Reaching A Generation Hungry for Truth w/Dave Jensen | Episode 290

[00:00:01] Understanding that most non-Christians think Christianity is about morality and works means very clearly when we evangelize, we need to make our argument all about grace. And where can you see grace most clearly? On the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that needs to be the focal point of what we discuss. And as you've said, brother, it's explosive to people, no matter who you are, because that's the gospel. That's the power. That's right. That's the power.

[00:00:28] Hello and welcome to Candid, where we never settle for less than the truth. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Youssef. Each week we'll tackle tough issues, answer your hard questions, and take a candid look at the Christian faith. Well, here at Candid Conversations, we love to have repeat guests, and we have the distinct privilege of having a repeat guest. And it is my very good friend down under, Dave Jensen.

[00:00:54] Dave is an evangelist who works for the Sydney Anglican Diocese. He is out and about in the Sydney region, proclaiming the good news of the gospel and making known the hope of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're just so grateful to have Dave join us on Candid Conversations. Dave, thanks for taking the time and your bright early morning over there.

[00:01:21] G'day, brother. Great to see you. And all I can say is I agree, what a distinct privilege for you. You have a low standard of privilege. I'm delighted. I'm thrilled to be here. We last talked, I think it was five years ago, I was in Northern Ireland at the time, for a long time. You were in Northern Ireland. Yeah. Your background hasn't changed. It's still just a drab wall. Yeah, that's great. And you were. So it's hard.

[00:01:51] If there's any non-Australian guest listening in Australia, we express our deep love and affection by insulting the people we care for the most. That's right. So if you ever hear me say anything negative to Jonathan, it's out of deep respect. It's out of a deep love for one another. And I hope people pick up on our friendship through our poking one another. Well, I've got to say that you were just complimenting me, which means you don't like me at all. Yeah, well, we'll see how that goes. We'll see how it works out. It's great to be here.

[00:02:20] I'm delighted to be back on Candid, and thanks for having me. Well, Dave, we are seeing a lot of trends towards an openness to hearing the truth of the gospel in the younger generations, particularly those of Gen Z or Gen Z. Let's talk a little bit about those trends, what you're seeing, how we got there. How do we get to all these things?

[00:02:48] Yeah, it's worth thinking about the – I find the generational labels can be confusing. And sometimes can lead to a bit of – one of my favorite terms to talk about something unhelpful can be analysis paralysis. Have you heard that before? Analysis paralysis. Yeah. And just to go right in the weeds of working on, oh, we need to speak to Gen Z slash Z, different to Gen Alpha.

[00:03:12] And in one respect, Paul's direction, encouragement to Timothy, you know, preach the word isn't out of season. You know, preach the word. Preach the word is the same. He doesn't say to Greek like this, to Gentile like that. But at the same point, we know the Apostle Paul. And even as Jesus engages people, he does, of course, take into account their background and where they're from and when they're from and that kind of thing. So I think it is worth identifying that as confusing as the generational things can be.

[00:03:41] And I think technically speaking, Gen Z, Z, if you're born in the late 90s, up until like 2012. And if you're born from 2012. So the people who are right now graduating high school or in college, university, those guys, and then you've got the generation under that who are our children. I don't think there's any clearer way that I can say that I don't think there has ever been an easier time to share the gospel with young people than today.

[00:04:11] I think the avenue and the opportunity we have to do so is unprecedented in the Western world that we live in, brother. And I think actually when I consider back just on a very tangible, pragmatic way of the last 10, 15 years, I can say as clearly as I possibly can that there has never been an easier time to evangelize than today to young people. There has never been a bigger open door.

[00:04:39] And when I reflect actually on fruit in ministry and people converted, I kind of think of events that I've spoken at or I've been at over the last few years. I think I've seen more young people converted to Christ and to his church over the last couple of years than all the years before that combined. I think the last five years more than the 10 years before that. And I think there's no doubt about it, whatever it looks like, however long it will go for,

[00:05:04] that there is an openness to the gospel in the generations from people born 1997 up that we need to be really, really excited about, but also thoughtful about how we engage. What is it that's allowed for that? What are the parents of that, those generations? Are they, and of course it'll be different, I think, from continent to continent,

[00:05:28] but in your experience, do you find that those are kids of parents who have walked away from the faith or never knew the faith? And then what were some of the things that maybe happened globally? We all know of a few things that happened globally that may be contributing to that openness. And we all know that ultimately this boils down to it's the spirit of God at work. But, you know, God uses those types of events and things to draw people. That's a great question.

[00:05:55] It's a really helpful thing to consider blockages and openings and what's going on, you know, and what's been happening. So I've just turned 44 and I think of my peer group and I think of my high school years. It's in Australia, as you would know, brother, that Australia is a secular nation in every sense.

[00:06:19] And we've got a state Protestant denomination of Anglicanism, Church of England, but a huge number of Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox people, but also the biggest contingent of our population say that they're nothing. That doesn't mean atheists, by the way. Atheism has gone down, down, down for decades. But they'd say spiritual, but nothing official. So we're closer to Canada, New Zealand, England than we are to the United States in that regard.

[00:06:49] And I think back to my high school years, I grew up in a Christian family, but I wasn't a Christian. But even though I went to a school which had a Christian association, there would have been 5% of my year group who had church attending families. Interesting. And Christianity was viewed with not suspicion, like it wasn't dangerous, but it was – now do you use the word daggy in America? No, that's an Australian term. Yeah, and unfortunately now the word itself has become daggy, so you can't use it. But, you know –

[00:07:19] It's redundant. It was losers. You know, like bad music, bad clothing, bad everything, just like the bad knockoff version of everything. Oh, Christians are weird, kind of – not dangerous, safe, but losers. Now, I want to offer – there's a beautiful continuity of thousands of years of church history with that. We are losers to the world. The gospel is foolishness and shameful to the world, and that is what it is. That doesn't mean we have to contribute to it with style, fashion choices.

[00:07:47] Fast forward to say, like even 10 years ago, I think Christians were viewed of as dangerous losers. Dangerous losers. And my exposure to that was I worked in high school ministry. That was my first entry into Christian ministry, and the Christians there, the gospel, the idea of biblical morality was viewed of with deep suspicion by a secular nation like Australia and viewed as dangerous and toxic. But today that's not the case. And I'm not saying we're cool. We should never seek coolness, and I don't think we ever will be cool.

[00:08:17] It's not that, but I think due to a range of reasons which I've got a few thoughts on, that there is an openness, a curiosity to the gospel and to Christianity, and that Christians are viewed of as aliens in the beautiful sense that we should be, as outsiders. But not losers, more sort of fascinating ones, you know, curious ones. Why would you do that? That's a bit strange. It's weird. That's – but there's something attractive and appealing about it.

[00:08:44] Now, I think part of the reason for that is that a lot of our young people in Australia and increasingly in the United States are not growing up with a church context. So they're not being exposed positively or negatively to any form of Christianity at all, yet they know we live in countries that have been so blessed by Christianity and the gospel that they know Christianity exists. Churches are everywhere.

[00:09:08] And more and more so, it's become evidently clear that Christianity has shaped the culture we live in profoundly and powerfully. People, secular authorities are pointing to that, and experts are pointing to that.

[00:09:19] And I think young people are hearing that, and so Christianity presents itself as a very positive sort of shaping thing on culture and society, but also that as young people through COVID have come face-to-face with the emptiness of the world, I think that has sort of really allowed the church to shine. I'm keen on your thought on this, but in Australia during lockdown, I don't think lockdown created as many problems as we think.

[00:09:48] Lockdown here was as bad as it was anywhere in the world, I have to say. There were some parts of Australia that were locked down, I think, the world record. It was terrible. But I don't think that caused problems. I think it displayed the problems. I think it showed the absolute incoherent shallowness of worldliness and that when everything was stripped away, the veneer, the facade of what's good about this world was stripped away and taken.

[00:10:14] I think it exposed the reality of that to a young generation who have evidently, and statistically speaking, displayed themselves as now being open to discovering and exploring true meaning. Because it's not going to be found in the internet. It's not going to be found in money. And it's not going to be found in all these things that would take – because they've just been proven to be nothing.

[00:10:38] And I think COVID is actually, as God said to Moses about Pharaoh, that Pharaoh intended to harm the Israelite people, and yet God used Pharaoh's, even his wicked intentions, for good. I think COVID in one respect is a little bit like that. On surface level, it appeared to be this great damaging thing. Of course, it was in many respects. However, for us, spiritually speaking, it has exposed people to the emptiness of the world and the gospel contrasts with that.

[00:11:07] That's in the Australian perspective. What do you think about that in the States? Is that right? Yeah. Well, it's interesting. So in the States, you're dealing with a – I think around that time, you have a large percentage of population who are going to church for different reasons. And what happened, I think, is COVID actually made them realize, hey, you know what? I don't know if we really need to go to church anymore. We don't really take this seriously.

[00:11:33] And so having – doing my doctorate during those COVID years, I was with a lot of pastors of small towns and small congregations who were just watching church after church after church start to board up because their numbers had just dwindled so drastically. Some of that was due to deaths, but a lot of it was due to people realizing, I think we could have more fun on our own. We don't really need to waste all this time on Sunday.

[00:12:03] Sports started to dominate Sundays. It's almost like this kid's sports thing realized, hey, there's this whole day we haven't been using. Let's see if we can use it. And so they've kind of infiltrated that. So whereas we saw kind of a flip of that, we've also seen some of what you're describing, which is some people did genuinely go, whoa, wait a second. This – something's not right and we've got to get our priorities reorganized here. And so they started investigating.

[00:12:33] And one of the things is we have a culture of a lot of churches around, especially particularly here in the southeast of the United States. And so you started – we started seeing people coming in saying, you know, we're looking for purpose, meaning, all these sorts of things. You also had a lot of volatility in the United States, a lot of bitterness, a lot of anger. You had a lot of churches that were getting kind of loose on certain sort of moral topics, political topics.

[00:12:59] And so then people were looking for a church that would stand and not sort of cave in to whatever the society was trying to push at that time. Yeah, I think it's been a little bit different. I think there's been a lot of similarities to what you just described. But I think, you know, having ministered in Australia for a number of years while we were there together, what we had there was different.

[00:13:24] And I remember there was just a general kind of ignorance about church in the culture, whereas in the States you wouldn't have had an ignorance. I mean, even some of our neighbors were like – I would tell them I worked in the church and they thought, I don't even know where the church is or what you do there, you know. Whereas you've got a little bit stronger culture of people have a general idea of what's going on.

[00:13:47] And so the Christians in the churches in Australia in the sort of 2015 to 2018 when we were there was very much like you were there for a reason. Oftentimes a lot of the young people in our church, their parents were not believers. We saw quite a lot of that. And so they had really genuinely committed their lives to the Lord. They were sold out. They were really in it for all the real true reasons.

[00:14:13] And the flip side of that, again, is in the States you had people who were like, this is just what we do. My family comes here. This is just kind of my general practice. And then when COVID hit, again, like I said, I think they thought, I don't know if I'm getting anything out of this. Now, sometimes that could be attributed to the fact that they were probably in a church that just didn't take the gospel seriously. Yeah. And so there was no need for them to stick around. No, no, that's right.

[00:14:41] I think it's worth us identifying what's going on there. And I think actually this cultural moment and why churches, ministers, pastors, Christians, why we need to view this cultural moment as the opportunity that we do to not only be ready to present the gospel. And we just always need to continually get better and better and better and work and drive ourselves to am I equipped?

[00:15:10] If someone said to me, what's a Christian? If someone said, what is Christianity? What is real Christianity? Could I answer that? Can I answer that? And I think the cultural moment that we have is one that, so we've come through COVID. There's deep division in Australia and America, not the same in the States as here. It's slightly different, but a whole range of things going on culturally and socially.

[00:15:31] Now, I think what's happened, brother, and I think we see this at the churches who are seeing the most evangelistic fruit, as is always the case, by the way, are the ones who don't pander to culture, who do not pander and compromise in the face of social. Revolutionary and sexuality or any of these social issues. So it's those churches that see the most conversions, always have, always will be. And I think that's particularly been the case coming through what's just happened.

[00:15:58] And I think we can see in the Bible that that's exactly the pattern of what happens, that when the apostles and the disciples are persecuted in the book of Acts, they rejoice for the privilege of being persecuted for the sake of the name. It's their willingness to stand out that allows them to most clearly proclaim the gospel and provides that platform for them to do just that. And they're willing to do it. That actually is compromise that cancels us.

[00:16:27] We self-cancel ourselves by compromise and by saying, oh, I'm not going to talk about this. Even if I believe it, I'm not going to talk about it because I don't want to offend anyone. Now, why is that so resonating in this cultural moment? Well, I think if we can't see the reality of the explosion of social media and the internet and the rise of the death of mainstream media who have been the gatekeepers over knowledge and information and therefore power.

[00:16:55] And so now we have, you know, you've got a microphone and a camera. They'll let anyone on. Even Jonathan. Yeah, that's right. So we now have a freedom of information, like an open-air market of info, which I love and I think is wonderful. But it means that young men, young women, they're tuning in and being exposed to ideas and concepts, which I never got in my school. I was never exposed to on the nightly news or the mainstream newspapers here.

[00:17:23] I might get it home because I had a wonderful Christian family. We talked about things. But now the 13, 14-year-old has been exposed to these ideas. They're unfiltered. They're allowed to talk about them. And what that means is they're not offended that we talk about them. They're not shocked because Andrew Tate or Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson or George Janko, Mr. Well, not Mr. Beast doesn't talk about them really.

[00:17:47] But that there's a platform continually through TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and the rest of it where people are discussing this. So when they come to our churches and when we speak about truth as the Bible presents it, come what may, in season, out of season, that we preach the word and we don't pander and compromise, but we carefully, lovingly explain the truth about God, the gospel, and the perspective of all life that that brings.

[00:18:16] The offense that they've been told the generation prior that you should have is gone. And, of course, that allows them to listen better and to be confronted by these truths. And I think there's a big part of that going on.

[00:18:30] And, therefore, just what a great encouragement to us to continue standing firm, realizing that it's our ability to stand on the foundation of the gospel, to not compromise our faith, that provides the greatest platform for gospel growth. It's salt. We stand out. And the more we pander and pretend like the Bible doesn't say what it does, well, the less people will listen. Why would you bother? Yeah.

[00:18:59] And I think we've seen that. We've seen that in Australia. And I dare say in the States as well, that must be happening. And the timing is important because I think, as you just said, there are now so many voices. Anyone with a camera and a microphone can have access to an unlimited amount of people. And with so many voices, some of those voices might kind of be wolves in sheep's clothing, kind of saying that they're presenting a Christian message. And it's not.

[00:19:28] So, there's a need to proliferate, get the unvarnished message out there at such a time as this. This is not the time to sort of sit back and see what's going to come of this. How is this all going to develop? There's a need to kind of protect that message, too. You're spot on, brother. And listen, I'll name names. I'll use Dr. Jordan Peterson, who I deeply admire and respect his intellect.

[00:19:54] But from everything I can pick up from listening to him, he's not a born-again believer. And in fact, the version of Christianity that he espouses is not biblical Christianity. It's a works-based righteousness. It's got a new clothing, but it's a works-based righteousness. Now, God can use a donkey to bring people in.

[00:20:16] He uses the high priest to prophesy about Christ as well, that people are coming into churches by virtue of being exposed to some of the arguments of Peterson and Rogan and some of these guys. It's been wonderful to actually watch Joe Rogan move from hostility and utter incoherent ignorance of the Bible to actually now listen to the truth of the Bible and hear it and become more positive to the gospel.

[00:20:44] He's not a Christian, but to be exposed to it all. But here's the key thing, and I think we need to continually remind ourselves, the best exposure the world can have to the gospel isn't the internet. It's us in our lives, matched and partnered with resources and things online. We need to flood the airways with the truth about the gospel.

[00:21:08] But even then, we need to realize that, hey, you know the guy who's looking at Jordan Peterson or listening to whoever, and he's piqued an interest? The most effective way of then engaging that individual is that if they know a Christian, the Christian is willing to share their faith with them or bring them to church or send them a link or whatever. So we don't sit back and rest and rely on these gateway drugs to the gospel that people will just, oh, and then people will turn up to churches. No, no, no.

[00:21:38] You know over 90% of people, and this is a statistic, brother, that I want to get tattooed on my face, you know, that 90% of adult conversions have one thing in common. What is it? They know a Christian. And that Christian they point to as implicitly or explicitly influential in their investigation and entry into the Christian faith.

[00:22:02] Now, that means the people most likely to be converted are the people we know. So we've got to be ready. We've got to be proactive, but we've got to be equipped. We've got to bring. We've got to speak. We've got to share. We've got to all those things. And, you know, to be hopeful, to be expectant that the harvest is plentiful, that we are pouring ourselves out to this regardless of the cultural moment we're in, you know, but also being excited that, hey, there's great opportunity here.

[00:22:31] Is there a need to nuance the way you present a message to a young person, to an older person, to male, female, or is it you just need to have your answer ready to any and all? It's both and. So, yes. Yes. The answer is yes. And I think the scriptures are the best model for us in this.

[00:22:56] Now, I'm going to go out and I'm not going to use Acts chapter 17 like everyone else always does. I'm going to use Acts 14. Now, in Acts 14, the Apostle Paul, this is the first cross-cultural evangelistic mission. You know, he goes out. And there is only one type of mission, evangelistic mission. So this is the first cross-cultural mission. And he goes into Iconium. Now, he's just said to the Jews that he's departed from, I'm done with you. I'm going to the Gentiles. He goes to Iconium. But where does he go when he gets there?

[00:23:26] Well, he goes to the synagogues again. And he preaches. Now, this is a Gentile place. He preaches the gospel. And some people believe. He preaches so effectively. We're told many people believe. Some people don't. Some people are curious. They want to find out more. The Apostle then stays and he spends time with them. And then he gets persecuted. He leaves. But then he comes back to them. Now, what we see is that in different places, in Philippi, where there's a group of earnest inquirers and believers meeting, you know, Lydia,

[00:23:56] meeting by a river, you know, that there's a different context by which he speaks. There's different places he speaks. But also that the way that the Apostle Paul engages individuals, whether Jew or Gentile, will therefore shape how he explains the gospel. But it will not change the very core of the gospel, but rather maybe how he enters in and maybe how he talks about the immediate consequence, whether Jew or Gentile.

[00:24:23] And I think for us, I've got to be honest, brother, the vast majority of Christians I know, myself included, we know we're good enough at giving a very plain and engaging explanation of the gospel to spend too much time worrying about nuance. You know, I want to say the best thing you can do is to learn the basics and the foundations and to practice it again and again and again. And here's what then happens.

[00:24:49] You realize that, hey, a little bit like, now, would you call it mini golf or putt-putt golf? Yeah, either one of those. Yeah. What's the aim of that? What's success when it comes to putt-putt mini golf? Getting close to the hole. Well, no, more than that, getting the ball in the hole. So if we view that as, hey, I'm aiming everything towards presenting the gospel, telling people God made it, we broke it, Jesus fixed it, there's a nine-word summary.

[00:25:16] Then that means sometimes you take five hits to get the ball. Sometimes if you're me, you take 500 hits to get the ball in. Sometimes it's a hole in one. But actually, I'm always aiming at the same place. And so when I begin a conversation evangelistically, I don't want to be an expert in their belief system. I can't possibly. I speak to people of every type of background imaginable. I know I can't be an expert in Islam and Jung and Buddhism.

[00:25:43] I'm glad there are Christian experts in all of those things for us to share their knowledge. But the most important thing I can do speaking to a Muslim or a Presbyterian background, non-Christian or whatever, is be an expert in the gospel and ask them questions about what they believe. And then be ready to putt-putt-putt. Okay. Now's my moment. I'm going to present the gospel. I think that's the best thing you can do.

[00:26:08] Be loving, be kind, ask questions, and really be an expert in what it is that you believe. That's my gut. What do you reckon? Yeah, I think you're right. I think probably our biggest deficiency is even in articulating. I still think a lot of Christians in the church would define Christianity through moralism or

[00:26:29] certainly the rise of the political lens of their faith, the need to believe and hold to these certain political ideologies that are only kind of specific to our own time period, some of those things. And here's been my experience, Dave. In the last year and a half or so of opportunities for evangelism, I've found these sort of people

[00:26:53] similar to my age, 30s, 40s, they'll often say, well, this is what I experienced when I was in the church. And it's always something really not terribly tragic, but it's something that I'm like, that's not a major issue. That I would not consider a hill to die on. But what their experience was, believers who wanted to die on a completely unnecessary hill that wasn't the gospel. And so what is the message?

[00:27:21] They end up getting secondary and tertiary things which are presented to them as the core of Christianity. And they're going to reject that almost every single time unless their worldview aligns with those things, which then they have bought into a false gospel. And so what I'm seeing is that they have a lot of frustration over things that are not of highest importance. And so then when I present to them, because I always tell them, I said, what you need to deal with is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

[00:27:50] And then when that is presented to them, all of a sudden it's like, this isn't what I have heard in other places or from other Christians. And it's like almost like a brand new thing to them. Now, it's always been a part of probably what those people who have shared with them and spoken with them have wanted to get across, but either inarticulate or perhaps didn't have the verbiage, whatever it was. And so I'm like, if we could just get to that point, we would be, I think we'd be blown

[00:28:19] away with how many people would be coming in the doors. Amen. You've hit on what I want to offer is the huge penny drop moment for me personally as an evangelist that really was, I've seen now in 15 years of ministry over and over again, just what you've articulated. Absolutely. And here it is. We need to understand what God tells us stops people believing. And then we need to address that. Okay.

[00:28:47] So what is it that stops people believing? 2 Corinthians 4, the God of this age, that's the devil, blinds the eyes so they cannot see. Now, what that means really clearly is that people who are not Christians and whether they think they're Christians or not, whether they're nominal Christian believers, they're not believers if they're nominal, all those things, whoever their background, why don't they believe? They don't believe because they do not know the gospel. And when I say no, they may have done catechism.

[00:29:17] They may have been able to recite it off by heart, but they do not in their heart know the gospel. They do not understand the gospel. That's what that means. They don't get it. Now, I want to offer to you that in thousands of evangelistic conversations that I've had, when I ask people my go-to question, and my go-to question is, what is a Christian? I just ask people, how would you define what a Christian is? That's my putt-putt golf, my sort of my setup shot. You know, so we can talk about sexuality.

[00:29:46] We can talk about evolution. We can talk about suffering. But at one point, I want to say, hey, it's a really helpful thing to establish where I'm coming from by understanding what my whole belief system is. So, what do you think a Christian is? What is a Christian? And brother, I've had one non-Christian answer that correctly, and that person was a seminary graduate who'd apostatized and walked away from Jesus. You know, everyone else has said something, and here it is.

[00:30:13] What they say indicates exactly the problem you've identified. What is it that you think they say a Christian is? What do you think? Like someone who does everything right and, you know, judges other people. Yep. Yep. So, they either positively or negatively say, works what you do. Now, that stands to reason 99.99999% of other religions say that. But, of course, it's at that distinguishing moment that the gospel shines its brightest

[00:30:43] light, that we're not made right with God by what we do, but by what Jesus has done on our behalf. Now, they do not know that. They do not get it. Okay? So, that's our great opportunity. So, when they say that back, I say, oh, well, actually, the Bible says something different to that. Can I tell you what the Bible says? And then get to the core of the gospel. Also, that answer they give, it shows you what they think we're all about. Okay? They think we are all about moralism.

[00:31:13] Yeah. Performance. Performance. Performance. And depending on what part of the world you're in, that will look different. So, when I lived in Northern Ireland, I lived during the time when abortion was made legal in Northern Ireland. It had been illegal. The only place in Europe, I think, really. Or certainly in Western Europe. But there was a bunch of reasons it had been made legal. And that, obviously, amongst the Christian community, was deeply distressing.

[00:31:40] And it became the big thing everyone talked about. Now, please don't mishear me, brother. I'm as pro-life as you could possibly get. And I think it's a wonderful thing. But here's the thing. Making everyone pro-life is not the aim of the gospel. Making everyone a Christian, someone who bows the knee before the king of kings. And you want to see America or Northern Ireland or Australia become pro-life, you know the best way to do that? Convert. That's exactly right. You know? One thing has to come before the other. Spot on. Spot on.

[00:32:09] And it's like that expression, don't put the cart before the horse. You've heard that before? Yeah. Don't put the cart before the horse. Well, flip it around. Again, it's don't put the cart before the horse. What we want to do is put the heart before the course. Okay? So we want to put the human heart before the action. We want to put the heart before God, before the behavior. And so we always need to stand up for the morality of the Bible. John the Baptist lost his head standing up for biblical morality. So I'm all about it.

[00:32:38] But I also want to say, hey, I don't want to get to the end of my life and think about the person I persuaded politically or the person I persuaded on morality. And think, but man, I never engaged them with the gospel. Right. You know? Because if Jesus is truly the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the one who will judge, who will return, if all of that is true, then that means very clearly that what matters most in life is not what happens now. It's what happens next. And I need to have that eternal perspective. That's Hebrews 12, isn't it?

[00:33:07] For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross, scorning its shame. In other words, what matters most is eternity. And I need to have that perspective shape. Now, understanding that most non-Christians think Christianity is about morality and works means very clearly when we evangelize, we need to make our argument all about grace. And where can you see grace most clearly? On the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that needs to be the focal point of what we discuss.

[00:33:35] And as you've said, brother, it's explosive to people, no matter who you are, because that's the gospel. That's the power. That's right. That's the power. That's the nuance, I think, right? It's the distinguishing mark between a moralistic gospel and a grace-centered gospel. And I think you're right. I think there can be nuance in how do I speak to a young person versus an older person. But if you've spent all your time on the nuance and missed the core and getting the heart of it right, it's for naught.

[00:34:06] It's for naught. And so we're going to start in our minds at the ending. So what's the ending of this? And can I say, we've been blessed by so many things from the United States. One of them evangelistically most powerful for me, though, was Evangelism Explosion by James Kennedy, I think it was Coral Ridge, Presbyterian. Coral Ridge, yeah. Yeah. And two questions at the center of that gospel presentation. And these are the questions I want to engage every non-Christian with, every person, no matter who they are. One, are you going to heaven when you die? What do you think?

[00:34:36] And two, if you did die tonight and God said, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you say? Now, can I tell you, I mean, it's almost impossible for a non-Christian to answer that. To even begin to answer what they think a Christian would say. Even in the ballpark, yeah. Yeah. And that, the wrong answer gives us the opportunity to lovingly correct it. You know, but if we're obsessed, right wing or left wing?

[00:35:04] If you're obsessed with climate change and global warming, well, I don't know if you know this, but Jesus, there's coming a time where this world will end anyway. Okay. With fire. With fire. That's it. But if you're obsessed with destroying the climate change alarmism, well, guess what? You can do all of that and people are still going to hell. So, we've got to rise above right wing, left wing. There's nothing wrong with having a political opinion. But the most important thing about every Christian must be the gospel.

[00:35:33] And the gospel shapes how we view eternity. And that means eternity must shape how we view the here and now and prioritize things correctly. Well, these are timeless truths, right? This is the core of the gospel. And this has been such a refreshing reminder, Dave. And I'm so grateful that you've taken the time to kind of remind us of these things. Because I think in our humanity, in our human nature, right? What do Adam and Eve do?

[00:36:00] They try and sew fig leaves together, right? They try and cover their shame and their nakedness. And it's God who has to sacrifice the animal and make a blood sacrifice in order to rightly cover their bodies and cover their shame. And I think in our human nature, we look for things that will cover our shame. And I think we feel like moral law, moralism will do that when it's really the heartbeat

[00:36:28] of the gospel is the blood sacrifice of God himself. And so I'm grateful for you, brother. I'm grateful that, you know, we can have these conversations and remind people of what's at the core. And we just want to say thank you so much. And I'm grateful for you taking the time to share with us on Candid Conversations. Greatly grateful to God for you, brother, for your father, of course, for the ministry.

[00:36:56] But most of all, for our Savior, Jesus, and the partnership in the gospel here. So thanks so much for having me. And mate, I look forward to seeing you soon. Amen. Candid is a podcast from Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Don't forget to connect with our social media pages on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And subscribe to Candid Conversations on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. While there, please leave a review. It does help people find us.

[00:37:24] As always, thank you for listening to and sharing this episode.