GAINING THE CANDIDATES FOR OUR GOSPEL PREACHING
We need to begin to pray to gain the candidates for our gospel preaching. We need to make a list of our close relatives and acquaintances. Then we need to pray, “Lord, among these, who are the ones that I should take first as my candidates for Your gospel?” The Lord will lead us. We should not take more than five people on our list as our initial candidates for the Lord to gain. It may be that out of these five, three would not be available. Regardless, we have to learn how to prepare ourselves and how to prepare our candidates, the objects of our work. We need to pray for them for about two months. Then we can go out to contact them.
This kind of selection and prayer for those whom we select will give us the impact with them. It is not the best thing to knock on “cold” doors, the doors of people we do not know. We must find a way to get “warm” doors, doors of people whom we know or who have been recommended to us by others.
We need to realize that what comes out of our labor can be counted rightly only in the future. Presently, all five whom we choose as our candidates may not be available. But after three years they all will be available due to our prayer. We do not know when the Lord will fulfill our prayer. We should just labor. The apostle Paul promised us that our labor in Christ is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). I believe that every minute we spend for laboring in the Lord’s service is recorded by the Lord.
According to the New Testament principle, not one person is saved directly. A person is saved through someone else or through someone else’s prayer for him. God may have chosen your cousin and decided to save him. But if you do not pray for him, no one will pray for him. Thus, God will have no way unless you pray. Your prayer will pave the way and lay the tracks on which God’s “train” can move. Prayer means a lot, so we have to pray for about two months. Then we will go out. Every day we must spend some time to get ourselves equipped, qualified, and prepared to do our duty in gaining sinners for the increase of the church.
After we choose our gospel candidates, we have to consider what book or what verses of the Bible we can use with them. This is why we need to be trained with the appropriate verses from the Scriptures. Certain verses are good for one kind of person, and other verses are good for another kind of person. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 3, “Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups”, ch. 15, pp. 497-498)
The church in Zamboanga 