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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Bible Breakdown
Podcast.
In this podcast, we will bebreaking down the Bible one
chapter a day.
Whether you are a new believeror have been following Christ
for a while, we believe that youwill learn something new and
fresh every single day.
So thank you for joining us.
Let's get into breaking down theBible together.
SPEAKER_01 (00:23):
Well, hello, everybody.
Welcome back to the BibleBreakdown Podcast with your
host, Pastor Brandon.
And today is one of those Biblebreakdown extras.
It's one of those opportunitieswhere we kind of take a break a
little bit and just talk throughthe things of God's Word.
And one of the things I loveabout doing these, we do these
once a month.
We take that break, gives us achance to talk about how to
(00:45):
engage with God's word, how toengage with other people.
And we've walked through allthese different things.
And what I want to do startingtoday is I want to walk through
a book called Tactics.
Because here's the thoughtprocess is as you start to read
God's Word, and God's Wordstarts to change your life and
you start to do this, you'regoing to talk to people who you
agree with, other Christians,and you're going to be
(01:06):
encouraged by them.
You're going to encourage them.
It's going to be wonderful.
But at some point, and I'mpraying this happens to you,
you're going to come acrosssomebody who doesn't know Jesus.
And here's the thing (01:16):
they may be one of those wonderful people
who are just one step away frombecoming a Christian.
They may be those people who arehostile.
Not only do they not believe inJesus, they don't think you
should believe in Jesus.
And they're just as much anevangelist for their atheism or
their secularism or theirhedonism as you are for
Christianity.
(01:36):
What do you do?
Well, can I tell you when I wasyounger, I would run away.
I was not confident at all onbeing able to talk to people
about my faith.
And then to still to this day, Iknow a lot of people who are
confident to talk about theirfaith, but they're terrified of
conflict.
So what do you do?
Because God has called us to bein the world while not of the
world.
I love how uh Jesus said he waspraying to his father and said,
(01:59):
Father, I pray that we take themnot out of the world, but that
you will protect them while theyare in the world.
So we've been called to begivers of the light.
And what I love about this isthe the author, Greg Kokel, he
takes this book and he reallyhelps us to understand and take
away some of the fear, some ofthe antagonism that we see.
(02:22):
And so we're gonna walk throughthis one chapter at a time, and
we're gonna call chapter onediplomacy or D-Day.
So is it gonna be like a momentwhere we're gonna have a
conversation or are we gonna geton our battle battle lines and
just start swinging at eachother?
Can we talk about that?
And once again, the idea of thiswhole book is to create a game
plan for discussing, you know,discussing.
(02:44):
If we were doing this live atchurch somewhere, I would say,
say it with me, discussing yourChristian convictions.
Because here's here's the thing.
I have noticed this in my ownlife, and I want to give this to
you as maybe a moment ofencouragement, and that is this
that many, many, many, many,many people, they look online
and they see these differentthings that happen online, and
(03:06):
they think that everyconversation with every
non-Christian is a yellingmatch.
And here's the thing it couldbe, but most of the time it
doesn't have to be.
Most of the time, it shouldn'tbe.
It should be a wonderfulconversation between friends
because we're supposed to bedeveloping, sorry about that,
developing a relationship withthese people and helping them
(03:27):
see the love that we have beforewe try to tell them about the
love that we have.
And that's what Greg Kokel'sbook does is he helps us to
realize that God is wantingthese people to find salvation
just like he wanted us to findsalvation.
There's nothing differentbetween them and us except we
found the love of God.
And so he wants to take awaysome of the silliness, take away
(03:50):
some of the angst, you know, andthe fear, and help us to get
back to the place where we arenow in the position of if I can
say of authority or the positionof not feeling like we have to
defend ourselves, but ratherwe're on the offense.
And so we're gonna look atchapter one.
And what I really want to do isis I want to encourage you to go
get the book.
Okay.
I want to encourage you to go toAmazon, wherever, and buy the
(04:12):
book Tactics.
Greg Kokel is the name of theguy.
And what my hope is is for this,is I want to give you enough
reason for you to say, yes, Ineed to go get this book.
This is very, very helpful.
You can also go on YouTube andyou can look up Tactics by Greg
Kokel.
And by the way, I can't spellhis last name either, so I'm
(04:33):
gonna spell it for you righthere.
That's his last name.
First name is Greg or GregoryKokel.
So first and last got thatbackwards.
But you need to get this bookbecause he is going to help you
take away some of the fear andget you excited.
Here, here were six takeaways Ihave from the first chapter.
And I want to know down in thecomments below if you've read
(04:54):
this or once you start to readit, what were your main
takeaways?
Here's my first one.
I love this idea, and that is toput a stone in their shoe.
The thought process is have youever have you ever been walking
along and you got a little rockin your shoe?
It it doesn't like debilitateyou.
You can't not walk aroundanymore, right?
But it's just a littleannoyance, something that you
(05:15):
you are constantly thinkingabout.
It's constantly there, it's justin your mind.
He's saying that our goal of anyconversation about Jesus should
not be that they get saved.
That's the hope.
But you, if you walk away andthey don't get saved, you didn't
fail if you put a stone in theirshoe.
Something for them to thinkabout.
That when they walk away,they're thinking about what was
(05:38):
said.
And so, once again, don'tmishear me on this, and and I
get this.
You would love for them to getsaved, but if you can just give
them a thought, that's a win.
Because we are gonna think ofevangelism, let's skip down to
my last one here, as gardening,not harvesting.
I heard someone say one timethat the average person has to
hear a presentation of thegospel seven times before they
(06:02):
actually hear it for the firsttime.
And then who knows how manytimes they have to hear it
before then they're willing toreceive it.
So therefore, let's say theyhave to hear it three times
before they receive it.
I don't, I don't know.
That means they're going to haveto hear a presentation of the
gospel for 21 times.
Well, if you are presenting itto them once, statistically, you
(06:23):
have a one in 21%, 201 in 21chances that you're going to be
the one that actually leads themacross the finish line.
That means the odds are notstacked in your favor that
today's the day.
It might be.
Only the Lord knows.
So instead, don't think thatevery time you have a
conversation, you have toharvest.
Instead, you're gardening,planting seeds, you're watering
(06:45):
those seeds, you're beingpatient.
What does that look like?
Maybe you start talking tosomeone and you start talking to
them about your faith, and theygo, you know, I was actually
just watching a video about thatthe other day.
Well, someone's already plantedthe seed.
Now you get to water that seed.
Or maybe they say, you know, Inever really thought about
faith.
Well, let me tell you about it.
Now you're planting seeds.
Someone else is going to comealong, they're going to water.
(07:05):
And if you look at it as justgardening, just slowly planting
more seeds, slowly watering moreseeds, eventually God is going
to harvest.
And so the first takeaway I gotfrom it was the goal is not for
them to receive salvation thatday, even though that's the
ultimate goal.
The goal is one thing that'sgoing to stay with them.
(07:25):
Thinking of it as a gardeningand not harvesting.
Here's another one.
And that is shift from combat toconversation.
Can I tell you, this is this isthe generation we're living in
right now.
We live in a generation thatwants to constantly watch videos
of people getting justdecimated, you know, verbally.
Oh, he got her, you know, rightthere, or she got him right
(07:47):
there.
Boy, he told him off.
You know, kind of whereverpeople love debate videos as
long as their side's winning.
But what you can do is you canrefuse to be in combat, but in
conversation.
Therefore, what that means isthat if somebody comes at you,
well, if you're a Christian,then prove it.
You know what your answer canbe?
No.
What do you mean?
(08:08):
Prove it.
Well, I can't prove anything toyou.
I can tell you my story, but Idon't really want to argue about
it.
Well, tell me your story.
Well, yeah, but I don't want toargue about it.
You want to have some coffee andsit down and talk about it
sometime?
So you're putting yourself inthat driver's seat.
And so you're saying, I wouldlove to talk to you about my
faith, but I'm not going toargue with you about my faith.
So you stay calm and you shiftfrom combat to conversation.
(08:31):
You and one of the ways you dothat is by asking questions.
One of the things that that heis going to talk about over and
over again is you always go backto asking questions because we
are an ambassador for Christ.
That was my third takeaway.
Is that that means we're goingto combine knowledge with wisdom
and have good character.
We're going to have a tacticsmindset, which means we're going
(08:52):
to have a game plan.
Like when conversations turn upto faith.
You don't have to be afraidbecause you got a game plan on
what you're going to do.
And that's what this book isgoing to teach us is what it
looks like to have that gameplan.
And then finally, one more is tostay calm and confident.
Stay calm and to be confident.
(09:12):
Because we have the hope ofsalvation.
And so we can stay confident inall things.
And you know what I've found?
I have found so many times thatpeople have a lot of one-word
statements.
They know how to say one thing.
But as soon as you call them onit, they don't really know.
And so, for instance, like I'vehad times before where as a
(09:34):
pastor, immediately I have atarget on my back.
You know what I mean?
That kind of thing.
And that's fine.
But, and we all do asChristians, to be honest with
you.
And I don't mean target is in areally bad way.
It just means, oh, well, youknow, I can test them.
Yeah, kind of thing.
And I've had people come up tome and say, well, how in the
world can you believe the Bible?
The Bible is corrupted.
It's full of scriptures thataren't really there and it's
just full of corruptions.
You know what?
(09:55):
I do because I'm staying calmand confident.
Instead of going, oh no, isthere?
Instead, I go, wow, I didn'tknow that.
Can you show me one?
Uh, because most people, theycan't show you one.
They just have heard somewherethat the Bible is not confident,
they can't be confident in theBible and it's corrupted.
They have no idea.
(10:15):
Say the same thing.
It'll be like, well, if theBible's real, then blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Well, can you show me?
No, no, they can't.
And so you can, so in otherwords, you put it back on them.
The burden of proof is on you.
You just made an extraordinaryclaim that billions of people
over all of history have puttheir faith in the God who said
he wrote this book.
And you are telling me that you,you person, have discovered that
(10:36):
it is not true.
That's an extraordinary claimwhich requires extraordinary
evidence.
Can you show me?
No, you can't.
Okay, well then let's start overagain.
Let's have a conversation.
And so you stay calm, you stayconfident, because here's the
final thing, and that is thisthat the Holy Spirit is also at
work.
I love how Greg ends his chapterby saying to never forget that
(10:58):
the Holy Spirit is also moreinterested in their salvation
than you and I are.
Therefore, we never talk to themas though it's all on us.
Instead, we talk to themrealizing that the Holy Spirit
is moving, the Holy Spirit isactive, and the Holy Spirit
wants to move in their life.
We just get to be part of theprocess.
I love this book.
I love this so much because hehelps us to find our footing so
(11:22):
that we can have conversations.
And I here's something Ibelieve, and I would love to
know if you agree with me downin the comments.
I believe more people wouldshare their faith if they felt
confident to do so.
Because here's the thing theprimary person to share their
faith is not your pastor.
Your pastor is supposed to beequipping you, like I'm trying
to do right now with tactics sothat you can share your faith.
(11:44):
The primary person to sharefaith with your family, with
your friends, is you.
So let's let's get let's getequipped so that we can.
I would encourage you to getthis book and then to think
through these six things.
So I've got like all of my stuffall over the place here, but I'm
gonna look one more time at itso that we can see this
together.
You ready?
Here we go.
(12:05):
The goal is to put a stone insomeone's shoe, to shift from
combat to conversation, torealize you're an ambassador for
Christ.
The tactics mindset is what wewant to have, to stay calm and
confident and to think of it asgardening, not just harvesting.
I want to hear what yourtakeaway is from tactics chapter
(12:26):
one, and I look forward toseeing you for chapter two
coming in the future.
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Bible Breakdown
Podcast.
In this podcast, we will bebreaking down the Bible one
chapter a day.
Whether you are a new believeror have been following Christ
for a while, we believe that youwill learn something new and
fresh every single day.
So thank you for joining us.
Let's get into breaking down theBible together.
SPEAKER_01 (00:23):
Well, hello, everybody.
Welcome back to the BibleBreakdown Podcast with your
host, Pastor Brandon.
And today is one of those Biblebreakdown extras.
It's one of those opportunitieswhere we kind of take a break a
little bit and just talk throughthe things of God's Word.
And one of the things I loveabout doing these, we do these
once a month.
We take that break, gives us achance to talk about how to
(00:45):
engage with God's word, how toengage with other people.
And we've walked through allthese different things.
And what I want to do startingtoday is I want to walk through
a book called Tactics.
Because here's the thoughtprocess is as you start to read
God's Word, and God's Wordstarts to change your life and
you start to do this, you'regoing to talk to people who you
agree with, other Christians,and you're going to be
(01:06):
encouraged by them.
You're going to encourage them.
It's going to be wonderful.
But at some point, and I'mpraying this happens to you,
you're going to come acrosssomebody who doesn't know Jesus.
And here's the thing (01:16):
they may be one of those wonderful people
who are just one step away frombecoming a Christian.
They may be those people who arehostile.
Not only do they not believe inJesus, they don't think you
should believe in Jesus.
And they're just as much anevangelist for their atheism or
their secularism or theirhedonism as you are for
Christianity.
(01:36):
What do you do?
Well, can I tell you when I wasyounger, I would run away.
I was not confident at all onbeing able to talk to people
about my faith.
And then to still to this day, Iknow a lot of people who are
confident to talk about theirfaith, but they're terrified of
conflict.
So what do you do?
Because God has called us to bein the world while not of the
world.
I love how uh Jesus said he waspraying to his father and said,
(01:59):
Father, I pray that we take themnot out of the world, but that
you will protect them while theyare in the world.
So we've been called to begivers of the light.
And what I love about this isthe the author, Greg Kokel, he
takes this book and he reallyhelps us to understand and take
away some of the fear, some ofthe antagonism that we see.
(02:22):
And so we're gonna walk throughthis one chapter at a time, and
we're gonna call chapter onediplomacy or D-Day.
So is it gonna be like a momentwhere we're gonna have a
conversation or are we gonna geton our battle battle lines and
just start swinging at eachother?
Can we talk about that?
And once again, the idea of thiswhole book is to create a game
plan for discussing, you know,discussing.
(02:44):
If we were doing this live atchurch somewhere, I would say,
say it with me, discussing yourChristian convictions.
Because here's here's the thing.
I have noticed this in my ownlife, and I want to give this to
you as maybe a moment ofencouragement, and that is this
that many, many, many, many,many people, they look online
and they see these differentthings that happen online, and
(03:06):
they think that everyconversation with every
non-Christian is a yellingmatch.
And here's the thing it couldbe, but most of the time it
doesn't have to be.
Most of the time, it shouldn'tbe.
It should be a wonderfulconversation between friends
because we're supposed to bedeveloping, sorry about that,
developing a relationship withthese people and helping them
(03:27):
see the love that we have beforewe try to tell them about the
love that we have.
And that's what Greg Kokel'sbook does is he helps us to
realize that God is wantingthese people to find salvation
just like he wanted us to findsalvation.
There's nothing differentbetween them and us except we
found the love of God.
And so he wants to take awaysome of the silliness, take away
(03:50):
some of the angst, you know, andthe fear, and help us to get
back to the place where we arenow in the position of if I can
say of authority or the positionof not feeling like we have to
defend ourselves, but ratherwe're on the offense.
And so we're gonna look atchapter one.
And what I really want to do isis I want to encourage you to go
get the book.
Okay.
I want to encourage you to go toAmazon, wherever, and buy the
(04:12):
book Tactics.
Greg Kokel is the name of theguy.
And what my hope is is for this,is I want to give you enough
reason for you to say, yes, Ineed to go get this book.
This is very, very helpful.
You can also go on YouTube andyou can look up Tactics by Greg
Kokel.
And by the way, I can't spellhis last name either, so I'm
(04:33):
gonna spell it for you righthere.
That's his last name.
First name is Greg or GregoryKokel.
So first and last got thatbackwards.
But you need to get this bookbecause he is going to help you
take away some of the fear andget you excited.
Here, here were six takeaways Ihave from the first chapter.
And I want to know down in thecomments below if you've read
(04:54):
this or once you start to readit, what were your main
takeaways?
Here's my first one.
I love this idea, and that is toput a stone in their shoe.
The thought process is have youever have you ever been walking
along and you got a little rockin your shoe?
It it doesn't like debilitateyou.
You can't not walk aroundanymore, right?
But it's just a littleannoyance, something that you
(05:15):
you are constantly thinkingabout.
It's constantly there, it's justin your mind.
He's saying that our goal of anyconversation about Jesus should
not be that they get saved.
That's the hope.
But you, if you walk away andthey don't get saved, you didn't
fail if you put a stone in theirshoe.
Something for them to thinkabout.
That when they walk away,they're thinking about what was
(05:38):
said.
And so, once again, don'tmishear me on this, and and I
get this.
You would love for them to getsaved, but if you can just give
them a thought, that's a win.
Because we are gonna think ofevangelism, let's skip down to
my last one here, as gardening,not harvesting.
I heard someone say one timethat the average person has to
hear a presentation of thegospel seven times before they
(06:02):
actually hear it for the firsttime.
And then who knows how manytimes they have to hear it
before then they're willing toreceive it.
So therefore, let's say theyhave to hear it three times
before they receive it.
I don't, I don't know.
That means they're going to haveto hear a presentation of the
gospel for 21 times.
Well, if you are presenting itto them once, statistically, you
(06:23):
have a one in 21%, 201 in 21chances that you're going to be
the one that actually leads themacross the finish line.
That means the odds are notstacked in your favor that
today's the day.
It might be.
Only the Lord knows.
So instead, don't think thatevery time you have a
conversation, you have toharvest.
Instead, you're gardening,planting seeds, you're watering
(06:45):
those seeds, you're beingpatient.
What does that look like?
Maybe you start talking tosomeone and you start talking to
them about your faith, and theygo, you know, I was actually
just watching a video about thatthe other day.
Well, someone's already plantedthe seed.
Now you get to water that seed.
Or maybe they say, you know, Inever really thought about
faith.
Well, let me tell you about it.
Now you're planting seeds.
Someone else is going to comealong, they're going to water.
(07:05):
And if you look at it as justgardening, just slowly planting
more seeds, slowly watering moreseeds, eventually God is going
to harvest.
And so the first takeaway I gotfrom it was the goal is not for
them to receive salvation thatday, even though that's the
ultimate goal.
The goal is one thing that'sgoing to stay with them.
(07:25):
Thinking of it as a gardeningand not harvesting.
Here's another one.
And that is shift from combat toconversation.
Can I tell you, this is this isthe generation we're living in
right now.
We live in a generation thatwants to constantly watch videos
of people getting justdecimated, you know, verbally.
Oh, he got her, you know, rightthere, or she got him right
(07:47):
there.
Boy, he told him off.
You know, kind of whereverpeople love debate videos as
long as their side's winning.
But what you can do is you canrefuse to be in combat, but in
conversation.
Therefore, what that means isthat if somebody comes at you,
well, if you're a Christian,then prove it.
You know what your answer canbe?
No.
What do you mean?
(08:08):
Prove it.
Well, I can't prove anything toyou.
I can tell you my story, but Idon't really want to argue about
it.
Well, tell me your story.
Well, yeah, but I don't want toargue about it.
You want to have some coffee andsit down and talk about it
sometime?
So you're putting yourself inthat driver's seat.
And so you're saying, I wouldlove to talk to you about my
faith, but I'm not going toargue with you about my faith.
So you stay calm and you shiftfrom combat to conversation.
(08:31):
You and one of the ways you dothat is by asking questions.
One of the things that that heis going to talk about over and
over again is you always go backto asking questions because we
are an ambassador for Christ.
That was my third takeaway.
Is that that means we're goingto combine knowledge with wisdom
and have good character.
We're going to have a tacticsmindset, which means we're going
(08:52):
to have a game plan.
Like when conversations turn upto faith.
You don't have to be afraidbecause you got a game plan on
what you're going to do.
And that's what this book isgoing to teach us is what it
looks like to have that gameplan.
And then finally, one more is tostay calm and confident.
Stay calm and to be confident.
(09:12):
Because we have the hope ofsalvation.
And so we can stay confident inall things.
And you know what I've found?
I have found so many times thatpeople have a lot of one-word
statements.
They know how to say one thing.
But as soon as you call them onit, they don't really know.
And so, for instance, like I'vehad times before where as a
(09:34):
pastor, immediately I have atarget on my back.
You know what I mean?
That kind of thing.
And that's fine.
But, and we all do asChristians, to be honest with
you.
And I don't mean target is in areally bad way.
It just means, oh, well, youknow, I can test them.
Yeah, kind of thing.
And I've had people come up tome and say, well, how in the
world can you believe the Bible?
The Bible is corrupted.
It's full of scriptures thataren't really there and it's
just full of corruptions.
You know what?
(09:55):
I do because I'm staying calmand confident.
Instead of going, oh no, isthere?
Instead, I go, wow, I didn'tknow that.
Can you show me one?
Uh, because most people, theycan't show you one.
They just have heard somewherethat the Bible is not confident,
they can't be confident in theBible and it's corrupted.
They have no idea.
(10:15):
Say the same thing.
It'll be like, well, if theBible's real, then blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Well, can you show me?
No, no, they can't.
And so you can, so in otherwords, you put it back on them.
The burden of proof is on you.
You just made an extraordinaryclaim that billions of people
over all of history have puttheir faith in the God who said
he wrote this book.
And you are telling me that you,you person, have discovered that
(10:36):
it is not true.
That's an extraordinary claimwhich requires extraordinary
evidence.
Can you show me?
No, you can't.
Okay, well then let's start overagain.
Let's have a conversation.
And so you stay calm, you stayconfident, because here's the
final thing, and that is thisthat the Holy Spirit is also at
work.
I love how Greg ends his chapterby saying to never forget that
(10:58):
the Holy Spirit is also moreinterested in their salvation
than you and I are.
Therefore, we never talk to themas though it's all on us.
Instead, we talk to themrealizing that the Holy Spirit
is moving, the Holy Spirit isactive, and the Holy Spirit
wants to move in their life.
We just get to be part of theprocess.
I love this book.
I love this so much because hehelps us to find our footing so
(11:22):
that we can have conversations.
And I here's something Ibelieve, and I would love to
know if you agree with me downin the comments.
I believe more people wouldshare their faith if they felt
confident to do so.
Because here's the thing theprimary person to share their
faith is not your pastor.
Your pastor is supposed to beequipping you, like I'm trying
to do right now with tactics sothat you can share your faith.
(11:44):
The primary person to sharefaith with your family, with
your friends, is you.
So let's let's get let's getequipped so that we can.
I would encourage you to getthis book and then to think
through these six things.
So I've got like all of my stuffall over the place here, but I'm
gonna look one more time at itso that we can see this
together.
You ready?
Here we go.
(12:05):
The goal is to put a stone insomeone's shoe, to shift from
combat to conversation, torealize you're an ambassador for
Christ.
The tactics mindset is what wewant to have, to stay calm and
confident and to think of it asgardening, not just harvesting.
I want to hear what yourtakeaway is from tactics chapter
(12:26):
one, and I look forward toseeing you for chapter two
coming in the future.
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