CalvarySouthDenver

We'll have a seat. We have a special guest today. Gino's always talking about this website, gutquestions .org. I think it's his favorite website. Must be. But we have Shay Hoodman with us. He's the founder of gutquestions .org.

Shay, come on up. Please welcome him.

Good morning, everyone. I'm assuming all of you listen to Gino's radio show, at least on occasion. I'm wondering, is there anyone here who has not heard him mention gutquestions .org on the air?

OK.

Several years ago, I think we were in a Mardell's down in Colorado Springs. And the girl in the cashier's station said,.

Oh, I like your t-shirt.

I had a Gut Questions t-shirt on. It's like, I hear your radio show all the time. I was like, I'm the CEO of the ministry, and I'm pretty sure we don't have a radio show. So I just kind of ignored it, figured someone had just mentioned us briefly.

And then we heard similar things like three or four more times. So finally, I asked, OK, tell me about this radio show. So finally, I was able to get a hold of Gino. We met for lunch, and we've developed a really good friendship over the past several years.

So I've been on the radio show a few times with Gino. And he recently asked me to come fill the pulpit this morning. I thought that was interesting, considering he has heard me preach before. So OK, we'll go with that.

Well, Gino asked me to bring a message from God's word and at the same time give a ministry report about gutquestions .org. So that's what we're going to do this morning. Do you remember when we could just say, open your Bibles to?

Well, now, with all the new technology, it's open your Bibles, or turn on your iPad or tablet, open your Bible app, and turn to, or flip to, or scroll to, or tap to, or swipe to. But since that is quite a mouthful, I'm just going to go with, in the Bible, go to 1 Peter 3 .15.

Being Prepared to Give an Answer

1 Peter 3 .15 reads, but in your heart, set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.

And in a sense, this is the verse that best describes what we try to accomplish with gutquestions .org. So I just want to kind of go through the verse and give you some ideas of how it's worked out for us.

Well, first, why do we need to be able to give an answer? So people like to ask questions, whether it's the young child who asks why, why, why, why all the time. Or strangely, by the time they reach the teenage years, the question turns into, why not?

Why can't I do this thing that I want to do? I remember when I was in my late teens, and my uncle, who is a minister, came and stayed with us. I found out later my mom had invited him in order to evangelize my sister and I.

But he sat us down and proceeded to start sharing the gospel with us. Well, I had all these questions. I don't even know where most of these questions came from. I was asking weird questions about the end times and all kinds of stuff.

But he very patiently answered all the questions that I had. And because of that, I was more willing to listen to what he had to say to get the ultimate question answered, how I can know Christ and have my eternal destiny secured.

But the fact that he was willing to answer all these seemingly unimportant questions really opened my heart to what he was trying to accomplish. People appreciate it when you take the time to answer their questions.

I remember very early on in GotQuestions .org, we received a question, do pets go to heaven? And that was the entirety of the question. And I've heard Gino answer this one numerous times on the radio.

Well, we took the time and wrote what I thought was the most biblically balanced and compassionate answer we could give and sent it back. And wasn't really expecting to hear back anything from this person.

Well, a few days later, I received an email from her saying, thank you so much for answering my question. I submitted this question to several Christian websites and you are the only ones who bothered to respond.

Well, as a result, I came back to your website and started reading all your other articles. I read the one about how to receive Christ as your personal savior and I've decided to trust Jesus Christ with my life.

So by answering a question which in schemes of eternity really isn't all that important, this person had the ultimate question answered. And she gave us a little more detail. She just had a beloved cat who's lived like 28 years or some crazy number die and she was devastated by it.

And to have someone not respond with a caring answer would have really hurt her. And finally, why do we need to be able to give an answer? Is if the questions are about God's word, they're worth answering.

There are answers to the many, many questions that are out there and because they are about God's truth, they are worth answering. So second, how can we give adequate answers? Here's where we dive into 1 Peter 3 .15 a little.

It starts out with submit yourself to Christ. Now, I think this is important because being able, being prepared to give answers is your responsibility. It's not an option. It's not something you can do or not do depending on how you feel.

It's part of submitting to Christ is being prepared to give answers to people who ask us the reason for the hope that we have. Crucially important. And second, be prepared. Study God's word and use it in your answers.

You look to Matthew 4 when Satan tempted Jesus. Every time Satan asked him something, what did Jesus do? He responded with a direct quote of God's word. And with this, I like to focus on Isaiah 55 .11, which reads, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.

It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish all which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I want it. When people ask you questions and if you're just answering from your own mind, your own thoughts, your own perceptions, it's not gonna have the same power as if you can answer the question directly with God's word.

Anytime we use God's word, whether the person will admit it or not, according to Isaiah 55 .11, it is going to have an impact. So always use the word of God in your answers. Second, educate yourself on important issues.

I'm not saying you have to be an expert about anything and everything. Between me and 250 volunteer writers and a whole bunch of really smart people that I have contacts with, we know a lot, but there's still all kinds of questions, weird issues that we've never thought of, never heard.

You would think after 350 ,000 questions, we would have heard it all, but no, we're still getting new questions. But if you can familiarize yourself with maybe the top 10, the top 20 questions that people ask, you can be prepared for when people ask you the main ones, the important ones.

Next, the verse concludes with what's probably the most important part of the whole thing. Give your answers with gentleness and respect. I remember several years ago, a friend of mine had some Mormon missionaries come to his door, and he invited the Mormons in and was trying to argue with them and failed miserably.

So he invited the Mormons to come back, and his thought, well, I'll invite Shea and this other guy. I'll bring the big guns to the argument. Well, so we came back, and we were having a little more success explaining the differences in the deity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith, alone, but the Mormons, of course, were still being resistant.

And unfortunately, my friend eventually lost his temper and said some not-so-nice things to these Mormons. I mean, honestly, I was thinking the same things, but at least the barrier had formed in my mouth to prevent me from actually saying them.

But because of this, in a sense, even if we had convinced them that they were wrong, we had lost the war by losing our Christian testimony by the way my friend behaved. So whenever you're answering questions, even when it's hard, even when it seems like you're losing the argument, at least win the argument of who's being the most Christ-like in the discussion.

And that can often be just as important or even more important than actually winning an argument. Now next, what would you say is the most famous question that Jesus ever asked anyone? I would say is when Jesus asked the disciples, who do you say that I am?

In Matthew 16, 15, if you want to look that up. Well, ultimately, I think this is the most important question. I mean, for example, if we go back to the pets, do pets go to heaven illustration? If we answer that question, then just leave it there.

Ultimately, we, yes, we've accomplished something, but we always want to point the people to Christ. So anytime we answer a question, they got questions or there's always a link to the gospel. There's always a link to point people back to try to get the ultimate questions answered.

So anytime you can turn a conversation, say they ask about some weird question about the end times. So rather than spending so much time debating when the tribulation is going to occur, when the rapture, what are the four horsemen of the apocalypse and okay, all that's good and well, but let's turn the conversation to maybe the second coming of Christ and are you ready?

Have you received Jesus Christ as your savior? So when he does come, you'll be prepared. Always focus the question on Jesus. Sometimes it is necessary to bypass the question someone asked and instead address the real issue at hand.

Turn in your Bibles, I guess, go to in your Bibles, Matthew 19, verses 16 to 17. This is the story of the rich young ruler. Now, I've always thought this was kind of interesting. Here, the rich young ruler comes up to Jesus and asks him, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?

Now, if someone asks us that question or some variation of that question, we are very quick, jump right into it, presenting the gospel. Well, Jesus did something very different and the way Jesus answered the question is not necessarily how I would answer the question, but Jesus has a distinct advantage over me.

He's omniscient, of course. He knows exactly what this guy was thinking. So rather than directly answering the question, Jesus threw it back to him and was trying to make the man realize that he had not perfectly obeyed the commandments his whole life as he had claimed.

So sometimes, based on how the person asked the question, you can really detect the true question behind the question and it's often good to go there rather than dealing necessarily with what the person was asked.

Again, we get the question a lot on this verse. Why, when the person asked the question, what must I do to inherit eternal life, why didn't Jesus say, well, in a few months here, I'm going to die on the cross and come back to life and you're going to need to trust me as your savior in order to be saved.

And so, if someone asks you a question that's a direct bridge to the gospel, I would encourage you to go that route unless, of course, the Holy Spirit leads you otherwise. And finally, always be willing to say, I don't know, but I'll find out for you.

Rather than giving a bad answer or even giving an incorrect answer when you're trying to come up with something really quick, say, I don't know, but I would be happy to come back to you in a couple days or the next time I see you and I'll have an answer.

Prepared for you.

Ministry Lessons from Unexpected Questions

Now, very close to our office down in Colorado Springs is a blackjack pizza store. And over the following years, in addition to adding probably about 10 to 15 pounds of weight onto me, I've developed a pretty good friendship with the manager there.

And he sees me come in usually about once a week and he always saw the Got Questions logo on my shirt. So he'd ask me, well, what's Got Questions about? And then that transitioned to him asking me some weird questions.

So every time I went in there to pick up my pizza, it'd be, what in the world is he gonna ask me this time? But one time he asked me this question. Like, okay, so if I'm a Christian, that means I have the Holy Spirit living inside of me.

And if the Holy Spirit is omniscient and omnipotent, since he's inside of me, shouldn't that also make me omniscient and omnipotent? And I was like, I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn't quite sure if I was gonna say it right.

So I just said, look, that's a great question. Let me come back to you next week when I come for my next pizza and I'll have an answer. And I actually just typed it up on my computer.

And printed it out.

So I was absolutely clear. I was saying exactly what I wanted to say. I gave it to him. He's like, that is great. I remember asking my Catholic priest when I was young this question. He just said, oh, just have faith in the things you don't understand.

And that's the cop-out is what he said. So yeah, so even me, who's used to being, I wouldn't say pestered, that's not the right word, peppered with questions all the time, occasionally run into something that I'm not comfortable answering immediately right then and there, it's totally fine to say, I don't know, but I'll find out for you and come back at a future time when you can be a little more prepared.

So in conclusion, according to 1 Peter 3 .15, the ability to answer questions about our faith is something that God expects of us. With the pastors, with the books, commentaries, websites that are available to us, we have no excuse for not being ready, willing, and able to answer the questions we receive.

It doesn't have to be a stressful thing. Remember, I don't know, but I'll find the answer for you. It's sometimes the best answer we can get. Don't allow yourself to be the excuse for someone else not believing.

Remember, it is not your responsibility to make someone believe in Christ. Only God can do that. I encourage you to look up John 6 .44. It is our responsibility, however, to demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

That's 2 Corinthians 10 .5. If people are going to reject God, may it be only due to their own sinful, hard-hearted rebellion, not due to us being unable or unwilling to answer their questions. I was once accused of creating gotquestions .org so I could minister to people without actually having to be around the people.

While that was not my goal, for me, being an introvert, it is definitely a side benefit. But all that to say, I mean, I'm not very outgoing. My wife is the one who makes a new friend in the King Soopers checkout line every time we go through it.

I'm not a typical evangelist or a preacher. I don't have to be, and you don't have to be. Submit yourself to God and ask him to use you.

He will.

Don't limit yourself to the traditional forms of ministry. Ask God to take the skills and gifts he has given you to use them for his glory and to reach people for Christ. And God will honor, will always honor such a request.

The Growth of GotQuestions and Its Worldwide Reach

So, gotquestions .org. It is estimated that by the end of this year, there will be 2 .4 billion people in the world with access to the internet. That's approximately 35 of the world's population. And this is growing rapidly.

We launched gotquestions .org about 11 years ago. I had just graduated from Bible college and seminary. Didn't really feel a clear calling from God in the traditional forms of ministry. So my wife and I were just praying, God, give me a ministry that is a unique fit for me.

So we came up with the idea. Why don't we just create a Christian website where people can come, ask any questions, they have anything spiritually related, and then we would answer the question. We didn't have anything in mind other than a hobby.

Had no idea this would ever become anything substantial. So the initial idea was people could just come to the website and enter their email address, in this case, not Gino's real email address. And then their question.

And often the anonymity of it, the fact that we don't know them, they don't know us, really frees people up to ask the questions that are on their hearts. We had people say, I've had this question for years, but I've never wanted to ask my pastor about it.

But Gino actually does know the answer to the does God exist question. We've discussed it on occasion. So let's say he did ask this question. We would then respond with an email response with the answer to that question.

Well, since we launched the site in February of 2002, we've sent email answers to over 350 ,000 questions. These are people who have come to the website, submitted a question to us, and received a personal response.

Now, as time went on, we started seeing the same questions occurring over and over again. So then we started building up the website so that more and more of the most frequently asked questions are available instantly online.

So if someone had the question, is Jesus God, they could come to our website, go to the questions about Jesus Christ category, click on the appropriate link, and we take them to the article that directly answers that question.

Our website has now grown to the point that there are over 3 ,200 frequently asked questions available on the website, divided into 26 categories to help people find the answers quickly and easily. Some of our top questions, as you can imagine, most of them would be controversial ones, people where there's disagreements, where it's hard to come up with the consensus on.

You get a lot of tough questions. The first one on this list, why did God allow my husband to be killed in Iraq, Afghanistan? About this time last year, we had a military wife living with us while her husband was deployed and got the phone call late at night that her husband was hit with an IED and lost both of his legs.

So it's one thing to write an answer to a question like this when it's so distant and separated, when it hits you right in the face. I mean, the intellectual answers don't work at that point. You just need to love on the person, care for them, be there to maybe try to explain why God would allow something like that.

But when it's real world like this, I mean, the best answer is sometimes a hug and just being there with them. And why should I not commit suicide? Imagine getting a question late at night where someone says, well, my life is meaningless.

If you don't convince me otherwise, I'm gonna commit suicide in 15 minutes. Well, what in the world do you do? You very quickly write the best answer you can and send it off to them and ask God to use it.

Now, thankfully, in addition to the serious ones, the difficult ones, we do get some funny questions. So I always like to share these with you. Where does the Bible talk about the little drummer boy? Unlike what some people think, he did not come with the three wise men.

Second, and this one still confuses me, did Jesus' mother Mary have a cat? I don't know, maybe.

Maybe.

This next one was recent, and I think it was due to, you know how on your phone when you're texting something, the autocorrect often changes it into something that you did not intend? What does the Bible say about shellfishness?

My best guess is shellfishness is when your friend eats all the shrimp. And the all-time funniest question we've ever received, is it wrong to take homeless people bowling and then gamble on which one of them is going to win?

So thank you for laughing so long to give me a chance to drink some water. And I think that the answer to that question started with something to the effect of, that is so wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin.

But you combine the tough questions, the top questions, the difficult questions, the funny questions, and God is producing some amazing results. March of 2013 was our busiest month ever. Just in one month, the website received over six million visitors.

Viewing the webpages on the site over 10 million times. 3 ,000 questions were submitted to us. We have a question of the week email that goes out to subscribers. We are up to over 207 ,000 email subscribers.

And we have 250 volunteer writers who help us answer all the questions, write the articles, and so forth for the site. Exciting as those stats are, the next one is most exciting. Professions of faith.

On our website, we have over 40 articles that are just dedicated to presenting the gospel based on a different theme, a different way of asking the question. Well, in March, those pages on our website were viewed over 252 ,000 times.

Compare that to maybe handing out 252 ,000 tracks. I mean, you don't know how many people read the whole article, how many people just looked at it and instantly left, but at least 252 ,000 people are landing on those pages and reading some of it.

And from that, we had nearly 16 ,000 professions of faith, professions of new faith in Christ in one month. Now, how many of those are genuine first-time decisions received in Christ? We don't know. These are just what people are professing, are indicating to us.

But if 10 of those are real, if 1 or even 0 .1 of those are real, we're jumping up and down excited at 16 people a month coming to faith in Christ. But only God knows. We know seeds are being planted, people are coming to faith, and God is using a website in a way that we never even imagined.

When we first launched GotQuestions, evangelism was not what we had in mind. We were just thinking more of a discipleship tool for Christians, but God has bigger plans than we ever did, and we're just privileged to play a role in it.

Now, from these professions of faith, the number one question we always get, well, what do you do with all these people who profess faith in Christ? Well, on our website, they have the ability to request discipleship material from us.

Last month, 223 people requested some information, and we have a link to NeedHim .org, which is like an online evangelistic counseling ministry. 197 people began a chat session with them, but 100 of the people have access to GotQuestions .org, which is built for discipleship.

What is the first thing a new Christian typically will do? They have a ton of questions that they want answered, and that's what we're there for. So how does it work? How does GotQuestions .org receive so many visitors?

82 of our traffic comes from the search engines. Let me give you a brief example of how that works. So in order to go to Google and search for what is Good Friday, typically every year, Good Friday is our busiest day of the year.

So if you go to Google and search for Good Friday, GotQuestions .org has one of the top positions. Every article on our site we specifically design so that they will do well in the search engines, because we want people finding our answers rather than finding the answers from other websites.

The Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, all kinds of cults, liberal Christian groups have websites as well. We want our material to be ahead of theirs. Who, when searching on Google, will go past page one or page two in the results?

It's very rare.

If it's not right there at the top, most people are not gonna find it. So if someone then clicks on this link, they then land on our page that answers that question. And as you'll see, every page on our website has at least two links to articles that present the gospel.

So that's what we're focused on. Whether they come to us on something very important, how can I receive Christ as my personal savior, or they come in on, what are the four horsemen of the apocalypse? We want very clear links to the gospel to eventually lead them there.

One of the other passions God has given us is translation. It's not just people who speak English who have questions. GotQuestions .org is online in 148 different languages, and this number continues to grow.

54 of our traffic is from outside the United States. As our translations continue to grow and grow, eventually we're gonna have 75 of our traffic from outside the United States. And let me just focus on one particular language that has a really great story.

There's a small island just south of India called Sri Lanka. The main language they speak there is called Sinhala. Well, Sri Lanka is less than 6 Christian, and that's including Roman Catholicism. Let me show you briefly what John 3 .16 looks like in Sinhala.

There we go. Looks absolutely nothing like English. It's a very beautiful script, but other than the 3 .16, I would have no clue what that was. Well, our translator for Sinhala, great guy, he's very, very faithful.

We've been working with him for several years, and he attends a local church in Colombo, Sri Lanka, which is the biggest city there. Well, something about the way he translates really, really reaches people.

Many, many people have contacted us in English and said, hey, I found your pages in Sinhala, and I've received Christ as my savior. Do you have anyone that you can connect me with? And so we connect them with our translator, and he invites them to their church.

And the coolest thing happened. He started sending us pictures of all these people in this little church in Colombo, Sri Lanka,.

Being baptized.

And we have over 20 pictures of different people, different individuals who've either come to faith in Christ through GotQuestions Sinhala, or we're able to refer them to the translator and to the church, and then came to faith in Christ.

So here are a little ministry located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and there's a church in Colombo, Sri Lanka with at least 20 people whom we've played a role in them coming to faith in Christ. And Colombo, Sri Lanka is on the top of our to-visit list, because I think that would be incredibly cool to get to meet some of those people.

So that's just how we love to see it work. For all you smartphone users out there, GotQuestions has an app for the iPhone or iPad, also for Android. We have a Windows Phone app that's coming soon. The apps are downloaded multiple hundreds of times a week.

We have a lot of new things that we're working on these days. Our main goal right now is building what we're referring to as the wall of truth. Now back to the search engine illustration. If you search for Bible questions in Google, and thankfully, GotQuestions usually has the top two spots.

Well, what if the other eight spots on page one.

Were all for bad sites?

It's not the case, but for some search terms,.

It is the case.

Well, what we're doing is building more websites so that if someone searches for a phrase, more and more of the websites listed at the top will be good, quality Christian websites.

Rather than bad ones.

Because we don't want people clicking on any of the links that are gonna take them someplace to lead them astray. We want them to find good, solid material. We're also sharing some of the expertise we've learned about how to work the search engines with other Christian ministries to help them.

Because we're not into reinventing the wheel. If there's another Christian ministry out there with great online material, we wanna help them. We want a wall of truth at the top of the search engine so people are always going to find the truth.

So with this goal in mind, we've launched several new websites in the last couple of years. Compellingtruth .org, which is very similar to GotQuestions, a little more apologetics and worldview focused.

The site called blogos .org, which is us discussing some of the same issues on our other sites but from a little more personal and practical perspective, a little bit more like a blog. We just recently launched a website for teens, which is 412teens .org, which is based on 1 Timothy 4 .12, which says, do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example in love, faith, and purity.

Just launched that, we're really excited about that. We have a site for kids, gqkids .org, and we're just getting ready to launch a redesign of this site, so we're excited about that. Now for the longest time, we received a lot of requests.

Why don't you take all the articles that are on GotQuestions and publish them in a book? And we were very resistant to this for several years because in a sense, a book is a step backwards in technology.

Ultimately, we discovered there's a lot of people who just much prefer reading material in a book rather than an electronic screen. And I'll be the first to admit, just staring at a computer screen for 10 hours a day, the last thing I wanna do is stare at a computer screen when I'm reading something.

So we started to have some of our content published in books. A couple of years ago, we published our first book, GotQuestions, which contains the 428 most frequently asked questions that we have. And just two weeks ago, our second book, Questions About God, the 100 most frequently asked questions about God was released.

And later this year, we're going to have questions about Jesus Christ, questions about the Holy Spirit, and questions about salvation released. So any way we can get this material into more people's hands, that's our goal.

And each of these books are available on a little table out there if you're interested.

How to Partner with the Ministry

So how can you help?

Well, thank you, I'm glad you asked, because it's really awkward for me just to throw that out there without someone actually asking. First, please pray for us. I mean, there's a spiritual warfare going on with our ministry.

We always warn people anytime we hire someone or contract with someone or someone starts serving with us, we tell them, be prepared. I mean, God is using this ministry to accomplish some things so there's going to be resistance.

So pray for our protection. Pray that we'd have wisdom in answering these questions. Pray that we'd have wisdom in knowing what the calling of God for the future of GotQuestions is. Secondly, can give.

We are primarily funded through donations. But God is very faithful in providing, so if the Lord would lead you to give, we would gladly accept that.

Serve.

I'm sure amongst the people that are here, there are many people who are quality writers with enough biblical knowledge that they can answer some questions. If you're interested in this, you can talk to someone out at the table or there's an application form on the site.

The link says serve with us. We'd love to have more people with a passion for ministering to people. And promote. We have cards, brochures, bumper stickers available out at our table completely for free.

So please take as many of those as you want. Put up links, mention us on Facebook, and just spread the word. If someone maybe asks you a question you don't know the answer to, by all means say, I don't know, but hey, there's this website that I would recommend you to visit.

I think this is the second time I've said in conclusion, but this time I really mean it. If I were to summarize this message, first, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that you have.

Second, if you don't know the answer, add gotquestions .org to the list of resources you consult. And thirdly, don't gamble on the bowling skills of homeless people. So thank you again for the privilege of coming here and sharing my passion, sharing the ministry that God has entrusted to me.

I love Gino. You guys have a great pastor. Definitely tune into his radio show. And again, it's a privilege to be here this morning. So I guess I'll close in prayer. And Father in heaven, we just thank you for the privilege you've given each of us to serve you in some way.

Lord, please help us to know very clearly your calling on our lives. Please use the gifts and the skills you've given us to reach people for Christ. Lord, may you just be glorified. Lord, I thank you for Calvary South Denver, for what you're accomplishing here.

May you continue to expand its ministry, its impact on Denver. Lord, we just thank you that you're in control. Thank you that you have a perfect plan. Thank you for salvation and the privilege of loving and serving you.

It's in Christ's name we pray.