John K. Jenkins Sr - Tips for Conversion that Build Friendships and Spiritual Influence

Amen, praise the Lord! God bless you! Thank our praise and worship team for leading us in worship tonight, and thank you for joining us, wherever you are in the world. I am so thankful and grateful that the saints join us every Tuesday night. Thank you for joining us. I’m so thankful; thank you, thank you, thank you from the depths and bottom of my heart. I’m going to spend a few moments tonight making a couple of quick announcements, and then I’m going to talk to us about winning people to Jesus. I want to share some techniques with you, and I will review a little bit of what we talked about last week. Then, I want to spend some time discussing how to engage people in spiritual conversations, which I believe will be a blessing to you and give you an easy way to remember. We 're going to remind you and teach you how to do that. I believe it can engage you and bless you in tremendous ways. So again, let me say Happy Valentine’s Day to everybody! This is Valentine’s Day, and I hope you’ve had a great day today. Thank God for another day that He has blessed us to see and for the privilege of sharing life. So, Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! Let 's take a moment and pray, and then we’ll dive into the lesson for tonight.

Father, we thank You for Your loving kindness and the multitude of Your tender mercies. You woke us up to see a brand new day that was not promised to us. We didn’t deserve it, but You blessed us and shared this day with us, allowing us the opportunity to be instruments of Your glory. Father, I just want to thank You. I want to pray for the saints of God who have joined us from around the world, that their eyes would be opened, their hearts would be receptive, and that You would influence their lives and teach them, Lord, how to win people to Jesus. I pray that You will allow the Word to impact us and change us, and that the principles we’re going to share will have an incredible effect on their lives. Thank You for hearing our prayer. I pray, heavenly Father, that Your name gets the glory. In Jesus' name, I pray this prayer. Amen.

Last week, we looked at John 15 and spent some moments discussing this passage where Jesus talks about Him being the True Vine and His Father being the vine dresser. He says that if we abide in Him and allow His Word to abide in us, He will empower us and engage us to win souls and bear fruit. We believe that bearing fruit means winning souls for Jesus. I am fully persuaded, convicted, and convinced that if we abide in the Lord and walk in the Lord, He will help us win souls for Jesus. So I challenged you last week, and I want to challenge you again today: we used to have a Frank list; we now make it the Francis list. We’ve expanded it a little bit. Let me just take a couple of moments to review that, and hopefully, you have a list with names of people you want to see saved.

I shared last week that 82 percent of Americans didn’t go to anyone 's church, and it’s probably greater than that. That 82 percent was the number before the pandemic, so that figure is likely even larger now. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is a larger number because many people feel no need for church; they believe they can fulfill what the church is intended to do at home. The truth is, that’s just not true. God designed the church for a reason: to help us become everything He wants us to be. It 's extremely troubling that so many people feel and are convinced that they don’t need the body of Christ. It’s like the hand saying it doesn 't need the eyes or the feet saying they don’t need the legs. The truth is, we all need each other to be everything God wants us to be. We all need to be part of the body. That 's why it’s so important: the body functions best when everything is in its place, in its proper position, and doing what it was created to do. That 's how the body best functions and excels, when everyone is in position and doing their part.

So, we want to pray for people to get saved. We want to pray for individuals to be engaged, involved, and connected to the Kingdom of God. That 's what our prayer is, and that’s where we want it to be. We made a list of people we want to pray for, and we call it the Francis list: F-R-A-N-C-E-S. Let 's look at it again. The F stands for friends. You have friends and people you’ve known and grown up with, cultivated relationships with, who you know need the Lord. Those are your friends. The R stands for relatives. We have relatives — cousins, uncles, and family members -who you know need Jesus, and we want to put their names on our list so we can pray for them .