Jesus at the Door

Chapter 1

GOD WANTS REAPERS

Let me be clear from the outset—I am not trying to guilt you into feeling worse about evangelism than you already do. Instead, this book will show you how you—yes, even you—can move from being a seasoned sower into a relentless reaper, living out a naturally supernatural lifestyle, partnering with the Holy Spirit in the harvest fields of life to bring glory to the Father as you bear much fruit (see John 15:8).

I am going to teach you how to use what I call “reaping style” evangelism. Bono from U2 describes beautifully and exactly what reaping style evangelism is in this advice he received once from a pastor: “Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Find out what God’s doing. It is already blessed.”

Jesus at the Door is what I call a reaping tool because it does this very thing. It focuses so closely on partnership with the Spirit that we go only where He is going. If we do that, then the worst thing that will happen is that we will sow.

Nine Points and a Picture

Jesus at the Door is framed around a card with nine prompts and a picture to help guide you in a conversation with unbelievers. I call this our Equipping Card, and one is included for you in this book. Here I will give the framework to help you understand what I am talking about when I mention the picture or card, and the next nine chapters will expand on each of the nine points so you will have confidence to use them. That means you can relax. You can flip back and forth between the card and the descriptions any time you want to, so there is no need to worry, get bogged down in details or feel that you have to memorize this.

First, Jesus at the Door begins with a picture. It is a very simple, but powerful and anointed picture. It shows Jesus knocking on a door with no outer doorknob. In other words, He cannot let Himself in; we have to let Him in. Jesus and the door are framed by a heart, so very quickly, at a glance, any person can see that Jesus is knocking on the door of his or her heart wanting to come in.

Next, as you share the Gospel, you simply guide your conversation through these nine prompts.

1. Have you seen this picture before, and do you pray? (In emergencies? Do you believe God is there?)
2. This is Jesus knocking on the door of your heart, but the handle is on the inside. Only you can let Him in.
3. Lots of people pray . . . but praying is like talking through the door: You know He is there somewhere, but you don’t know Him personally.
4. Visualize wearing a backpack. If we filled it with all your sin, would it be heavy? That represents your debt with God. It stops you from having a relationship with Him.
5. If you owed the bank $10,000, and I gave you a check for that amount, and you deposited it into your account, what would happen to your debt?
6. That’s what Jesus did for you on the cross. He wrote you a check signed in His blood. Today He is standing at the door of your heart, wanting you to cash it.
7. If Jesus were here right now, would you let Him in?
8. Can you see the wind? No, but you can feel it, right? Like the wind, Jesus is here right now. May I pray for you to feel His presence?
9. Now for the last thing: to turn from the road you’re on without Jesus, change direction and follow Him. Do you want to follow Him?

The first three pertain to the picture and have a blue background. The next three symbolize sin and have a red background. And the final three reveal repentance and have a yellow background. At the bottom of the card is a prayer to lead them to Jesus right then and there.

There is nothing fancy about this method. It simply puts forth the Gospel plain and simple. I felt the Lord highlight 1 Corinthians 2:13 as a passage that best defines what Jesus at the Door really is: “When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths.”

Out in the Deep

I remember the day my pastor, Alan Scott, called me, excited to tell me the good news that he was offering me a job as a full-time evangelist, working for Causeway Coast Vineyard Church. I was in the middle of leading a guy to the Lord in a café. I mean, literally, he was repeating the prayer with me and I had to silence my phone as it rang mid-prayer. You could not have planned it if you had tried. Alan posted on social media later that day: “I called my friend to offer him a job as an evangelist. He couldn’t take the call, as he was leading someone to Jesus. I think we got the right guy!”

I think it was the Lord encouraging us both that we were making the right decision.

My job would be to stand on the streets all day every day, let down my nets and catch. It would be an understatement to say I felt out of my depth. In their fifteen-year history they had never employed an evangelist, and I had never been one, so it was a leap of faith on both parts. It was made only the more tenuous by my pastor’s comments that this job was a six-month trial position that was dependent on fruit—his desire was for me to lead one soul a day to Jesus.

I would have called myself more of a sowing evangelist up until that point. I was leading someone to the Lord on average once every five weeks. I did not really know what I was doing, however, and walked away from the majority of those encounters at that time thinking, I should have said this, or I should have done that.

So when I stepped out onto those streets as a full-time evangelist, I was utterly dependent on and totally abandoned to the Spirit. All I could think about was, what if I could not deliver? I had left my job to take this six-month trial position. What if I got fired? How embarrassing it would be.

I know that without God’s divine hand in this, we would all be walking away disappointed. But I also knew that it is only out in the deep that the miracles take place. If you stay on the shore, you will never walk on water. It was only when Peter found himself out of his depth that Jesus gave him the invitation to come and do what He did. You see, when we are out in the deep, we can do exactly what Jesus does.

Catching Falling Apples

The birth and growth of Jesus at the Door happened organically and effortlessly. When I first stepped out as a street evangelist, I felt out of my depth and ill-equipped for the task, so I prayed a simple prayer: “Lord, teach me how to fish.”

Let me fill in the lines with what that means. It means that everything you will read here has been tested by fire. I did not get it from a book or hear it on a podcast. It comes from firsthand experience.

Although I believe the Lord had placed the office of evangelist upon me from an early age (despite my shunning His advances), it was only when I stepped out onto the streets five days a week for three years that I fully embraced this calling and it fully embraced me. I learned in three years what would normally take people thirty years to learn.

It was a baptism of fire, where I was schooled in evangelism by the Spirit of God, and in that school something beautiful began to happen. The Holy Spirit spoke to me a sentence that was to change the trajectory of my life. He said, Scott, I want you to imagine these people are all like apples on a tree. When you share, then I’ll shake! Upon hearing that simple phrase, and picturing that simple image, everything changed for me. For the first time in my life I understood what evangelism was—it was an invitation to partnership. It was not about how good or bad I was; it was about how available I was.

This removed the pressure of feeling I had to know everything and convince everyone. It changed me from the inside out as both a disciple and an evangelist.

After my “apple tree” revelation, Jesus’ words in John 6:44 (esv) took on a whole new meaning. There Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” The Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is drawing people to Him. The Holy Spirit, like a mighty wind, is shaking the trees.

Some apples will move a little, some will not move at all and some (more than you would expect) will fall.

All we have to do is catch. I was not alone in this, and all I had to do was play my part and faithfully share—and the ruach wind and breath of heaven would blow accordingly and do the rest. Now when you hear the term “apple tree evangelism,” you know what it means.

Everyone is an apple on a tree, as were you until somebody caught you. We are priceless apples waiting to be caught. Whether dirty apples or shiny apples, we are all still apples.

Evangelism is as simple as everyday believers going about their business, walking through the apple orchards of life, reaching out their hands to catch the falling apples. Everybody can catch! Yes, even you.

What happens to apples that are ready to fall but nobody catches them? They will either decay and die or fall into the wrong hands. This is the case for every person who is not reached for Jesus by you and me through the power of the Gospel.

It is not dependent on your age, sex or social standing. Young, old, men, women, boys and girls can catch, whether they were born with a silver spoon or a wooden spoon. The thing to remember is that it is not about you anyway; it is about His power on display, which means everybody gets to play.

Now we would have to try extremely hard not to come into contact with any other apples as we go about our daily lives. Just live your life in whatever sphere of influence He has strategically placed you in, and always be willing to catch. You will be privy to apples I will never come into contact with. The orchard of life in which you have been placed has been reserved just for you and entrusted into your care.

Salvation on the Stairwell

Apples are all around us if we will just look up to see them. I was just finishing an Evangelism Made Easy weekend at the mighty Jake’s House Church in Arlington, Washington. After I had spent a long time praying for folks at the altar, I lifted my eyes and right before me was Jose.

The previous evening, I had walked into my hotel, and as I passed by the stairwell to go into my room, I happened to notice a young man. I decided to turn around and go back.

I showed him the picture, but he said, “No English,” and motioned for me to walk down the corridor with him.

A little apprehensive, I followed him. He stopped outside his room where two other Mexican, tattoo-bearing, rough-looking lads stood wondering who I was. Neither of them could speak English, so between Google Translate and our Jesus at the Door app, I attempted to walk them through our steps. The other two lads left, but Jose stayed, standing wide-eyed, and when I talked about Jesus knocking on the door of his heart, he was drinking in every word that I was saying.

He looked overwhelmed as the Holy Spirit ushered in his salvation. He read the prayer of salvation in Spanish that was on our app and, afterward, turning to me, he hugged me. I got his phone number and said I would contact him.

The next morning, I sent him a text from my friend’s phone inviting him to church on Sunday evening. He wanted to come, so I was able to connect him with a beautiful Spanish couple who offered to go and collect him from his hotel. On the way to church, Jose told them his story. He told them that on Saturday evening after he had met me, he slept like a baby. He said when he had hugged me, he felt pure and clean.

After church we prayed for him, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. He was so hungry for a Spanish Bible that he had even gone down to the reception desk to ask if they had one. When our friend Maria gave him his own Bible, it was as if he had won the lottery.

For the next month Jose kept in contact with me, and the last I heard he is pressing in to his newfound relationship with Jesus, attending the church where I was speaking that night.