How can I be victorious over my fear of sharing my faith? With Ray Comfort - Podcast Episode 203

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Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. Occasionally on our podcast we like to invite a special guest to come on to talk about a specific topic, and joining me today is someone

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I've wanted to have on for quite a long time, Ray Comfort of Living Water.

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So Ray, welcome to the Got Questions podcast. It's an honor to be here, and I mean that. We love

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Got Questions, so yeah, it really is an honor. So, Ray, I don't know how many of our audience are going to be super familiar with you and with Living Waters and Way of the

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Master and so forth, so can you give like the few minute elevator pitch of who you are, what

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God's calling on in your life, and what Living Waters is all about? Well, I'm from New Zealand originally.

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I was born there twice, came to the U .S. 1989 by invitation specifically to bring a teaching called

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Hell's Best Kept Secret to the United States, a teaching that just asked what did

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Jesus do when it came to evangelism, and it was very radical, and yet it's so clear in Scripture.

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When the rich young ruler ran to Jesus, he said, good master, what should I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus didn't get him to pray a prayer, didn't preach the cross, didn't talk about the love of God.

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All he did was say, why are you calling me good? There's none good but God, and then he said, you know the commandments.

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And the question is, why did Jesus do that? We're not under law, we're under grace. Well, the Bible says in the book of Romans, by the law is the knowledge of sin.

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God's law, the Ten Commandments, tell us what sin is. In fact, the apostle Paul said, I had not known sin but by the law.

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So once you see that principle in Scripture, Lord of the proud, grace to the humble, it opens up everything.

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And so I came over with my family in 1989. Things were quiet for the first three years because I was totally unknown.

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And then David Wilkerson, the famous preacher, called me from New York, had me preach in his church. He wanted me to preach hell's best kept secret.

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And then another well -known minister called up and he said he had heard it and would I preach it to a thousand pastors, and could he put it on video?

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And he did. And he screened that video to 30 ,000 pastors, and that just exploded the ministry. And then the early 2000s,

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Kirk Cameron, the actor, called and he said he had heard hell's best kept secret. He had listened to it twice. The first time, he said it went over his head.

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The second time, it hit him like a ton of bricks and he realized how important it was. And so he wanted to combine ministries.

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So we combined ministries and he got my Bible and from my notes preached hell's best kept secret on a major TV network.

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And our website collapsed, crashed the next day. Over a million hits, I think it got.

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And so the TV network said, would you come back and do more preaching? He said, no, we'll create a program teaching people how to share their faith biblically.

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And so we called it Way of the Master or The Way of the Master. And now that's in its 10th season. It's in 190 countries and our objective as Christians, as a

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Christian ministry, is to come alongside the local church and equip them to fulfill the

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Great Commission because many Christians don't know how to share their faith. They are subject to fear and all sorts of things.

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So we give them knowledge and help and encouragement through our ministry, Living Waters. That's fantastic.

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I mean, when I think of you and I think of Living Waters, Way of the Master, the first thing that pops in my head is watching your kind of the man on the street videos where you would be on a beach somewhere and just come up to a complete stranger and begin sharing the gospel with them using the

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Ten Commandments as the jumping point into helping them understand that they are sinners in need of a savior.

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And I've always appreciated the directness of the approach and how biblical it is.

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And I've used the method several times myself, both in person and in our writings that got questions.

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And when someone is asking us, how can I know for sure I go to heaven when I die? There is a great opportunity.

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Let me talk to you about it. Let me help you understand your need before I present the solution and so forth.

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So thank you for what you've been doing for many, many years. And just let you know, it's had an impact on many ministries, even beyond Got Questions, in terms of giving people courage and boldness and the tools needed to share their faith well.

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Yeah, we're very humbled by our YouTube channel and our television program that these doors have opened.

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You go back like 50 years ago and say, we want to reach the lost. So you'd hire a big stadium and get a well -known preacher and combine churches that take a couple of years to get the churches to combine, because it's like herding cats, cost millions of dollars for these mass crusades.

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And it's mainly made up of churchgoers. But with YouTube, our channel's got 272 million views and we get to reach millions of people just with a click of a button.

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So I think the Apostle Paul would be green with righteous envy at what we have with this modern technology to reach so many so easily.

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Yeah. Of all the YouTube channels out there, there aren't very many Christian YouTube channels, especially solid evangelical channels with more subscribers than Living Water.

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So congratulate us on that. And I'm very happy about that. There's so much bad content on YouTube and bad teaching that to be able to refer people to the videos on YouTube, it's a huge blessing to us.

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But let me ask you this question, because you mentioned it in passing a minute ago.

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Why, in your experience, are so many Christians so fearful when it comes to sharing their faith?

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Well, we'll touch on fear in a minute, but I want to just talk for a moment as to why evangelism isn't prioritized in the pulpits, because a pastor will reproduce after his own kind.

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If he's a prophecy buff, well, the whole congregation will be into prophecy. If he's into a certain theology or something, that's what he will reproduce of his own kind.

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And if he has evangelism on his heart and he preaches, oh, why aren't we groaning in prayer?

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People are going to hell. Why aren't we trampling the streets and searching and seeking that which is lost, as Jesus did?

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You know, from New Zealand, we don't have the big population that we have in the US, especially California.

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So when I came over here, I was always awestruck and still am on how when there's an ambulance or any emergency vehicle comes along the street, all the cars by law have to pull over to let them past.

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Why? Because someone's life could be at stake. Well, evangelism is an emergency vehicle, and everything within the church should pull over to let it through, to let it have its way, because people's lives are at stake.

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And that's what's been missing in modern evangelism. So there's so few who really cry out,

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OK, I want to reach the lost, but I'm fearful. How do I deal with my fears? Excuse me.

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So let's talk about the subject of fear for a minute. I get fear all the time. I'm always battling fear. I go out on my bike twice a day when it's not pouring with rain as it is today to a local college on my electric bike with my dog sitting in a special platform wearing sunglasses.

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And I go through the college and people come up and say, I love your dog. Who has you with sunglasses on? You got a dog?

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It's a YouTube channel. I ask people, you know, do they think there's life after death? Would you like to come on?

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So that's what I do. But I always battle fear. And there are a few things that help me bring my fears to perspective.

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I'm not exaggerating here. And some people find this hard to believe. I've traveled by plane 2 ,000 flights.

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So I've sat next to a lot of strangers on planes. And when I've sat on a seat and the seat next to me has been empty,

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I always pray for the person who's going to come and sit there. And this is the prayer that I pray.

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It's deep within my heart. Oh, God, don't let them show up. Don't let them reach this flight.

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I don't want to witness to someone. That's my cry in my heart. And because evangelism in that context used to scare me until I understood this principle.

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And it's a wonderful principle. Every single human being has a will to live. Everybody thinks about the afterlife, atheist, non -atheist.

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In fact, the Bible says in Hebrews 2 that they are subject to the fear of death, haunted by it all their lifetime.

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And so when I say to someone, do you think there's an afterlife, it interests them immediately.

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Almost everyone says, oh, no, or oh, yeah, or whatever. They think about it. And that's the question that's brought

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Goliath down to Zacchaeus when it comes to fear, because I know I don't have to say something like on a plane, oh, see those clouds out the window?

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Guess who made them? God. I mean, that's just very awkward. And so I just turned to this guy that I've met five minutes ago and just say, hey,

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Eric, do you think there's an afterlife? I haven't mentioned God, Jesus, heaven, hell, the Bible, sin, righteousness and judgment, the things that make them and me feel uncomfortable.

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I've just asked for his opinion, appealed to his ego. Do you think there's an afterlife? And that is what's helped me more than anything else.

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Plus the fact that I know this person's got a will to live. Well, that's fantastic.

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Just being prepared, obviously, experience can play a huge role in how much fear you have going into evangelism, but just having a methodology that you're comfortable with that's biblical, that people are actually interested in.

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So one of the things I love about Got Questions and serving this ministry is that people are coming to us and asking us these questions.

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So they're inherently then interested in our responses. So hitting on a topic that, as you said, that people are thinking about, where 99 percent of the people in the world have thought about this question at some point in their lives, and they're almost always interested in discussing it.

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That's huge. You know what, if I may butt in, what I often say to people is, especially university students or college students, do you think you're an educated person?

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Are you well read? They say, yeah. I say, what's the biggest selling book of all time? They say, I don't know.

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I say, it's the Bible. Have you ever read it? And they say, often, no. I said, did you know the

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Old Testament? In the Old Testament, God promised he would destroy death. And in the

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New Testament, we're told how he did it. Did you know that? And people say, no. And even an atheist will say, no.

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I say, you're interested. And who's not going to be interested? Because I know this person I'm talking to isn't a dog, cat, a horse, or a cow.

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He's a human being made in the image of God with a will to live. God has placed eternity upon his heart.

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So even an atheist cries in his heart, oh, I don't want to die. And so one of the first questions

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I ask people is, are you afraid of dying? Some people say, nah, nah, not at all.

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I know they're lying because I know they're haunted. By the fear of death. But other people will say, yes,

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I am. And I can see their eyes widen and I can even see what they're thinking. They're thinking, how did this guy know?

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I haven't told mom or dad, my brother, sister, girlfriend, but I am terrified of dying. I just don't even like to think about it.

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And that's something we can address. You think of a waitress. She looks into her restaurant and sees three businessmen sitting at a table.

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They're wearing three -piece suits and they've got these little important looking cases. Is she going to feel intimidated?

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Of course not. She just boldly walks up and says, can I take your order? Why is she so bold?

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These are wheeling and dealing millions of dollars. It's because she knows she has what they want. They're there to eat food.

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And she knows that. That's why she's bold. Can I take your order? And we have what this world wants more than anything else.

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They think we're religious. When in truth, we have found everlasting life. There are millions of people, even today, even right now,

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I would say, in these torture chambers called gyms. Or they're drinking green slime because they want to extend their life just a little.

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We have everlasting life. So if they knew what we had, they would ask us. And that's what

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Jesus said to the woman at the well. If you knew who's speaking to you, you'd ask him and he would give you living water.

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And so that's why it's really good to address this inherent will to live or this fear of death that's in the heart of every human being.

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Plus, there's another tool in the little tool chest that I've got out of the Bible. And that's this person not only has a will to live, but they have the work of the law written on their heart.

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They have a judge on the courtroom of the mind, an impartial judge who will agree with all the commandments.

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And when I meet an atheist, I like to say to him, explain this to me if you believe in evolution. Why is it that evolution gave every human being a conscience that agrees with the

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Ten Commandments? You shall not kill, shall not steal, shall not lie, shall not commit adultery, shall not take

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God's name in vain. We all inherently know this. Why is that? I've got no explanation.

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I say it's because you and I were created in the image of God. And he tells us that he demands morality by putting this impartial judge, this conscience on the courtroom of the mind.

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Well, we can address that as Jesus did. Because if you stay in the area of the intellect, you're going to get arguments.

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Romans 8 verse 7 says this. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

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It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. In other words, that carnal, worldly mind of an unregenerate person is in a state of hostility.

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It's an enmity towards God. And you can see this enmity by the fact that they take

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His holy name that godly Jews won't even write down. And they use it as a cuss word, unthinkable.

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They use it as a cuss word. That's evidence the human mind is in a state of hostility towards God.

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They hate God without cause. And that same verse, Romans 8 verse 7, says it's not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

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Tells us the thing that offends sinners about the God of the Bible is that He demands morality.

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He has a law that says you shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not lie, shall not be a false witness, etc.

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And so you've got to get away from the carnal mind as quickly as you can, like Jesus did.

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And I often say to an atheist that I've talked to about suffering in the world, the hypocrites in the church, evidence for God's existence.

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I say to him, I've addressed your intellect. Do you mind if I address your conscience? He's not intimidated. He says, yeah, go ahead.

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I said, do you think you're a good person? What am I doing? Moving from the intellect, the place of hostility, to the conscience, the place of harmony.

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Do you think you're a good person? How many lies do you think you've told? Lots. Ever stolen something? Yeah, just little things.

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Ever used God's name in vain? Yeah, I do it all the time. And I explain to them how evil it is to take the holy name of God and use it as a cuss word by saying, do you love your mom?

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They say, yeah. Would you ever use her name as a cuss word? No. Why not? Well, be disrespectful.

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I say, you respect your mother, but you don't respect the God that gave you a mother. You've taken his holy name and used it as a filth word to express disgust.

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What's happening is I'm stirring up the conscience, the work of the law written upon the heart. So the conscience does its duty and accuses of sin.

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That's what Nathan did with David. He told him a little story about a man who stole another man's lamb because David had skittled all the

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Ten Commandments, coveted his neighbor's wife, stole his neighbor's wife, lived a lie, committed adultery, committed murder, dishonored his parents, and doing that.

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So what did Nathan do? Told him that story and then said, you're the man. Why have you despised the commandment of the

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Lord? That's when David said, I've sinned against heaven. And that's when we get the penitent prayer of Psalm 51.

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That's what we see Paul doing in Romans chapter two. You who say you shall not steal, do you steal?

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He's doing, you are the man. You say you should not commit adultery. Do you commit adultery? And the wonderful thing is that people don't get angry at you because they've got the conscience accusing them.

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It's not that I'm accusing them. I'm saying how many lies have you lied? The conscience accuses them and shows them they're in great danger and they desperately need a

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Savior. And that's when they understood the cross. And my own personal testimony, Shea, is that I had no fear of God before my eyes until I read the words of Jesus in the

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Sermon on the Mount. This was the night of my conversion. I read, you've heard it said by them of old, you shall not commit adultery.

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And I said in my heart, well, if there's a heaven, I'll make it because I've never committed adultery. But then

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I read the words of Jesus. But I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman to lust for her has committed adultery already with her in his heart.

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It was like an arrow went into my chest. I thought, man, am I guilty before God? Because I was like every other male human being.

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I was burning with unlawful sexual passion and no one knew except me and God.

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And my conscience accused me. I cried out, what should I do? And then came the cross and the relief of God knowing that I'd sinned, but he was willing to forgive me because of what

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Jesus did on the cross. And I became a brand new creature that night. So these principles that we share of addressing the will to live and addressing the conscience are biblical and very effective.

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In the videos that you have watched over the years, there's some of them where you can actually see like the light bulbs going off.

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You can see the point in which they're convicted. You can see the point at which they're interested in what you're saying.

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And it's the way you do it is powerful. And like I said, it's it's very biblical. It points out the things in the

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Bible that talks about where a human being needs to be pricked in order to be convinced of their need for a

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Savior. I love what you do. Love your passion.

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And just even the spirit in which you share your faith, share the gospel and that you're you're very bold, but you're not argumentative.

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You're aggressive in the sense of that you want to point out faulty thinking, faulty understanding, but you're not insulting.

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You're not demeaning. You're not belittling in any sense. And I think my second question to you was going to be, why are so many

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Christians like really bad at evangelism? But I think you've already answered that question, because they're not doing it the right way.

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They're not doing it as Scripture outlines. Not that there's only one right way to do it. But when you follow the biblical pattern, the biblical teaching, understand what the

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Bible actually says about our condition without Christ. The way that Living Water's Way of the

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Master, Hell's best kept secret, the way that you and your ministry have done it, to me, it goes straight to the point.

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And I've seen it have impact many, many, many times. Leads me to a question

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I would love to ask you, because in the 22 year history of GotQuestions, we've seen a difference in the culture just from both the content of questions we're being asked, but also even the spirit or the attitude in which they're asked.

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And obviously, the gospel doesn't change. We're not talking about how we share the gospel change.

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But have you noticed in your experience, as the culture has shifted dramatically since the time you first came to the

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United States, are you noticing certain things that used to work that don't work as well anymore?

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Or anything you've had to adapt or change in light of the new ways that people are thinking wrongly today, as opposed to a couple of decades ago?

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My big problem is that the prosperity gospel continues to be preached, and the compromising gospel is also still preached.

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And by that, I mean, if you want to give medicine to your child, and you say, oh, this is going to be a bit of medicine.

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Oh, I'm going to water it down. You're not doing a favor to your child. You're doing a great disservice.

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Because the strength of its curative properties is in its bitterness. And if you water it down, it's going to lose its curative properties.

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And that's what's happened with the gospel. The whole thing is we can't approach people and talk about sin and judgment and God's anger against sin.

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And yet we've got to. We can't water down the medicine. And so that has created a tremendous amount of false converts, that is, people who sit in the church that don't have the things that accompany salvation.

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They don't have the fruit that reveals they're genuinely and have genuinely passed from death to life.

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Plus, it's given us a whole stack of those people in society that we erroneously call backsliders that never slid forward in the first place.

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They're like a pig that's gone back to swallowing the mire of a dog returning its vomit. And they're the hardest ones to reach.

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And so that's always been my dilemma. But there's a silver lining in the dark society in which we live.

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The Internet has done tremendous damage to society as a whole in that it's let darkness...

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Let me be a little specific. When I was a kid, teenager, burning with unlawful sexual passion, if I wanted to see a dirty picture,

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I'd have to send a friend into a store and he'd buy a magazine. And in the back would be a magazine. It wasn't pornography, it was just, you know, really lusty looking pictures.

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Nowadays, any kid can have hardcore pornography in a split second with his touch of the finger.

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And what it's done, the darkness has filled the heart of this generation. It's made them hate the light. The darker societies become, the more they hate the light.

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However, the silver lining is the pandemic. The pandemic caused a whole generation to be confronted with their own mortality.

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Suddenly, death wasn't something that happens when they're 80 years old. It's happening to people all around the world, younger people, older people dying.

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And so that's why it's so important that we learn to address someone's will to live and realize that every human being, the atheist, the agnostic, the churchgoer, has this cry in their heart of, oh,

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I don't want to die. And we can address that. It's a great door to open by just saying, do you think there's an afterlife?

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Do you think about your own mortality? Are you afraid of dying? Did you know the Bible gives the answer and says

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Jesus Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel? Did you know that?

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May I share it with you? And who's going to say no when that cry is in the heart for this answer to this great dilemma?

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Death is like an elephant in the room that's stomping on all humanity. I noticed in the questions you sent me before the interview, you asked why or how

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I came to Christ. Let me just share a little bit of my testimony. I was not unhappy as a non -Christian.

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That doesn't make any sense to the happiness gospel that says you can't be happy without Jesus. Of course you can.

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Moses enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a season. Kirk Cameron was incredibly happy before he was a

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Christian. Who wouldn't be? You know, beautiful girls all around the world flinging themselves out, you know, millions of dollars and fame and fortune.

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He was incredibly happy. I had the same thing in a smaller scale. I didn't have any girls flinging themselves at me except my wife.

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But I noticed when I was about 20, I had my own house, my own business. It was a surf shop.

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I could go surfing anytime I wanted. Slam a note on the door. I was financially stable, had everything material

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I could want, except for this one thing that bugged me. I was going to die. My wife could die at any second.

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And life took on a futility at the age of 20, just like with Solomon. He had everything and he said, it's like chasing the wind, all because of death.

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Vanity, vanity. All is vanity. And so that's the thing that brought me to the

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Savior. Not to find happiness, but to find righteousness. And what we've got to do is put aside this

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Jesus will make you happy gospel, because it's not biblical. Ask the Apostle Paul if he was happy with his beating, stoning, shipwreck, imprisonment, martyrdom.

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Or James who had his throat cut with a sword. Or Stephen who was stoned to death.

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Or Fox's Book of Martyrs tells us all those that died for the name of Christ. So being a Christian doesn't mean a smooth flight.

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It means a safe landing. Being a Christian isn't a promise of happiness because we enter the kingdom of God through much tribulation.

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Being a Christian is a promise of righteousness. Riches profit not on the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.

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And when we lose sight of God's moral law, the Ten Commandments, we lose sight of God being a lawgiver.

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And we lose sight of Him being a judge. We lose sight of the fear of God that we have to stand before Him. And we come to Him not for happiness, and we come to Him not for righteousness, but happiness.

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The prodigal son returns to his father, not because he sinned against heaven, but because he's run out of money.

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And so what we must do is show the prodigal the pigsty he's living in. Show him that his desires are for filthy pig food.

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Make him realize that he's burning with unlawful sexual pleasure. He's selfish. He's ungodly. He's ungrateful.

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He's unthankful. And yet despite all this, God is the lover of his soul. He's rich in mercy.

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He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And he's proved his love by Christ dying on the cross. And when someone comes through that door of genuine sorrow for sin, true repentance, they're going to put their hand to the plow and not look back because they're fit for the kingdom.

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And that's what we need in contemporary society. Genuine converts that will be bold and share the gospel without compromise.

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No, I think you're exactly right with how the pandemic opened people's eyes in a new way that I don't know

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I'd ever experienced before. Being an internet -based ministry like GotQuestions, when everyone is locked in their home for six weeks to three months, what are they doing?

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They're spending a lot of time online, and they're asking a ton of questions. So GotQuestions actually grew dramatically during the pandemic.

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And praise God for that. There's more opportunities for us to answer people's questions and to point people to God's word for the answer.

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If I were to try to think of what is the number one question that we're asked about evangelism, it can often be very practical, like actually how to, what's the first step?

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But also I've seen lately a few, and something that I will admit that I struggle with on occasion, when you're trying to do like with your neighbors, for example, you're trying to build a relationship with them to make them want to listen to you.

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How do you, I don't know, in that moment, get that boldness to go from friendship evangelism in terms of trying to build a relationship to recognize, you know,

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I actually need to share the gospel with that person. Both like a little how -to, but also more of a, how do you know when is the right time to go from just being a good neighbor, being a good friend to, you know,

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I need to tell you what your ultimate need is in life. Yeah, neighbors are a hard one because you really don't want to upset your neighbor.

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You know, you want to win them with works rather than words. So we're surrounded by Jehovah's Witnesses on this side,

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Catholics on this side, Hindu on the opposite us. And so what we do is we're rich at good works.

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We give out gifts to the, we have chickens. We've got 24 chickens and they lay eggs and we give our neighbors eggs and we show them we love them.

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I give them my books, which is a great thing to be able to do to say, this new book came out.

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Today, the lady who's had a Hindu background is actually coming to the ministry for lunch. And so if you can invite someone for lunch that doesn't know the

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Lord, that really helps. But it really is a difficult one. It takes a lot of courage, but the thing that can help once again is that question, do you think there's an afterlife?

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You don't have to lean over your fence and immediately talk about sin. You can just say, Fred, what's your thoughts on the afterlife?

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Do you think there's life after death? And just let them talk. That will dissipate your fears. Often people will say something like,

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I don't know. And I say, do you think about it much? And they say all the time. When I hear them say all the time, that dissipates my fears.

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He's not the Antichrist. He hasn't stabbed me. He's saying he thinks about death all the time. And I've got the answer.

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And so I say, well, do you ever read the Bible? Can I give you a Bible? Do you know what the message of the Bible is? Have you ever heard the gospel?

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Often I'll say to Catholics, have you ever heard the gospel? They say, yes, all the time. I say, what is it?

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They'll say it's the word of God. Because they hear in their mass a priest just read from the

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Psalms or something like that. And they think that's the gospel. But I say, no, the gospel is good news.

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It means good news that Jesus Christ has abolished death. Did you know that? And it opens up the door.

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So never be afraid. Ask questions. It's called the Socratic method, where Socrates taught his students by asking them questions.

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We should start a site called GotQuestions. And that is a great key to finding out what's in someone's heart.

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And so then you can give the answers. Yeah. And so, Ray, the last question,

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I want to throw you the ultimate softball here. What's new in your ministry?

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What's coming up? What should our listeners know about? Oh, I'm so pleased you asked.

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Because we had an outreach in London last year during the king's coronation.

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I looked at the queen's coronation in 1953, I think it was, and how she had to vow before God that she would uphold the biblical truth of salvation by grace through faith without works.

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It was all written that she recited. And I thought, oh, Charles is going to do the same thing. So we produced a tract, had 16 million printed, sent a team to London, had a massive team in London and around the world,

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Australia and in Europe and in New Zealand and other countries. And in that one day, 22 ,000 people gave out these tracts.

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And people held on to them because they had this perceived value. It was a memorial for the coronation.

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So we're doing the same thing during the Olympics coming up this year. In Paris, we're seeing a team to Paris.

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We've had four incredibly well -designed, quality million -dollar euros, pounds, dollars and dollars in the

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US. Our first print is 12 million, and we're giving them away free of charge. You just pay the shipping.

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And for people to either join us in Paris for the conference and for the outreach, or to get these free tracts, just go to livingwaters .com

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forward slash Paris, livingwaters .com forward slash

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Paris. And by the way, 3 billion people watch the Olympics. That's 3 ,000 million.

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And so this is a huge opportunity. Everyone's thinking about it. To get a tract that's designed to look like an

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Olympic memorabilia, a million dollars, people are going to snap it up.

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So they're completely free. 12 million being printed first print. Wow. It's exciting. I love what you're doing.

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I love your passion for evangelism. My weakness, I'll fully admit this many times, is I'm a writer by trade, so it's easy for me to want to just hide behind a computer and share the gospel that way.

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And there's nothing wrong. I know many people have come to faith in Christ through just reading articles on GotQuestions or responding to answers on GotQuestions.

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But your enthusiasm about evangelism is infectious, and it always has been for me in times when

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I have shared the gospel. Sometimes I've used directly the exact method you've described today, and I've almost always found it effective.

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I'm not saying everyone is converted on the spot, but it definitely causes people to think. It definitely makes them more open to what you're trying to say when you're discussing a universal question like that.

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So, Ray, thank you, and please keep doing what you're doing. And I know God's using it. He's used it in my life to help me to know how to share the faith better.

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And I know the same true of many people I know who love you, love your ministry, and have been impacted in powerful ways.

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So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. This has been the GotQuestions podcast with Ray Comfort of Living Waters Ministries.