Welcome. Welcome to Truth for Life, where today we begin a series titled Lessons for Life.

These are messages Alisturbeg originally taught to college students, but I think you'll see that the teaching applies to all of us at any age.

We begin by learning why it's imperative for Christians to be confident in the truth and power and relevance of the gospel.

At a bar down in Dallas, an old man chimed in, and I thought he was out of his head.

Because being a young man, I just laughed it off when I heard what the old man had said. He said, I wish I was 18 again,

to go where I've never been. I'm three-quarters home from the start to the end, and I wish I was 18 again. I don't know why I woke up with that old song by Sonny Throckmorton on my mind this morning, but I did. I think it's because in a very

similar and yet different way, when I come, as I come this morning to an opportunity like this,

I feel very much like that. It is that when I look out on you this morning, I have, I think,

a rightful sense of jealousy, jealous of the opportunity that now falls to you to seize the moment to bring the gospel

to this next generation. And if you want to be fit for that task, if you're serious about taking

up the challenge, it is imperative that you, like Timothy,

as Paul addresses him here in 2 Timothy 314, that you are both convinced and continuing.

It is imperative that you're convinced because even a casual reading of church history

reveals the fact that when Christians when the church loses confidence in the truth

power and relevance of the gospel along with that it loses any compelling sense of mission

William Booth who had founded the Salvation Army,

was asked what he thought were going to be the challenges of the church in the next generation,

in the next century. In Booth's day, of course, that was the challenge of the 20th century.

And this is Booth's reply. In answering your inquiry, I consider that the

chief dangers which confront the coming century will be, religion without the Holy Spirit,

Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven

without hell. His words, of course, were prophetic, as both the 20th and the 20th century have now revealed.

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