Welcome to the Jeff Kaven show where we talk about the Bible, discipleship and evangelization putting it all together and living as activated disciples.

This is show 287 evangelization. What's holding you back?

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in Florida and I was in the middle of a training, a theological training school in Florida back in the 80s.

And I was given the responsibility of going to a beach in Florida and standing up on a picnic bench and proclaiming the gospel.

I am not kidding you. This was all a part of a class that I was a part of years ago about how do you share Christ with people publicly? I took the class and the assignment was go do it.

Well, good day to you, my friend. Jeff Kavens with you and it's good to talk to you again about all things evangelization and Bible and discipleship and what it means to follow Christ.

Today I want to talk to you about what's holding you back? What's holding you back from evangelizing? What's holding you back from sharing Christ with the people that you work with?

The people that you encounter throughout the week. I'm going to talk about five things today that I think are holding you back and my goal is to set you free, to help you to get over those hurdles so that you can do what deep down inside you know you're called to do.

Before I get to that, I want to tell you, I just got, I think it was a week and a half ago, my large print great adventure Bible. Oh, man, I am looking at my stack of Bibles and my bookcase right now at least one of them.

And I have several hard bound Bibles, but the large print great adventure Bible is hard bound and I don't have anything like this. This is beautiful. It is in color. It's the regular great adventure Bible, but it's much bigger, bigger text and beautiful cover a blue cover.

And I'm going to put it at the show notes for you. If you know of anybody who says, yeah, read the Bible, but I can't read the small print in those Bibles. Well, you can get them the great adventure Bible and they're going to, they're going to smile when they see it. Trust me.

So we'll put that in the show notes for you. And thank you, by the way, for all your feedback, both on this show and my daily reflection on, on the hello app. It's so good to hear from you regularly.

Okay, so we're talking about evangelization. What's holding you back? Now the reason I want to, I want to keep hammering this topic is it really comes from the what I'm hearing people say.

And I know that people are watching, you know, cable news and network news and there's so many hot topics, you know, politics and medicine and you name it going on out there.

And people are just talking about it and what the way our country is going and oh, no, what's happening to our children and how can we ever expect that our children are going to break through all this garbage and so forth.

And we talk about it, but, but the answer is really taking the truth, which is in your heart, my friend, and bringing it to the world.

We have to stop talking to each other about simply the church and what we already know we've got to bring this message to broken people.

And I've had several shows over the last number of years on the curriculum and sharing the gospel with one another and how easy that is.

I'll give you an example on today's show just in a little bit of a man that I encountered just this last week. In fact, I've even thought about sharing with you every week, at least one encounter that I have and how we get the job done and how we open up conversations and so forth.

So these are the five things that I think are holding you back or maybe it's one, maybe it's two, but for most people, they can identify with one of these things.

Now, when it comes to sharing the Lord with whoever, I have found that these opportunities usually come quickly. They come very quickly.

I'll give you the example that I was talking about just a moment ago. I was at Starbucks with a friend of mine and we were shooting a video for a revelation study that I'm doing for the Catechetical Institute at the Seminary of St. Paul Minneapolis.

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