. And we don't learn how to sin. We're born with this condition to sin. And the wages
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of sin is death. And somebody needs to die for our sin, according to scripture. And the reason
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we've sinned is because we've broken God's law. And God's law is in the 10 commandments and nobody's
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been able to keep it. Nobody can keep it. That's the reason we tell our kids the 10 commandments
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is so that they can realize that they can't keep it and they need a savior. And we need to be found
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righteous before God because we are unrighteous. And in order to be found righteous before God,
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we need righteousness, but we can't be righteous on our own. We need someone else's righteousness.
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Jesus gives his righteousness to us through faith.
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you will be guilty and you will spend eternity in hell
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It should make everybody that hears that message tremble.
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The reality is, is that we have shifted that gospel message
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to this Jesus loves you and everything about you.
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that has left many people in the church with false hope.
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You know, I think it was Dr. Steve Lawson said the only thing worse than not having the assurance
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of salvation is having the false assurance of salvation. And sadly, here in the United States,
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in the West, we have so many individuals in the church that have came to the church,
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but never came to Christ. And they are falsely assured in their salvation. So we have this
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problem that only 10% of Christians are sharing the gospel. How do we activate the 90%? How do
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we activate the 90%? But more than that, what are the three reasons for why Christians are not
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sharing the gospel? What's the problem? What's in the way? And there's three primary reasons that
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we've done in our research. The first one is people's fear of rejection. We fear the rejection
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of somebody when we preach the bad news gospel. If you want to tell them that they're sinners and
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that their sin is going to send them to hell unless they repent of their sin and go trust in
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Jesus Christ. That message can be intimidating for people to deliver, especially if you're
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introverted, especially if you're timid. But we know that God doesn't give us a spirit of fear,
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right? But of power, a love, and a sound mind. And so we have to remember that the fear of
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rejection, while it is a primary reason for not sharing the gospel, the fear of man is actually
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sin. We need to trust God and his sovereignty in our lives. But that's the number one reason.
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The second reason is that people doubt their ability to eloquently present the gospel.
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And I'm not going to say just eloquently, but accurately.
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Because we live in a church era where so many Christians have not actually heard expository
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preaching verse by verse, year after year, decade after decade, building up sound doctrine,
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they're not able to communicate the mechanics of the gospel.
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We have to understand that a gospel explanation really is a byproduct of sound doctrine.
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When you understand your theological basics and your doctrinal basics, you can explain
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the gospel regardless of the questions or the defenses that come at you.
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And so we need to be able to strengthen individual biblical and theological literacy, which again
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is the mission of what we do here at relearn.org.
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We want to strengthen your understanding of Scripture, of God, of the gospel, of the cross.
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The third reason people don't share the gospel is because they're worried about the apologetic
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questions that come after a discussion of the gospel as a result. And this is understandable.
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You know, are they prepared for the discussions about moral relativism or evolution or the
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dinosaurs or whatever it may be. You layer all three of those things on top of each other and
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you've got a pretty big, or I should say a pretty thick wall to get through on why Christians are
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not sharing the gospel. So this is a problem. We need to overcome it. Now, as an entrepreneur,
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you guys know, if you don't know, before I was in ministry, I spent, what, 15 years as an
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entrepreneur building up businesses and entrepreneurs solve problems. Now, not every
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problem is worth solving. The best problems to solve are the problems that are urgent, required,
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and painful. And the Great Commission is urgent, it's required, and for many Christians it can be
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painful. And so we wanted to solve that urgent, required, and painful problem. And so we wanted
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to create a way for any Christian to share the gospel with anyone, anywhere. And we did this by
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producing a couple things. Number one is that we produced some theologically accurate, bold,
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presentations of the gospel. Now, again, when you think about a gospel tract, most gospel tracts
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are either really ugly or they're not palatable or accessible. A lot of them are either doom and
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gloom on one side or they're Jesus loves everything about you on the other side. So we wanted to
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create a beautiful, clear, concise, theologically accurate, faithful, bold presentation of the
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gospel. So we wrote these gospel tracts. They're like little booklets, and they can be read in
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just a short period of time, between about eight to 15 minutes, depending on how fast an individual
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reads. And we wrote these things with a handful of individuals. All of them are seminarians. We
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have a theological advisory board who reviews this on our board, or several men that have their PhD
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in theology or systematic theology and have reviewed these things. We have looked at these
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tracts to make sure that they are a faithful, accurate presentation of the gospel. They're also
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positioned in a way of a sermon. We learned historically that most people come to Christ
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through a sermon. Throughout church history, preaching is essential. And so we wanted to
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really make these little booklet tracts like a sermon being preached. And so that's the first
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thing we did is we created these theologically accurate tracts. The second thing that we did
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really it's, they're the same core gospel message
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that's maybe struggling with depression or anxiety.
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The gospel, a message of joy, is for people that might be going through a tragic moment,
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difficult trials, chronic illness, grave diagnosis, someone just died.
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And this, again, meets somebody in the midst of those difficult trials.
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So we have these circumstantially relevant presentations of the gospel that are absolutely
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They're what we call a raw touch cover with even a gold foiling on the cover.
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They're little booklets and they're worth checking out.
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And so that's why we created mailthegospel.org.
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and you can enter the information, your information.
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you can choose which tract you would like to send, and then you can enter the recipient's
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information. And you can put anybody you'd like in there, which means you need to go get their
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address. But you can actually send this personalized, meaning you can write them a note.
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You can also send it anonymously, which we found about 50% of people so far have been sending them
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anonymously. We do encourage you guys to send it personalized if you can, because we want you to
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nurture that appetite for evangelistic outreach. We know that there are those circumstances in
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which you maybe will benefit from sending it anonymously. Maybe there is some relational
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turmoil there, whatever it may be, but we do want to encourage you guys to personalize it if you
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guys can. The other thing is that you can include either a gospel of John, which just for a couple
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bucks, I'm holding it up here in the video. Again, you can see this gospel of John. You can include,
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you can also include a full ESV thin line Bible. And this is a beautiful Bible. And I think we
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include these for about 10 bucks. I'm not sure if that's going to stay that cheap, but wow,
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come on. You can't buy a Bible this nice for 10 bucks anywhere. And so we include that there.
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And then when you mail this off, you just pay for shipping and we will mail the gospel for you
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to anyone anywhere. Now we are currently just launching. We're launching with the United States.
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keep them in your backpack, you can absolutely do so.
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I go and try to get my hair cut from different barbers
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And so having these tracks, you can buy those as well.
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if you actually mail the gospel to someone at checkout.
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or a pack of 50 that you can keep again in your car.
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go back into the ministry to provide the salaries
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So this is 100% all the profits back into what we're doing.
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And so we want you guys to check out mailthegospel.org.
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If you also want to just support us financially,
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We put about $30,000 into buying our first round of tracks.
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that are faithful and interested in supporting us that way.
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We would love to have your faithful support that way as well.
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because again, we don't want to replace evangelism.
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This isn't meaning that you shouldn't stop evangelizing
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So we want to first again, overcome the fear of man.
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And we want to be ready for some of those common questions
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that are going to come at us in the defense of the gospel.
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Always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is in you.
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We're called to be ready in season and out of season
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or if you're the electrician or if you're the pastor,
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about the gospel when someone sees that in your life,
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but every individual has the duty and opportunity
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and responsibility to fulfill the gospel ministry.
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So again, you can always do that at mailthegospel.org.
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We hope to see you guys use that on a regular basis,
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figure out what you're going to say and get ready to mail the gospel. Again, check out the website,
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mailthegospel.org. On this episode, we're going to just end it there. We're going to get back
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into our discussion about Romans chapter two, verses one through five, next episode. So stay
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tuned for that. Thank you for listening to this episode of Real Christianity. I hope that this
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was an edifying episode for your walk with Christ. I hope that this resource that we've created
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If you haven't subscribed to our channel here on YouTube,
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supporting what we're doing just on social media?
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We've got a bunch of different products in the store,
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We would love to have you on the journey with us.
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Thanks for listening to this episode of Real Christianity.