Born in the Heart of God

Some Characteristics

The evangelist can generally give better instructions for you to drive by because he is often in a strange place and knows how you need to talk for better instruction. An evangelist will call you and leave his phone number on your answer phone about three times slowly. He wants to make sure you can call him back without writing the number down. He figures you are calling him on your cell phone while driving. When you get his message so you do not have to stop the car and listen to the message four or five times to get the call back number.

In like manner, it is that little difference in extending the invitation that causes men and women to respond. It is as if God put a deep concern in the evangelist to help the sinner overcome those little difficulties to place their faith in Christ that others who have been saved for a long time take for granted. Most evangelists are “How to” oriented because evangelists have such great confidence in the Lord Jesus to save and the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion of sinners and reviving of saints. If you have the tendency to be simple and try to look to see where the other person is coming from and help them overcome difficulties in understanding salvation in Christ this could be an indication of God’s call to evangelism. Especially if the lost are saved under your preaching or during personal soul winning conversations.

Two Examples

J. Harold Smith said, “But even with all this emphasis on church, I was not "born again." I had Joined the church and been baptized when I was twelve because I noticed my mother tended to dab at her eyes during the invitation time in our church services. My friends were joining up, so I made everyone happy by going forward and presenting myself as a candidate for baptism one Sunday morning.

The next week I was baptized, but when I tried to pull off my wet pants, jumping up and down on one foot, I produced a chorus of oaths that took the starch right out of the deacon's collar. The only change involved in that experience involved changing nothing more than my clothes.

Since I was now a bona-fide member of the church in good standing, I really didn't think much about what it meant to be really saved. There weren't any radio or television preachers around talking about it, either. I became more and more saddened, and disillusioned, and desperate.

Then on September 4, 1932, while sitting with my sister, Mildred, on her front porch in Greenville, South Carolina, she looked me squarely in the face and said, "You have tried everything that the Devil has to offer. Why don't you give Jesus Christ a chance in your heart?" I turned to rebuke her, but the Holy Spirit gripped my heart and for the first time in my life I really prayed, calling upon the Lord and asking Him to cleanse my soul from all of my sins.

I think my exact words were, "God have mercy on me a sinner. Save me through Jesus Christ." And that's when I was really born again. I became a child of God and just as I knew that at that moment my name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life for all eternity. I knew that I was going to give my life to the preaching of the Gospel.

Sometimes we experience a "knowing" that is so sure and so powerful for us, that by comparison, tables and chairs and food, and light and, dark seem unreal. I really knew about my salvation and my calling, and I have never doubted either since that moment.”⁴⁵

Once a man puts his hand to the plow He is to never look back. For most of us we have to count the cost and decide whether we will do what God would have us do. For every preacher it is imperative that his mate have a heart for the Lord Jesus and His work. Brother Smith knew this and thought it would cost him the love of his life.

Smith said, “I believe that the heaviest temptation of my life came in the next few hours on that same day. I felt my heart start to beat faster as I realized I had to go face that girl I met eleven years ago in that grocery store and tell her I had been saved...and was going to be a preacher, not a medical doctor.

The Devil was real to me that evening. I had never had but one sweetheart. I never loved any girl but her. And the Devil said to me, "She's going to drop you, old buddy. She's too classy a dame to marry a preacher."

But I knew I had to tell her; the sooner the better.

She was working at the Greenville News, and I went by to pick her up. She knew something was going on when she got in the car, but I waited until I was inside her living room to tell her. I said straight-out, "You'd better sit down. I have something to tell you. I'm going to be a preacher. I was saved this afternoon."

And she was silent for what seemed like light years. Time is such a strange phenomenon. When we're happy and busy, it seems to fly; at other times it drags. During that little slice of time, during her silence -I lived and died a thousand lifetimes; it was long enough for whole continents to rise and sink; it was so prolonged a silence, I could have filled it with all of man's recorded history, re-writ; it was so lengthy, I circled the globe twelve times on a tricycle.

But when she spoke, she simply said, "Harold, ever since I was twelve years old, I have wanted to marry a Baptist preacher." Those were words worth waiting for. And so, thirteen months later, we were married.”⁴⁶

The proof is in the pudding is an old saying that applies to men called into evangelism. For reasons God gives men to his church who are harvesters. While few men have the auspicious start of a J. Harold Smith, it will be obvious to the man and those around him that God has uniquely placed his hand on this man to draw the net.

J. Harold said, “Thirteen days after I was converted, I held my first revival in the Northside Baptist Church of my home town. When it was noised about that the grandson of J. N. Smith, who for forty-four years had operated the local cotton mill, would be speaking, lots of folk became curious.

Although the service was scheduled for eleven that Sunday morning, before ten o'clock no one else could be packed into the church. My text was John 3:16; all I wanted them to know was that God loved them, that Jesus died for them, and that it was up to them to believe it and live it. More than a hundred people were saved in that first service.

When the service ended at about two in the afternoon, the pastor announced that he felt we should continue the revival a few days. By Saturday more than seven hundred people had made a decision for Christ.”⁴⁷

The second example is from the Second Great Awakening. Charles Finney was a lawyer. “His call and conversion were simultaneous. He met Christ and was gloriously saved. The morning after he was saved a client came into his office and asked him if he were ready to try his case which was set for 10 o’clock that day. Finney replied, “I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause and I cannot plead your cause.” “When the client left,” said Finney, “I immediately went forth to talk to those I would meet about their souls. I knew that God wanted me to preach the Gospel, and that I must begin immediately. I knew it with a certainty beyond all possibility of a doubt!”⁴⁸

How a man is saved always affects his call and how he ministers. There comes a time when a man must decide to yield completely to God’s will for his life, no matter what it costs him. While J. Harold Smith was allowed to keep the girl he had loved from childhood, others have to give them up. I told the girl I would marry that we would never own a home and would do without for most of our lives. I told her that I would not be home for much traveling and preaching. While she did not fully realize the extent of it, she was willing to do whatever God would have us do. Many are called but few are chosen.

Many of the men listed below have sacrificed for Jesus and souls in ways that the average churchgoer do not know or understand.