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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Jesus’ Unusual Recruitment Strategy

Well, today our text was found in John chapter 6, and I invite you to turn there in your Bibles to John chapter 6 today, or maybe on the screen.

As we talk about Christ's unusual recruitment strategy, and of course that is, do you want to leave also?

Let me think, That sounds like maybe on the face of it, not very good recruitment strategy.

But how many of you have ever been recruited for something, and how many of you remember how you were recruited?

Anybody ever recruited to some task or purpose, you were called to something, and you remember exactly how that happened.

Alright, how many of you have ever had a negative experience in recruitment?

How many of you have ever had a positive experience in recruitment?

How many of you just don't know what I'm talking about?

I was thinking about it this morning and I was thinking, have I ever had negative recruitment strategies that actually turned out well?

There was a man that I had just started coming back to the Lord, and I had had, you know, an altercation with my father, so I went to a retreat, and to retreat from my father, but he ended up going to the same retreat.

And I was retreating there, and I was walking through the woods, and this man came up to me and he said, hi, my name's Tony.

And he said to me, do you know how to pray?

I'm telling you I know how to pray and you're saying that I don't?

And he said, yeah, you don't have a clue.

And I was like, actually I do know how to pray.

I said, well, who are you to tell me whether or not I know how to pray?

And I was just coming back to the Lord, okay?

So I actually started to call him some names that were not really godly names.

This was an unusual recruitment strategy because he said, If you want to know how to pray, come to my apartment, my cabin right over there, 04:00.

And I was like, you know of all the things I thought that I might do today, that's Not 1 of them.

I think maybe I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than go to that guy's apartment.

I'm walking along and I come along and I come through some woods and I see some other people and they're all talking to each other.

He goes, this guy came up to us, just talked to us, made us very upset.

This guy came up to us and told us we don't know how to pray.

I said, you know, I think we should lay hands on this guy.

So we started walking towards the place the seminar and we had some bad intentions.

And we got in there and he saw that we were all upset.

He pulled his Bible out to Romans chapter 8, verse 26, and he read, "'You do not know how to pray as you ought.

"'This is what the Bible says.'" And we were like, This is unusual recruitment strategy.

Have you ever had an unusual recruitment strategy that that brought you, you know, to the Lord?

As I was reading through John this morning, getting ready for our text, you know, Jesus did a lot of things that were unusual, you might say, recruitment strategies.

Some of them seem, you know, maybe innocuous, but he went to a wedding, he turned the water into wine.

He threw the money changers out of the temple He made provocative statements that drew attention If you destroy this temple, I'll raise it up in 3 days People are what in the world I?

He's talking to a lady by a well and he says, where's your husband?

You've actually had 5 husbands and the 1 you're living with is not your husband How many think this is just an unusual?

Recruitment strategy But you know that lacks actually later on She said that's the reason I knew you were the Messiah That's the reason I knew it You told me everything I ever did I Was reading a statement this last week and this is kind of an interesting statement.

Unless the attention of people is gained, all effort for them will be useless.

The Word of God cannot be understood by the inattentive.

They need a plain, thus saith the Lord, to arrest their attention.

Let them see that their cases are tried and condemned by the Bible, not by the lips of men, that they are arraigned at the bar of infinite justice not before an earthly tribunal what is being said here sometimes provocative statements that totally knock us off.

Like Tony saying to me, you don't know how to pray.

You know, later on I realized Tony was right.

When he led through that seminar that day, I realized I did not know how to pray.

And you know, ever since then, I've used what Tony taught me to teach people how to pray.

Unusual recruitment strategy by Tony, unusual recruitment strategy by the Lord.

Let me continue this quote, when the plain-cutting truths of the Bible are presented before them, it comes directly against long cherished desires and confirmed habits.

Now let me ask you folks that are here from New Start, when you first came to New Start, did you ever hear convicting messages maybe from science that came across long cherished desires and confirmed habits?

When you saw the food the first time in the cafeteria did you go, what is that?

And every single time I've had people come to health seminars and whatnot, and they're used to 7, 6, to 10 of the same foods day in, day out, but what they see there is all this stuff that they never would eat in a thousand years, even if you put it before them, and that's all there is.

And many times in health seminars over the years, invited speakers that would come.

I mentioned, I didn't mention any of the others, but William Costelli, John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn.

I had him come once, and I was driving him around in my little Pontiac T1000.

There was no excitement in that car whatsoever.

It was like a Chevette without an engine.

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Jesus’ Unusual Recruitment Strategy

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