February 24, 2005

Obedience to Jesus Is Not an Option

Dear Pastor Kruse,

Recently I feel Jesus has been confirming to me many of the things concerning your teachings on walking in the spirit. I was re-reading the section on spiritual warfare just now, and things just fell into place.

I'm starting to really realize now how CRUCIAL our obedience to Jesus is. It is all linked to the things He taught me earlier through Your material and through my own experience concerning the flesh. I have seen in the last month that every time I snap away from Jesus' will and plan for my time and life, even if it is for a "good" thing (like giving a Christian book to someone when I should be doing something else) that everything else comes crashing down on my head and hurts not only me but my brothers and sisters as well!

This primarily relates to the Basic Training Program. Pastor Kruse, Jesus has made it abundantly clear to me that He wants my whole and total focus on seeing this program through. No other teachings whatsoever are to come before my eyes until this is thoroughly studied and completed. It is such a major part of His will for my life, that whenever I turn away after another teaching, no matter how good it may seem, my whole life (daily and spiritual) goes mayhem. You wrote in your section on spiritual warfare that you had seen many Christians fall away from this program because they got deceived by Satan, and I see this happen again and again in my life. I initially make a schedule, but then there comes a point where I fall off it because I lose trust in God over an issue and take that back into my own hands. What happens? Everything else becomes tumult. My love for my brothers and sisters grows cold, even if I want to be a blessing and support for them I often become a stumbling block. School becomes chaos, I lose several hours of sleep because I cannot get organized...eventually I abandon the whole schedule and struggle vigorously in the flesh despite all that I have learned about it, and as a result I fall into sin and depression. that is the fruit of walking in the flesh!

I am grateful to Jesus for letting me go through this so I could learn, I just repented and have dedicated this day to get all my time under His control once again and get even more committed to see the training program through. Jesus is faithful, and I know that if I give my desires and wants to Him, He will see to everything in His time!

Into the fray :)

Your student in Christ,

Chris Svanefalk

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STUDENT EVALUATION OF EVANGELISM: THE TIME IS NOW! (Basic Textbook)

By Christopher Paul Svanefalk, class of 2006 J
March 18, 2006.

Brothers and sisters!

We are living in dark times, everyday billions of souls around the globe suffer from lack of hope and joy in the Lord our Shepherd, and many thousands daily descend to eternal damnation because they were never saved! Many are not saved because the Gospel, Gods power to save, is not preached among them! These are days for evangelism, for reaching out to the lost, hurting and scattered with the love of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, snatching them from the flames of hell and emptiness of worldly life!

Many of you have maybe have no idea how to evangelize effectively, and I once hadn’t either! What I want to share with you about is a great evangelism-training program, which I recently finished. It is called Evangelism: the time is Now!, and is a full course in Evangelism and everything related to it! This book is a powerful tool, which will teach you many things that will make you effective in sharing the Gospel! 

Think you can manage it? Read the first section and find out not only that you can but also that training in evangelism is a must if we want to be successful witnesses for Jesus! Brothers, sisters, if you want to become more fruitful in evangelism and for the Holy Spirit to lead you more powerfully in reaching the lost, training is not an option, and the first part of this training program makes it clear why! It explained to me that not only is evangelism not a spiritual gift but a responsibility for every believer, but that the Holy Spirit does not work in a vacuum! Because He doesn’t, training in evangelism is not an option if you want to be fruitful! But that’s not all! This section also contains great teachings on spiritual warfare, which is very necessary to understand and apply if one is to succeed in seeing this training through to completion! If you did not already believe in the devil, you will do so when you try to get through this training program! The snake may attack you anywhere, but here you will learn basics in spiritual warfare to defeat him! You will also learn something very useful: Time management through relationship with Jesus! You will learn how to effectively, in agreement with the Lord, plan out every hour of your week to accomplish everything you set out to do! This is real powerful! You might think you are too busy to see training through or even be actively involved in evangelism…not after reading this! This section, the first of 9, will get you firmly established for the coming 8 sections, and give you great skills for life after training also! If you here decided to see the training through, the fun was only beginning! This section will also get you established in very important theological issues.

Theology is one of the strong sides of this training program, and in this section you will learn fundamental teachings about what the Bible teaches about the constitution of man – spirit, soul and body – and how this relates to the creation, purpose, life, fall and ultimately redemption of man through Gods Son Jesus Christ! You will also learn about certain key doctrines of Christianity, which cannot be altered or played with if we are to be effective witnesses on the field for Jesus! Mainly, they deal with the nature of God and our Salvation in Him. It is all clearly explained and easy to understand! This gives an introduction to what the third section, my personal favorite, is all about! But before that, the training covers a powerful weapon of the Christian: prayer!

That’s right, Section 2, “Prepare for war: pray first” is a collection of the authors 30+ years experience of evangelism and the things that he has found vital to pray for before going on the field! This section will teach you what you should pray for and how to pray for it. It also provides you with model prayers for both groups and individuals.

The next Section, titled “Understanding your Salvation in Jesus” is just what it says! It is all about our SALVATION in, and about, JESUS! This section is a killer for everyone looking for hard and thorough Biblical proof that we are saved by grace through faith alone, and that Jesus Christ is God the Son, 100% God and 100% man! Most chapters of this section deal either with one of these themes or the other. I learned a lot about Jesus claims to Deity and the proof of Jesus Godhood, and also what shows us that He was 100% man at the same time and still is! You will also learn why we are saved through grace through faith alone (not through water baptism) and why Jesus and Jesus ALONE IS GODS ONLY MEANS OF SALVATION! On top of that, this section has a whole chapter talking about Gods nature, especially the doctrine of the Trinity! This material is GREAT for all of you needing a foundation for these theological issues, which are hot not only in the visible Church but also when dealing with Christian sects which deny these doctrines. Again, everything here is clearly written and easy to understand, so you do not need a PhD to understand everything. What you learn about your salvation in Jesus then carries over to the next section, which deals with discipleship and relating to Jesus as the answer to our needs!

This next section, “Jesus is the answer to your needs” argues and proves just what the title says: Jesus and Jesus alone is the answer to all our needs! Not only is our salvation in Him complete as you learned before in the past chapter, but here you will learn principles of drawing upon Jesus for the answers to your needs, be they physical, spiritual, mental, material…no matter what, Jesus is the answer, not flesh or religious self-strife. This Section teaches basic principles on discipleship; how we relate to Jesus for the answer to our needs through worship in Spirit and Truth, manifesting the gifts of the Spirit, and how we discern what is truly Jesus voice to us in what we believe He is speaking to us. For those of you lost and confused about Gods will for your life, this section is a real hit! It will give you a firm foundation for discernment, and teach you what it means to walk in the Spirit as opposed to the flesh, so you will learn also why religion is worthless and how to rest in Jesus rather than striving in the flesh!

The next section is called “Evangelism: the time is NOW!” and is all about the importance of Evangelism! It explains why our personal involvement in evangelism is so important for the Church to be effective, and lists several reasons where only aggressive evangelism will be sufficient to accomplish the best results. The author talks about various forms of evangelism, but here puts large emphasis to how we witness through our lives, and teaches us from his own life experience and walk with God 5 principles of being effective witnesses in our homes and on the job simply by being there and obeying the Lord. The author shows us that running upon people we see everyday directly is not a good approach, but rather that we live holy and obedient lives, which will attract these peoples to the teaching of Christ. The author in one chapter also deals with witnessing ethics – what to do and not to do on the field. This is helpful and very important, as plain stupid behavior on the field can mean the loss of untold good opportunities of witnessing the Gospel with positive results. Last of all, the author here attacks the doctrine of absolute predestination and stresses that Gods will is that all men should be saved rather than just a chosen few, and thus why it is so important that we prepare ourselves for evangelism.

In Section Six, you will find several Testimonies of Evangelism on the Field, and this is also its title. This section will be a great help for you, as you see illustrated real-life witnessing experiences directly from the battlefield! If you have never witnessed to anyone before, this will be a great experience of learning-by-looking. Covered here are many different field encounters: with a pro-homosexual, a pro-fornicator, a liberal churchgoer, a determinist, an ex-convict…you will surely learn something from these experiences!

A great thing to incorporate practical examples with theory! You will find that this program does this over and over. 

The next section, titled “The Bible: Gods Word Absolutely!” is maybe the heaviest chapter of the book, crammed with information about the validity of the Bible as Gods Word alone! The sole aim of this section is to equip you with the intellectual knowledge about some ways we can know objectively that the Bible and the Bible alone is Gods Holy Word to man. It starts with defining the concept of truth and how the Bible satisfies it. It then goes on to prove the Bibles reliability from numerous viewpoints. You will learn a lot here! 2 whole chapters here deal separately with the reliability of the Old and New Testaments, and 1 with the 100% reliability of copies from the original manuscripts after 2000 years of transmission! It will also provide you with many facts refuting the documentary hypothesis, proving that Moses is the author of the Torah, and show the Bible as being reliable from both the scientific and historical perspectives. The chapter about science and the Bible is a big one, and here you will find many arguments again by secular evolutionists and proof that the tangible facts of science supports intelligent design. This section deals heavily with evolution, one of the main strongholds of atheism in our day, and refutes it with pure scientific observations from many fields of science. One chapter also talks about Old and New Testament prophecies and how their fulfillment in our day is Gods signature to what is His only Word: The Bible! The section closes with teaching you, on the basis of this, why Creationism and Evolution are not compatible and why we can base life and society on the Bible alone as the reliable Book of God. Not an easy section to get through, but you will surely learn something!

In the next section, I started learning about the eternal destinies of men: heaven and hell. This section shows that Jesus and the Apostles all taught a literal heaven and hell, and proves this from the Bible as well as testimonies of men and women having been to heaven and hell and come back to tell about it! It starts waking up a concern for not only changing the eternal destinies of the lost, but also that we as Christians should be concerned about investing in eternity, the Kingdom of God, and not this temporary life which will pass away! This, in fact, is what the next and last section is all about!

In the last section, “Keep a Heart for the Battle”, you will  be challenged to put to work everything you learned in this school of Evangelism! This section is one big challenge to Christians: will we choose this life or the Kingdom? Will we invest our lives into Jesus will or our selfish pleasures? For us there is only one option! I was very encouraged by this section, it will really shake you up and show you that this life is nothing to live for, but that loving God with all you have and doing evangelism is what really matters in eternity! There is nothing more important than this, nothing!

Brothers, sisters, Jesus is coming really soon, and our opportunities to openly proclaim our faith is running out! Going through this training will get you equipped for sharing your faith effectively and bringing others to Jesus!

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Christopher Svanefalk