I started ministry 18 years ago, and I remember early on, I would not ask people to make a decision to follow Jesus while I was teaching in the middle of the service. And I don't remember ever consciously, like, making that decision or having some hard stance against it. I remember later reflecting on those early years and thinking, like, how come I'm not, how come I'm not asking or inviting people to make a decision

to follow Jesus? And I think it was because I had grown up in a church culture and a Christian

culture where there was some, sometimes it could feel like emotionally manipulative where people

would like kind of get you all riled up and you'd be in a room and everyone else is doing it.

And so I guess I'll just raise my hand and repeat this prayer that the

pastor, the leader is asking me to pray. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want people just to

like raise their hands so that we could count numbers and then they would go on with the rest of their

life. And they didn't actually ever grow in discipleship. They never learned what it means to really

follow Jesus. They never counted the cost of following Jesus. They just kind of

repeated a prayer in an emotional service and went on with their life. And I didn't want them to think

that's what following Jesus look like because we see in the scriptures that following Jesus is this

crazy, deep, hard call to give up your life, to die to yourself, to serve a God, and to say, I'm not God, and I'm going to

give up all the things that I want to do in my own life, and instead follow the ways of King Jesus.

Anyway, I say all that to tell you that recently, I've just been feeling convicted, mainly because

I've been hearing more and more and more stories of guys who said, listen, I just came to church.

Some guy was teaching.

He presented the gospel.

I felt like I was using that to tug my heart, and I made a decision that day to follow Jesus.

And ever since then, I've been growing in my discipleship journey with him.

And I thought, dude, it would be terrible of me to present the gospel, and then somebody to feel like the spirit is moving in them and like, dang, that makes sense to me.

I want to follow Jesus and then never give them a conscious or a moment to actually make that conscious decision.

And so over the last two years, I've just said, every time I'm standing on a stage and somebody

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