By the time I got out of preaching school, which was soon after my conversion, I had come to understand that soul winning was directly tied with how many one baptized. I followed that pledge for a good number of years. And, God has allowed me to stand with many in the baptistery waters.
However, soul winning is not a counting of trophies to be reported in the brotherhood journal. Lest I sound excusive, I'm not. We baptized a young man near 40 this morning as we did also a woman a bit younger. I believe in leading all to be buried in Jesus.
Yet, saving souls is more than immersion in water. It is saving souls; souls that are lost in the quagmire of humanity. Everywhere we turn there are good people and less good people whose souls have slipped away into rutualistic....ruts.
People are lost!
The handsome, the educated, the common laborer, the struggling single parent, the beauty and the beast....all are lost in that they no longer see themselves as of any value or worth. Rude society coupled with poor parenting has caused a multitude of men and women to assume they are useless. These souls are lost, lost, lost.
We can retrieve them. We can bring them back to life. We can speak newness into them; and hope, and confidence, and wonder.
Be about soul winning this week. If any should be at the waters of baptism, praise God. But, too, if any happen to be over a cup of coffee or in a waiting room and you seek to inspire someone back to greatness....this too would be winning of the soul.
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