BORN TO REPRODUCE by Dawson E. Trotman
available in print-media from
NAVPRESS, a ministry of The Navigators
P.O.Box 6000, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80934
The Navigators is an international, evangelical Christian
organization. Jesus Christ gave His followers the Great
Commission to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). The aim of
The Navigators is to help fulfill that commission by multiplying
laborers for Christ in every nation.
NavPress is the publishing ministry of The Navigators.
NavPress publications are tools to help Christians grow.
Although publications alone cannot make disciples or change
lives, they can help believers learn biblical discipleship, and
apply what they learn to their lives and ministries.
ISBN: 0-89109-404-0
24281
*
Dawson Trotman, converted at age 20, gave 30 years to
vigorous pursuit of the goal "to know Christ and make Him known."
Daws was a man who believed God, who asked Him for great things
and saw God answer. The ministry of The Navigators is one of
those answers. It began when another man asked Daws to teach him
what he saw practiced in Daw's life.
FOREWORD
In the summer of 1955 it was my privilege to meet Dawson
Trotman, director of The Navigators, for the first time. My
heart was thrilled not only with his vision of soulwinning but
also with the manner in which God had used this man to promote a
method of first winning an individual, then teaching him how to
win and teach others, multiplying the ministry in this manner,
supplementing the mass approach.
Through the years I have met Navigators who were trained
by either Dawson Trotman or one of his men and I have usually
found them to be people with a passion for souls, a good
knowledge of the Word and something that made them stand out as
individual Christians.
From the day when I met Dawson Trotman, our friendship
and fellowship grew by leaps and bounds. We spent many hours
together on various occasions, and almost overnight a David-
Johnathan love grew.
As I came to know this man better, I soon discovered the
secret of his power. Early in his Christian life, he and another
young man covenanted together to meet for prayer every morning
for six weeks in order to find God's will in a certain matter.
This spirit and practice of devotion was a rule of his life. He
rose early to pray and read God's Word. Without this devotion to
God he could not have been so successful in his service.
The unselfishness of Mr. Trotman could be seen on every
hand. There was no trying on his part to hoard information or
knowledge that he had gained in 22 years of experience, but
rather there was a willingness to share and to cooperate with us
in producing a much more thorough follow-up system for the Back
to the Bible Broadcast.
The Back to the Bible Broadcast Home Study Course, a
follow-up method for young Christians, was the result. Different
ones in the organization gave many hours of their time in helping
to produce this course, and Mr. Trotman himself supervised every
phase of it.
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Possibly one of the last major accomplishments of this
man was his untiring work in making this Bible course a reality.
It was a pooling of both experience and knowledge which we
believe will bear much fruit.
Mr. Trotman went to be with the Lord June 18, 1956. In
rescuing another person from drowning in Schroon Lake, New York,
he lost his own life. How characteristic this was of his
lifelong ministry! One man summed it up in these words: "I
think Daws has personally touched more lives than anybody I have
ever known."
The work of The Navigators continues under able
leadership. It was solidly built on the principle of one person
training another instead of one person being the teacher of all.
My own life is dedicated to a greater effort than ever
before to follow persistently this great principle of Bible
memory work and person-to-person evangelism.
-Theodore H. Epp
*
BORN TO REPRODUCE
A few years ago, while visiting Edinburgh, Scotland, I
stood on High Street just down from the castle. As I stood
there, I saw a father and a mother coming toward me pushing a
baby carriage. They looked very happy, were well dressed and
apparently were well-to-do. I tried to catch a glimpse of the
baby as they passed and, seeing my interest, they stopped to let
me look at the little, pink-cheeked member of their family.
I watched them for a little while as they walked on and
thought how beautiful it is that God permits a man to chose one
woman who seems the most beautiful and lovely to him, and she
chooses him out of all the men whom she has ever known. Then
they separate themselves to one another, and God in His plan
gives them the means of reproduction! It is a wonderful thing
that a little child should be born into their family, having some
of the father's characteristics and some of the mother's, some of
his looks and some of hers. Each sees in that baby a reflection
of the one whom he or she loves.
Seeing that little one made me feel homesick for my own
children whom I dearly love and whose faces I had not seen for
some time. As I continued to stand there I saw another baby
carriage, or perambulator as they call it over there, coming in
my direction. It was a secondhand affair and very wobbly.
Obviously the father and mother were poor. Both were dressed
poorly and plainly, but when I indicated my interest in seeing
their baby, they stopped and with the same pride as the other
parents let me view their little, pink-cheeked, beautiful-eyed
child.
I thought as these went on their way, "God gave this
little baby whose parents are poor everything that He gave the
other. It has five little fingers on each hand, a little mouth
and two eyes. Properly cared for, those little hands may someday
be the hands of an artist or a musician."
Then this other thought came to me, "Isn't it wonderful
that God did not select the wealthy and the educated and say,
'You can have children,' and to the poor and uneducated say, 'You
cannot.' Everyone on earth has that privilege."
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The first order ever given to man was that he "be
fruitful and multiply." In other words, he was to reproduce
after his own kind. God did not tell Adam and Eve, our first
parents, to be spiritual. They were already in His image. Sin
had not yet come in. He just said, "Multiply. I want more just
like you, more in My own image."
Of course, the image was marred. But Adam and Eve had
children. They began to multiply. There came a time, however,
when God had to destroy most of the flesh that had been born. He
started over with eight people. The more than two billion people
who are on the earth today came from the eight who were in the
ark, because they were fruitful and multiplied.
HINDRANCES
Only a few things will ever keep human beings from
multiplying themselves in the physical realm. One is that they
never marry. If they are not united, they will not reproduce.
This is a truth which Christians need to grasp with reference to
spiritual reproduction. When a person becomes a child of God, he
should realize that he is to live in union with Jesus Christ if
he is going to win others to the Saviour.
Another factor that can hinder reproduction is disease or
impairment to some part of the body that is needed for
reproductive purposes. In the spiritual realm sin is the disease
that can keep one from winning the lost.
One other thing that can keep people from having children
is immaturity. God in His wisdom saw to it that little children
cannot have babies. A little boy must first grow to sufficient
maturity to be able to earn a living, and a little girl must be
old enough to care for a baby.
Everyone should be born again. That is God's desire.
God never intended that man should merely live and die--be a
walking corpse to be laid in the ground. The vast majority of
people know that there is something beyond the grave, and so each
one who is born into God's family should seek others to be born
again.
A person is born again when he receives Jesus Christ.
"But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the
sons of God...Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12,13)--
the new birth. It is God's plan that these new babes in Christ
grow. All provision is made for their growth into maturity, and
then they are to multiply--not only the rich or the educated, but
all alike. Every person who is born into God's family is to
multiply.
In the physical realm when your children have children,
you become a grandparent. Your parents are then great-
grandparents, and theirs are great-great-grandparents. And so it
should be in the spiritual.
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SPIRITUAL BABES
Wherever you find a Christian who is not leading men and
women to Christ, something is wrong. He may still be a babe. I
do not mean that he does not know a lot of doctrine and is not
well informed through hearing good preaching. I know many people
who can argue the pre-, the post- and the amillenial position and
who know much about dispensations, but who are still immature.
Paul said of some such in Corinth, "And I, brethren, could not
speak unto you as unto spiritual (or mature), but as unto carnal,
even as unto babes..." (1 Corinthians 3:1).
Because they were babes, they were immature, incapable of
spiritual reproduction. In other words, they could not help
other people to be born again. Paul continued, "I have fed you
with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to
bear it ... ye are yet carnal (or babes): for ... there is among
you envying, and strife, and divisions..." (1 Corinthians 3:2,3).
I know a lot of church members, Sunday school teachers and
members of the women's missionary society who will say to each
other, "Have you heard about so and so?" and pass along some
gossip. Such have done an abominable thing in the sight of God.
How horrible it is when a Christian hears something and spreads
the story! The Book says, "These six things doth the Lord hate:
yea, seven are an abomination unto Him...a lying tongue..." (
Proverbs 6:16,17). Oh, the Christians I know, both men and
women, who let lying come in! "...he that soweth discord among
brethren" (Proverbs 16:19) is another. This is walking as a
babe, and I believe that it is one of the basic reasons why some
Christians do not have people born again into God's family
through them. They are sick spiritually. There is something
wrong. There is a spiritual disease in their lives. They are
immature. There is not that union with Christ.
But when all things are right between you and the Lord,
regardless of how much or how little you may know intellectually
from the standpoint of the world, you can be a spiritual parent.
And that, incidentally, may even be when you are very young in
the Lord.
A young lady works at the telephone desk in our office in
Colorado Springs. A year and a half ago she was associated with
the young Communist league in Great Britain. She heard Billy
Graham and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. Soon she and a couple
other girls in her art and drama school were used of the Lord to
win some girls to Christ. We taught Pat and some of the others,
and they in turn taught the girls whom they led to Christ. Some
of these have led still other girls to Christ, and they too are
training their friends. Patricia is a great-grandmother already,
though she is only about a year and four months old in the Lord.
We see this all the time. I know a sailor who, when he
was only four months old in the Lord, was a great-grandfather.
He had led some sailors to the Lord who in turn led other sailors
to the Lord, and these last led still other sailors to the Lord--
yet he was only four months old.
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How was this done? God used the pure channel of these
young Christians' lives in their exuberance and first love for
Christ, and out of their hearts the incorruptible seed of the
Word of God was sown in the hearts of other people. It took
hold. Faith came by the hearing of the Word. They were born
again by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They observed those
Christians who led them to Christ and shared in the joy, the
peace and the thrill of it all. And in their joy, they wanted
someone else to know.
In every Christian audience, I am sure there are men and
women who have been Christians for five, ten or twenty years but
who do not know of one person who is living for Jesus Christ
today because of them. I am not talking now about merely working
for Christ, but about producing for Christ. Someone may say, "I
gave out a hundred thousand tracts." That is good, but how many
sheep did you bring in?"
Some time ago I talked to 29 missionary candidates. They
were graduates of universities or Bible schools or seminaries.
As a member of the board I interviewed each one over a period of
five days, giving each candidate from half an hour to an hour.
Among the questions I asked were two which are very important.
The first one had to do with their devotional life. "How is your
devotional life?" I asked them. "How is the time you spend with
the Lord? Do you feel that your devotional life is what the Lord
would have it to be?"
Out of this particular group of 29 only one person said,
"I believe my devotional life is what it ought to be." To the
others my question then was, "Why is your devotional life not
what it should be?"
"Well, you see, I am here at this summer institute," was
a common reply. "We have a concentrated course. We do a year's
work in only ten weeks. We are so busy."
I said, "All right. Let's back up to when you were in
college. Did you have victory in your devotional life then?"
"Well, not exactly."
We traced back and found that never since they came to
know the Saviour had they had a period of victory in their
devotional lives. That was one of the reasons for sterility--
lack of communion with Christ.
The other question I asked them was, "You are going out
to the foreign field. You hope to be used by the Lord in winning
men and women to Christ. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"You want them to go on and live the victorious life,
don't you? You don't want them just to make a decision and then
go back into the world, do you?"
"No."
"Then may I ask you something more? How many persons do
you know by name today who were won to Christ by you and are
living for Him?"
"The majority had to admit that they were ready to cross
an ocean and learn a foreign language, but they had not won their
first soul who was going on with Jesus Christ. A number of them
said that they got many people to go to church; others said they
had persuaded some to go forward when the invitation was given.
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I asked, "Are they living for Christ now?" Their eyes
dropped. I then continued, "How do you expect that by crossing
an ocean and speaking in a foreign language with people who are
suspicious of you, whose way of life is unfamiliar, you will be
able to do there what you have not yet done here?"
These questions do not apply to missionaries and
prospective missionaries only. They apply to all of God's
people. Every one of His children ought to be a reproducer.
Are you producing? If not, why not? Is it because of a
lack of communion with Christ, your Lord, that closeness of
fellowship which is part of the great plan? Or is it some sin in
your life, an unconfessed something, that has stopped the flow?
Or is it that you are still a babe? "For when for the time ye
ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again..."
(Hebrews 5:12).
HOW TO PRODUCE REPRODUCERS
The reason that we are not getting this Gospel to the
ends of the earth is not because it is not potent enough.
Twenty-three years ago we took a born-again sailor and
spent some time with him, showing him how to reproduce
spiritually after his kind. It took time, lots of time. It was
not a hurried, 30-minute challenge in a church service and a
hasty good-bye with an invitation to come back next week. We
spent time together. We took care of his problems and taught him
not only to hear God's Word and to read it, but also how to study
it. We taught him how to fill the quiver of his heart with the
arrows of God's Word, so that the Spirit of God could lift an
arrow from his heart and place it to the bow of his lips and
pierce a heart for Christ.
He found a number of boys on his ship, but none of them
would go all out for the Lord. They would go to church, but when
it came right down to doing something, they were "also rans." He
came to me after a month of this and said, "Dawson, I can't get
any of these guys on the ship to get down to business."
I said to him, "Listen, you ask God to give you one. You
can't have two until you have one. Ask God to give you a man
after your own heart."
He began to pray. One day he came to me and said, "I
think I've found him." Later he brought the young fellow over.
Three months from the time I started to work with him, he had
found a man of like heart. This first sailor was not the kind of
man you had to push and give prizes to before he would do
something. He loved the Lord and was willing to pay a price to
produce. He worked with this new babe in Christ, and those two
fellows began to grow and spiritually reproduce. On that ship
125 men found the Saviour before it was sunk at Pearl Harbor.
Men off that first battleship are in four continents of the world
as missionaries today. It was necessary to make a start,
however. The devil's great trick is to stop anything like this
if he can before it gets started. He will stop you, too, if you
let him.
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There are Christians whose lives run in circles who,
nevertheless, have the desire to be spiritual parents. Take a
typical example. You meet him in the morning as he goes to work
and say to him, "Why are you going to work?"
"Well, I have to earn money."
"What are you earning money for?" you ask.
"Well," he replies, "I have to buy food."
"What do you want food for?"
"I have to eat so as to have strength to go to work and
earn some more money."
"What do you want more money for?"
"I have to buy clothes so that I can be dressed to go to
work and earn some more money."
"What do you want more money for?"
"I have to buy a house or pay the rent so I will have a
place to rest up, so I will be fit to work and earn some more
money." And so it goes. There are many Christians like that who
are going in big circles. But you continue your questioning and
ask, "What else do you do?"
"Oh, I find time to serve the Lord. I am preaching here
and there." But down behind all of this he has the one desire to
be a spiritual father. He is praying that God will give him a
man to teach. It may take six months. It need not take that
long, but maybe it takes him six months to get him started taking
in the Word and giving it out and getting ready to teach a man
himself.
So this first man at the end of six months has another
man. Each man starts teaching another in the following six
months. At the end of the year, there are just four of them.
Perhaps each one teaches a Bible class or helps in a street
meeting, but at the same time his main interest is in his man and
how he is doing. So at the end of the year the four of them get
together and have a prayer meeting and determine, "Now, let's not
allow anything to sidetrack us. Let's give the Gospel out to a
lot of people, but let's check up on at least one man and see him
through."
So the four of them in the next six months each get a
man. That makes eight at the end of a year and a half. They all
go out after another and at the end of two years there are 16
men. At the end of three years there are 64; the 16 have doubled
twice. At the end of five years there are 1,024. At the end of
fifteen and a half years there are approximately 2,147,500,000.
That is the present population of the world of persons over three
years of age.
But wait a minute! Suppose that after the first man, A,
helps B and B is ready to get his man while A starts helping
another, B is sidetracked, washes out and does not produce his
first man. Fifteen and one-half years later you can cut your
2,147,500,000 down to 1,073,7500 because the devil caused B to be
sterile.
God promised Abraham "... in Isaac shall thy seed be
called" (Genesis 21:12), so Abraham waited a long, long time for
that son. God's promise to make Abraham the father of many
nations was all wrapped up in that one son, Isaac. If Hitler had
been present and had caused Isaac's death when Abraham had his
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knife poised over him on Mount Moriah, Hitler could have killed
every Jew in that one stroke.
I believe that is why Satan puts all his efforts into
getting the Christian busy, busy, busy, but not producing.
Men, where is your man? Women, where is your woman?
Where is the one whom you led to Christ and who is now going on
with Him?
There is a story in 1 Kings, chapter 20 about a man who
gave a prisoner to a servant and instructed the servant to guard
the prisoner well. But as the servant was busy here and there
the prisoner made his escape.
The curse of today is that we are too busy. I am not
talking about being busy earning money to buy food. I am talking
about being busy doing Christian things. We have spiritual
activity with little productivity. And productivity comes as a
result of what we call "follow-up."
MAJORING IN REPRODUCING
Five years ago, Billy Graham came to me and said, "Daws,
we would like you to help with our follow-up. I've been studying
the great evangelists and the great revivals and I fail to see
that there was much of a follow-up program. We need it. We are
having an average of 6,000 people come forward to decide for
Christ in a month's campaign. I feel that with the work you have
done you could come in and help us."
I said, "Billy, I can't follow up 6,000 people. My work
has always been with individuals and small groups."
"Look, Daws," he answered, "everywhere I go I meet
Navigators. I met them in school in Wheaton. They are in my
school right now. (He was president of Northwestern Schools at
that time.) There must be something to this."
"I just don't have time." I said.
He tackled me again. The third time he pled with me and
said, "Daws, I am not able to sleep nights for thinking of what
happens to the converts after a crusade is over."
At that time I was on my way to Formosa and I said,
"While I am there I will pray about it, Billy." On the sands of
a Formosan beach I paced up and down two or three hours a day
praying, "Lord, how can I do this? I am not even getting the
work done You have given me to do. How can I take six months of
the year to give to Billy?" But God laid the burden upon my
heart.
Why should Billy have asked me to do it? I had said to
him that day before I left for Formosa, "Billy, you will have to
get somebody else."
He took me by the shoulders and said, "Who else? Who is
majoring in this?" I had been majoring in it.
What will it take to jar us out of our complacency and
send us home to pray, "God, give me a girl or man whom I can win
to Christ, or let me take one who is already won, an infant in
Christ, and try to train that one so that he or she will
reproduce!"
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How thrilled we are to see the masses fill up the seats!
But where is your man? I would rather have one "Isaac" alive
than a hundred dead, or sterile, or immature.
BEGINNING OF FOLLOW-UP
One day years ago, I was driving along in my little Model
T Ford and saw a young man walking down the street. I stopped
and picked him up. As he got into the car, he swore and said,
"It's sure tough to get a ride." I never hear a man take my
Saviour's name in vain but what my heart aches. I reached into
my pocket for a tract and said, "Lad, read this."
He looked up at me and said, "Haven't I seen you
somewhere before?"
I looked at him closely. He looked like someone I should
know. We figured out that we had met the year before on the same
road. He was on his way to a golf course to caddy when I picked
him up. He had gotten into my car and had started out the same
way with the name "Jesus Christ." I had taken exception to his
use of that name and had opened up the New Testament and shown
him the way of salvation. He had accepted Jesus Christ as his
Saviour. In parting I had given him Philippians 1:6, "Being
confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good
work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." "God
bless you, son. Read this," I said, and sped on my merry way.
A year later, there was no more evidence of the new birth
and the new creature in this boy than if he had never heard of
Jesus Christ.
I had a great passion to win souls and that was my great
passion. But after I met this boy the second time on the way to
the golf course, I began to go back and find some of my
"converts." I want to tell you, I was sick at heart. It seemed
that Philippians 1:6 was not working.
An Armenian boy came into my office one day and told me
about all the souls he had won. He said that they were all
Armenians and had the list to prove it.
I said, "Well, what is this one doing?"
He said, "That one isn't doing so good. He is
backslidden."
"What about this one?" We went all down the list and
there was not one living a victorious life.
I said, "Give me your Bible." I turned to Philippians
and put a cardboard right under the 6th verse, took a razor blade
out of my pocket and started to come down on the page. He
grabbed my hand and asked, "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to cut this verse out," I said, "It isn't
working."
Do you know what was wrong? I had been taking the 6th
verse away from its context, verses 3 through 7. Paul was not
just saying, "All right, the Lord has started something, He will
finish it." But you know, that is what some people tell me when
they win a soul. They say, "Well, I just committed him to God."
Suppose I meet someone who has a large family and say to
him, "Who is taking care of your children?"
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"My family? Oh, I left them with the Lord."
Right away I would say to that one, "I have a verse for
you: 'But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those
of his own house, he...is worse than an infidel'(1 Timothy 5:8)."
Paul said to the elders of the church at Ephesus, "Take
heed...to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made
you overseers..." (Acts 20:28). You cannot make God the
overseer. He makes you the overseer.
We began work on follow-up. This emphasis on finding and
helping some of the converts went on for a couple or three years
before the Navigator work started. By that time our work
included fewer converts but more time spent with the converts.
Soon I could say as Paul said to the Philippians, "I thank my God
upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine for
you all making request with joy, For your fellowship in the
Gospel from the first day until now" (Philippians 1:3-5). He
followed up his converts with daily prayer and fellowship. Then
he could say, "Being confident of this very thing, that He which
hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of
Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). In keeping with this the 7th
verse reads: "Even as it is met (or proper) for me to think this
of you all, because I have you in my heart..."
Before I had forgotten to follow up the people God had
reached through me. But from then on I began to spend time
helping them. That is why sometime later when that first sailor
came to me, I saw the value of spending three months with him. I
saw an Isaac in him. Isaac had Jacob, and Jacob had the twelve,
and all the rest of the nation came through them.
IT TAKES TIME TO DO GOD'S WORK
You can lead a soul to Christ in from 20 minutes to a
couple of hours. But it takes from 20 weeks to a couple of years
to get him on the road to maturity, victorious over the sins and
the recurring problems that come along. He must learn how to
make right decisions. He must be warned of the various "isms"
that are likely to reach out with their octopus arms and pull him
in and sidetrack him.
But when you get yourself a man, you have doubled your
ministry--in fact, you have more than doubled your ministry. Do
you know why? When you teach your man, he sees how it is done
and he imitates you.
If I were the minister of a church and had deacons or
elders to pass the plate and choir members to sing, I would say,
"Thank God for your help. We need you. Praise the Lord for
these extra things that you do," but I would keep pressing home
the big job--"Be fruitful and multiply." All these other things
are incidental to the supreme task of winning a man or woman to
Jesus Christ and then helping him or her to go on.
Where is your man? Where is your woman? Do you have
one? You can ask God for one. Search your hearts. Ask the
Lord, "Am I spiritually sterile? If I am, why am I?"
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Don't let your lack of knowledge stand in the way. It
used to be the plan of The Navigators in the early days that
whenever the sailors were with us for supper each fellow was
asked at the end of the meal to quote a verse.
I would say it this way, "Quote a verse you have learned
in the last 48 hours if you have one. Otherwise, just give us a
verse." One evening as we quoted verses around the table, my
little three-year-old daughter's turn came. There was a new
sailor next to her who did not think about her quoting Scripture,
so without giving her an opportunity, he began. She looked up at
him as much as to say, "I am a human being," then she quoted John
3:16 in her own way. "For God so loved the world, dat He gave
His only forgotten Son, dat WHOSOEVER believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life." She put the emphasis on the
"whosoever" because when she was first taught the verse she could
not pronounce that word. Days later that sailor came over
and said to me, "You know, I was going to quote that verse of
Scripture. It was the only one I knew. But I didn't really know
it, not until little Ruthie quoted it. When she said
'whosoever,' I thought, 'that means me.' Back on ship I accepted
the Lord." Today that young man is a missionary in South
America.
Until several years after we were married, my wife's
father did not know the Lord. Here again God used children to
reach a hungry heart. When Ruthie was three and Bruce was five,
they went to visit Grandpa and Grandma. Grandpa tried to get
them to repeat nursery rhymes. He said, "Mary had a little lamb"
and "Little Boy Blue," but the children just looked at him and
asked, "Who is Little Boy Blue?" He thought they did not know
very much.
Their mother said, "They know some things. Quote Romans
3:23, Bruce." This Bruce did. Then he asked, "Shall I quote
another one, Grandpa?"
"Sure," said Grandpa.
Bruce began to quote verses of Scripture, some 15 in all,
and Ruth quoted some in between. This delighted Grandpa. He
took them over to the neighbors and to the aunts and uncles,
showing them how well these children knew the Scriptures. In the
meantime the Word of God was doing its work. It was not long
before the Holy Spirit, through the voices of babes, planted the
seed in his heart. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast
Thou ordained strength..." (Psalm 8:2).
Soulwinners are not soulwinners because of what they
know, but because of the Person they know, how well they know Him
and how much they long for others to know Him.
"Oh, but I am afraid," someone says. Remember, "The fear
of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord
shall be safe" (Proverbs 29:25). Nothing under heaven except
sin, immaturity and lack of communion will put you in a position
where you cannot reproduce. Furthermore, there is not anything
under heaven that can keep a newly born again one from going on
with the Lord if he has a spiritual parent to take care of him
and give him the spiritual food God has provided for his normal
growth.
Page 12
Effects obey their causes by irresistible laws. When you
sow the seed of God's Word you will get results. Not every heart
will receive the Word, but some will, and the new birth will take
place. When a soul is born, give it the care that Paul gave new
believers. Paul believed in follow-up work. He was a busy
evangelist, but he took time for follow-up. The New Testament is
largely made up of the letters of Paul which were follow-up
letters to the converts.
James believed in it. "But be ye doers of the Word, and
not hearers only," he said in James 1:22. Peter believed in it.
"As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye
may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2). John believed in it, "I have no
greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth" (3 John
4). All the writings of Peter, Paul, James and most of John's
are food for the new Christian.
The Gospel spread to the known world during the first
century without radio, television or the printing press, because
these produced men who were reproducing. But today we have a lot
of pew-sitters--people think that if they are faithful in church
attendance, put good-sized gifts into the offering plate and get
people to come, they have done their part.
Where is your man? Where is your woman? Where is your
boy? Where is your girl? Every one of us, no matter what age we
are, should get busy memorizing Scripture. In one Sunday school
class a woman 72 years of age and another who was 78 finished The
Navigators Topical Memory System. They then had something to
give.
Load your heart with this precious Seed. You will find
that God will direct you to those whom you can lead to Christ.
There are many hearts ready for the Gospel now.
*
DAWS:The Story of DAWSON TROTMAN, Founder of The Navigators, by
Betty Lee Skinner is published by Zondervan Publishing House.
*The Navigators New Topical Memory System and other Bible study
and discipleship materials are available from
NAVPRESS, a ministry of The Navigators
Post Office Box 6000
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80934
[keyed into electronic media from an undated and uncopyrighted
booklet by
Clyde Price, Bible teacher
P.O.Box 667, Red Oak, GA 30272-0667 USA]