How Can I Live More Like an Evangelist?

00:00:05.000 | At the recent Pastors' Conference in the Twin Cities, it was an opportunity to

00:00:09.000 | think about pastoring and evangelism. Pastor John, how can pastors think and

00:00:13.920 | live more evangelistically?

00:00:17.000 | There's probably no pastor who's satisfied with his own life of personal

00:00:24.880 | witness concerning Christ. We are public figures who preach sermons and lead

00:00:33.720 | meetings and do devotions, and we are as slow as anybody probably to be out among

00:00:46.520 | unbelievers, maybe even slower because our job tends to surround us with

00:00:51.680 | believers. And so Darren Patrick was urging pastors to seek to move beyond

00:00:58.400 | that private circle of believers. And he just gave one example, there's nothing new

00:01:04.760 | about this, it wasn't even original with him, he was quoting somebody else, but it

00:01:08.760 | was refreshing to me again. Made a difference yesterday, even as I walked

00:01:12.960 | into Precision Tune, with my oil chains. Darren said, "When you walk from one room

00:01:23.720 | to another, it might be from the kitchen to the living room, it might be from the

00:01:27.760 | sidewalk into Starbucks, it might be from one aisle over another aisle in Target," he

00:01:36.000 | said, "ask the question, 'What is God doing here?'" Which simply, for me, I mean there

00:01:44.120 | are a lot of ways to take that. It's based on John, I think, 519, where Jesus

00:01:47.960 | says, "I only do what I see the Father doing." But what it says to me is, I want to be a

00:01:54.040 | person who walks in the awareness of God's activity. And my goodness, even as a

00:02:01.720 | pastor, I can slip out of that. I can enter my day, I can go get my oil

00:02:06.920 | changed, I can eat at McDonald's, and I wake up two hours later and realize

00:02:11.840 | I've not had any consciousness of God or of God's activity. Well, if I'm walking

00:02:17.960 | in obliviousness to God's activity in the world, how am I going to interact

00:02:23.560 | with people at a God level, where He might be preparing them for some word

00:02:29.240 | from me or from some action from me? So I was so helped by just the simple

00:02:35.680 | statement, "Be aware of God as you move from one part of your day to another. Ask

00:02:43.000 | God, 'What are you doing here? How might I join with you in your saving, helping

00:02:50.640 | purposes?'" And then just enjoy the ride as He leads us. Thank you, Pastor John,

00:02:57.280 | and thank you for listening to this podcast. Send your questions to us via

00:03:00.240 | email at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. Please include your first name and

00:03:04.680 | your hometown. Find thousands of other free resources online from

00:03:07.680 | JohnPiper@DesiringGod.org. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

00:03:13.560 | [BLANK_AUDIO]