Be a soul winner! (1)
“… and he who wins souls is wise”(Proverbs 11:30b).
The theme of Victory Presbyterian Church in New Year 2006 is “Be a Soul Winner!”. And the theme verse is Proverbs 11:30b - “… and he who wins souls is wise.” Then, what does the word ‘to win souls’ mean here? It means ‘to do good to people or to influence them in a wise way’ (MacArthur). In a word, the wise is a “life-giving influence” on others. Then, what does the life-giving influence refer to here? In the first half of Proverbs 11:30, the Bible says, “The fruit of the righteous is the tree of life.” Then we can say that the dead tree is the fruit of the unrighteous. That is, the life-giving influence is to do good to those lost trees that bear the fruit of the unrighteous is to bring the lost souls to the Lord so that they may believe in Jesus Christ and have eternal life. Therefore, the life of the wise who wins the souls is to help a believer to grow up and bear fruit as a tree of life. So, what qualities (or character) must we have in order to exert the “life-giving influence” on others? In Pastor Spurgeon's book “The Soul Winner,” he said seven things.
First, we must have holy character in order to win souls.
This is exactly what Pastor Andy Stanley asked about the personality of his leaders (“The Next Generation Leader”): ‘Personal development should always start with an end in mind. How do you want to be remembered by others?’ How would you answer this question? What do you think is the end of personality development? If I ask a more specific question, what kind of person do you want to be memorable to everyone at your church? Don’t you want to hear the compliment that you really resemble Jesus?
However, the reason why Christians today don’t have good influence on the home, work, and neighbors, and the church is ungodly influenced by the world rather than holy influence on the world, is because the saints fail to live a holy life apart from the world. What is the end or goal of our character development? It is only to resemble Jesus. There is nothing else. With that goal of becoming like Jesus, we must pursue His holiness. How do we do that? The answer to John 17:14 and below can be summarized in two ways: (1) We must not belong to the world (v. 14). In order to do this, we must ask God to preserve us from falling into evil (v. 15). (2) We must be sanctified by the truth (vv. 17, 19). Pastor Spurgeon said: ‘God will not use tools (people) to compromise His own character.’ Even if we ask others to come to church and preach the gospel to them, if the inviter or the evangelist cannot resemble the holy character of Jesus and reveal His holiness in life, then we cannot win those souls (Spurgeon). We should not evangelize with only our lips, but with our lives as well. We must evangelize by becoming more like Jesus' holy character.
Second, we must have high level of spiritual life in order to win souls.
In the sermon of Pastor Han-eum Ok's Church Renewal Pastors' Council (Title: ‘If we set the standard low, we will perish’) (August 2, 2001), Pastor Ok said that a tremendous change in the leadership of today's Korean churches is qualitatively changed. He pointed out that this is a worsening change qualitively. In other words, the trust in leadership has fallen. And he said, ‘If it's an earthen bowl without worry, it's not the earthenware.’ If we look at 2 Corinthians 4:7, God says that He put the treasure in earthen vessels. The earthen vessels are about to die because God put the treasure not in the golden vessels but the earthen vessels. Pastor Ok said that if a leader doesn’t feel this, either he is a little weird, or he is so favored that he became an angel. What do you think? Do we really have any worries as the earthen vessel containing treasures? How high have we, bearing the precious name of Jesus Christ, set the standard of our spiritual life? For example, can a person who prepares with a local mountain as a standard to climb and a person who prepares to climb Everest have the same attitude of preparation? Of course it is different between the church officials who set their standard to other immature believers, saying everyone does it, and those who set their standard to imitate Jesus. Pastor Spurgeon said that some preachers are in the state of half-death. In other words, they live like an angel in the pulpit and an earthworm in their daily life. If we are an angel in church on Sunday but live differently at home or at work, then we are like half-death state of faith and cannot give life-giving influence to others. Here we can apply two things: (1) We must have high level of spiritual life. We must keep in mind that if we lower this level, then we will be ruined. We will not be soul-winners. But we will only be vessels that hurt man and hide the glory of God. (2) We will have to pursue a life of unity within and outside the church. If we continue to seem holy in the church and hide the glory of God in our homes, then we will not be sufficiently used as God's instrument to win souls because of our disagreeable character inside and outside the church.
Third, we must be humble in order to win souls.
We must not forget this biblical principle: “… God … but gives grace to the humble” (Jam. 4:6). Who is a humble person? He knows himself rightly by knowing God. Therefore, he not only does not think of himself more highly than he ought, but also he thinks of himself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given him (Rom. 12:3). Simply put, the humble person is a person who doesn’t think presumptuously because he knows himself before God. However, too many times we tend to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. Therefore, there are too many times that we live a life of faith in an illusion. Sometimes I see an article saying that we are 2% insufficient. But I think that we are misunderstanding that we are 98% insufficient and not 2%. Why do we have times to live in this illusion? The reason is because of our pride. Pastor Spurgeon says there are two types of proud people: (1) The first group is those who are full of pride, who say, 'Praise me, please praise me, I want it'. (2) The other class of proud people are those who don't even want to be praised. They are so arrogant that they don't care whether people praise them or not and they are satisfied with themselves. These people despise others rather than want them to praise them. After speaking of this class of proud people, Pastor Spurgeon spoke of false humility. And it was a stab to my conscience. When referring to that false humility, he called it “sinful love of ease.” In other words, many people look low on themselves. And their idea is that they take their own abilities so small that they don't venture to try anything good. They say they don't have self-reliance, so they always choose a comfortable place for themselves. They are so humble that they don’t do what they are responsible for (to be blamed). They call it humility, but Pastor Spurgeon called it “sinful love of ease”. Pastor Spurgeon's challenge is that the soul winner must be free from this kind of pride. Rather, the soul winner must be truly humble. True humility makes us to think about ourselves rightly and it also makes us to think about the truth about ourselves.
Fourth, we must have living faith in order to win souls.
What is living faith? To answer this question, we should first consider the dead faith that James speaks of. In James 2:26, the apostle James said “faith without deeds is dead.” Then we can see that living faith is faith with deeds (1:22). In the words of Luke 10:29 that I meditated on at the early Morning Prayer meeting on Tuesday, there was an expert in the law who tested Jesus (v. 25). Since he knew the law well, he knew about the love of God and the love of neighbor (v. 27). But when Jesus said “Do this”, the expert in the law asked Jesus “And who is my neighbor?” (v. 29) As I meditated on this, I learned that faith without works and faith that deceives oneself cannot win souls. Pastor Spurgeon said that in order to be a soul winner, we must believe in God's call for us to win souls. He also said that while proclaiming the gospel, we must believe in the gospel and believe that the work of winning souls will take place through the gospel. We must keep in mind that those who walk by faith will be done according to faith.
Fifth, we must have genuine zeal in order to win souls.
We will have to work wholeheartedly to win souls. Look at 1Timothy 4:15, what Paul said to his spiritual son Timothy: “Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.” I want to apply the words of 1 Timothy 4:12 to “these matters”: “Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” We need a genuine zeal to be an example for them to be soul winners. Also, we should reach out to them and preach the gospel eagerly.
Sixth, we must have great simplicity in our hearts in order to win souls.
Here, the great simplicity in our hearts means to set the purpose only to glorify God and to win souls. Otherwise, if there is one's own glory or other things that are not God's glory for the work of winning the souls, it means that we have lost the simplicity of our hearts, and we aren’t winning souls worthy in the sight of God. But Satan is trying to take simplicity out of our hearts. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul says, “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” Satan in some way deceives us and corrupts the simplicity of our hearts toward Christ. Therefore, above all, we must guard our hearts well. In particular, we should keep our simple hearts to Christ, focusing only on glorifying God and winning souls.
Seventh and last, we must completely surrender ourselves to God in order to win souls.
As a little boy offering all his 2 fishes and 5 loaves of bread to Jesus in the story of 2 fishes and 5 loaves of bread miracle, we must surrender ourselves completely to the Lord. Then we will be used by the Lord as soul winners.
In New Year 2006, we want to put our efforts into evangelizing one soul, under the church motto “Be a Soul Winner!” (Prov. 11:30). In order to do that, we meditated on the seven qualities that Pastor Spurgeon said above. As we begin this New Year, I want to pray for these seven qualities. In order not to forget, after proclaiming the Word, I wrote it down again. I’m going to put it on the wall and memorize it. And I want to keep on meditating, praying, and striving for these seven qualities. Therefore, I want to be raised by the Lord to be a soul winner for His glory.