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I want to thank Don McHenry for his kind words of introduction, though it does trouble me that he did not mention the greatest honor that I've received. It happened in Southern California. I was speaking to a rotary club there.

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Now, rotary clubs commonly close their meeting by ringing a bell. I did not know it, but in this particular rotary club, they weren't satisfied just to ring the bell one time to indicate that the meeting was at an end. Instead they had a system of evaluating their speakers with their bell.

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For example, if you were a very good speaker, you got four bells. If you were above average, you got three bells. If you were just so-so, you got two bells. And if you were really poor, you got one bell.

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And it was on the occasion of my speaking there that I received the greatest honor which I ever had received, because I was given then the Nobel Prize. Well, seriously, I think we all must acknowledge that there are certain things we can't do. I know across the course of my years that there are some things that are utterly impossible

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for me. It is impossible, for example, for me to fill an ice cube tray with water and carry it to the refrigerator without spilling some of the water on the floor. It is impossible for me to hold a telephone between my ear and my shoulder while I'm trying

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to write something down. It is impossible for me to open the top of a cereal box in accordance with the instructions that are there. All of us, I suppose, have our own personal impossibilities.

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But one of the things that troubles me very much is that so many Christians say that witnessing for Christ is an impossibility for them. What is witnessing? Well witnessing is simply testifying to how the story of Christ has intersected the story

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of your own life. It's simply bearing witness to what you have seen and heard in your own experience about Jesus Christ in the here and now. The Bible, especially the New Testament, speaks of witnessing again and again.

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It's mentioned more than 200 times. And every Christian is called to be a witness. A single illustration from scripture would make this point. Jesus says to his disciples, "And you shall be my witnesses."

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Why is it then that so many Christians say that witnessing is impossible for them? I think it's because many of them are confused about what witnessing is. Some are intimidated by other people, the ones to whom they wish to bear witness. And then there are some who are put off by the bad examples of witnessing that they observe

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on the part of other Christians. So I want to think with you tonight on the theme, how to be a winning witness. And I'd like to hold before you as our role model, Philip, in the story just read in your hearing.

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The first thing we learn from that story is that a winning witness is confident in Christ. A winning witness knows herself to be saved of the Lord and knows also that the Lord is a present power in her life. The winning witness has two confidences, one that she is loved of God and secondly, that

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she is supported by God in the living of her life. Now we see this kind of confidence in Philip. He receives instructions to go down to the Jerusalem-Gaza road. Now this was a desert road.

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And furthermore, he is told to go there at the noon hour. Now a desert road is a hot, dry, painful place at any time of the day, but it is especially so at high noon. Still Philip immediately obeys the instruction which he has received.

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When he gets there, he sees an Ethiopian, a man permanent in the government of that Nubian nation. The man is riding in a chariot, probably covered with some kind of sunscreen, and about him are the royal retinue.

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And Philip approaches, and as he approaches, he is led of the Holy Spirit to understand that he is to go and witness to, the words are, join himself to this Ethiopian. And again, he instantly obeys. Now this kind of instant obedience, instant response to the lead of Christ in his life,

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I think testifies to the confidence in Christ which filled the heart of Philip. You see, once Philip had heard Jesus say to all of his disciples, "Go ye into all the world, and lo, I am with you always." And Philip believed that.

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And so when the words came for him to go, he went without hesitation, confident in Christ. I know a man who wears his wedding ring on the second finger of his left hand. And I asked him once why it was that he wore his wedding ring on the wrong finger. He said, "I wear my wedding ring on the wrong finger because I married the wrong woman."

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Well he doubted his relationship, but there was never any doubt like that in Philip. He was married by the power of the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ and immediately confident and responsive to him. Back in 1956, I was in London for the first time.

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And it was my first morning there, and I was trying to decipher a map of the city. And I wasn't having much luck. A young man in his 20s walked up to me and said, "Could you give me two shillings for a cup of soup?"

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Two shillings then was about 28 cents. I said to him, "Are you a Londoner?" He said, "Yes, I am." I said, "All right then, I'll be glad to take you for breakfast if you'll just explain this

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map to me and the things I ought to be looking for here in London." Well, he hesitated for a moment. And I said, "Wait, we both have needs. You need something to eat.

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I need some directions. Let's meet each other's needs." "Okay," he said, and with that we went into a restaurant. And he packed away more food than any person I have ever seen in my life at one meal.

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And all the time he was eating, he was marking my map and telling me the things that I should see and the things that I could overlook. And when we came to the end of our time together, and just preparing to leave, I said to him, "I'm intrigued by you.

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You're obviously educated. You're sophisticated. You're very articulate. What are you doing begging for two shillings for a cup of soup?"

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"Well," he said, "I'm a communist and I work on the staff of the Daily Worker, the red newspaper here in London, and we don't have enough money to put out our next few editions. So we decided that we would all go out and we would beg money, saying it was for food, but we would actually put that money to producing the next editions of the paper.

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That's the reason I hesitated when you said that you wanted me to go to breakfast. I would have rather at first just have had the two shillings because I could have put that toward the next edition. Then I thought about it and I decided I could really fill myself up.

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And then for the next two days, I could go out and beg all over the city and put all of the money toward the publishing of our communist newspaper. Thanks Yank and cheerio." And you know, I've never forgotten him.

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And even as I speak of him tonight, I can see him before my eyes. Here was one totally confident of that to which he had committed himself, communism. Many knew it to be an untrue lie then, the whole world knows it to be an untrue lie now, but this young man had such confidence in it that he was willing to starve himself in

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order to raise the money to produce his red sheet. And that kind of confidence impacted on me. I have never been able to forget. Now, how much more is the witness of a Christian strengthened by this confidence?

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Because the Christian does not witness to that which is untrue, but witnesses instead to that which is everlastingly true. Christ not only offers the truth, but he is in himself the very truth. So a winning witness begins with a compelling confidence in him.

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Now the second characteristic of a winning witness is that he is competent in the things of Christ. You'll notice that in the story, when Philip approaches the Ethiopian, he hears the Ethiopian reading aloud from the prophecy of Isaiah, and he approaches the Ethiopian and says,

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"Do you understand what you are reading?" And the man replies, "No, how am I supposed to understand this if I have no one to teach me?" Now, it must have become clear to the Ethiopian that Philip knew what this passage meant,

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else he would not have asked, "Do you understand it?" He was in a sense volunteering to be a teacher, and so the Ethiopian responded immediately to that by inviting Philip to come into the chariot with him. And the Book of Acts is very careful to notice that Philip begins his witness at precisely

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that verse in the scripture where the Ethiopian was reading. In other words, Philip had such a competence in the understanding of the Old Testament, and such a competence in the understanding of what faith is and ought to be, that he could start right at the point which was offered to him, and beginning there, bear his witness.

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Competence like that counts. Andy Rooney, who just about this time is giving his little weekly complaint on 60 Minutes, has an essay in which he talks about how the art of conversation is disappearing in our time.

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And one of the illustrations which he uses in his essay is that everyone is afraid to talk about politics and religion. Those are subjects, he says, which are never discussed. He discusses first why politics is not talked about, and then with regard to religion, he

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writes these words. No subject is more interesting to discuss than religion, but people are so uncertain about what they believe that they'd rather not have the subject brought up. And that too often is true.

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You see, we live in a day when people want affiliation without obligation. They want to be part of something, but without making an investment in it. They want to claim Christ, or they want to claim citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, or they want to claim fellowship with his body on earth, which is the church.

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They want to claim these things. They never study the issues of the faith. They never develop any meaningful personal devotional disciplines. They do not pray with regularity.

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They do not search the scriptures every day of their lives. And they quite casually absent themselves from worship and other responsibilities which are theirs in the church. This is a sad reality.

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You know, I occasionally hear, and you do too, people saying that someday the computers will be able to do everything that the human brain can do. Well, Dr. Arno Penzias, who is probably America's foremost expert on communications, he's head of the communications laboratories for Bell, says that computers will never be able to

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think like the human mind thinks because, he says, they cannot develop patterns of thought such as we develop. For example, if you say to a computer, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," it can tell you it's from Shakespeare.

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It might even be able to tell you the character who uttered the words. But it's going to be utterly unable to understand, given its understanding of what an ear is, how you lend one to somebody. That's not within its capacity to discern.

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Or if a computer hears you say something like, "I see your point, Bill," the computer begins to wonder immediately, "Where is this point on Bill?" The computer, you see, does not have the experience which we have had to run through. We, when we confront some idea, can discern the most subtle shadings of meaning, and a

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computer can't do that. Now Philip has so developed the pattern of his own life after that of his Lord, his faith understanding is so subtle, is so developed, that when this Ethiopian begins to read in Isaiah, Philip can immediately respond at precisely the point of inquiry, and respond

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not only quickly, but accurately and persuasively. He didn't get on board that chariot and just start spouting verses at this man. You see, a computer could do that. It could just reel out the verses.

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But rather than that, he interpreted the story, and he interpreted how that story was testimony to the sacrifice of Christ, and how that Christ was a reality in his life, and could be a reality in the life of the Ethiopian. The scriptures say that we are all to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in

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us. And if we're not able to do that, then we have seriously weakened our witness. Now the third characteristic of a winning witness is that she is congenial. I have a terrible joke I used to illustrate this point.

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I apologize for it in advance. It's a story of a pirate who had a wooden leg and a hook for a right hand, and no right eye but wore a black patch instead. And a young pirate said to him on one occasion, "How did you lose all those parts of yourself?"

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And the older pirate said, "Well, once we were in a storm and the mast broke and it fell on my leg and I couldn't save it, and that's how I got in the peg." "Oh, well, how did you lose your hand?" "Well, we were attacking a Spanish merchantman and we were fighting our way toward the treasure

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on board and the captain of the ship slashed me with his saber and I couldn't save my hand and that's how I got my hook." The young pirate said, "And how did you lose your eye?" "Well," the old pirate said, "I was walking along the beach one day and I looked up and

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there was a seagull flying over me. And as I looked up, some grains of sand fell from his claws right into my eye." And the young pirate said, "Well, a couple of grains of sand is not enough to make you lose your eye."

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And the old pirate responded, "Well, unfortunately, it was the day right after I got my hook." Now, I wouldn't use a story like that if it didn't make the point. And the point is this. I have seen some confident witnesses and some competent witnesses who stab themselves, who

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hook themselves with their own attitudes. They lack congeniality and grace with those to whom they are witnessing. Look at Philip again. He listens to what the Ethiopian has to say.

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He doesn't jump up onto the chariot and begin to preach a sermon. He pays attention to what this man is asking. That's a very important principle in witness, to listen more carefully to what the one to whom you are witnessing is saying than you listen even to your own words.

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And notice this too. Philip showed a very great concern for this man. "Do you understand what you are reading?" he asked. And he must have asked it in such a way that this person of royal authority, who under

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ordinary circumstances would lord it over those all about him, would be open and honest enough to reply, "No, I don't. Can you help me?" I recently read in an article that the average American has only seven minutes of intimate

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conversation in the average week. People are really anxious to talk about the deep issues of life, but they don't have much opportunity to do so. I'll never forget in the second church that I served, a young man fell in love with a

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young lady and they were married. And they were very, very happy. And he enjoyed his mother-in-law and his father-in-law, the whole family, very much. But he knew his father-in-law was without faith.

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And he was concerned for the man. He earnestly loved him and wanted him to know the Lord. So after several years, and after witnessing in more subtle ways, he called once and made an appointment with this man to go and meet him in his office.

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The man was surprised but said, "Well, come ahead." And so he went. Here was the father-in-law sitting on one side of the desk and here is the son-in-law sitting on the other.

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And as gently and as simply and as tenderly and as lovingly as he could, this young man talked to this older man about how much he cared for him and how much he wanted him to have the same experience of faith that he had had. And when he was done, his father-in-law said nothing.

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There was a long, awkward pause. This young fellow, Bill, thought that maybe he hadn't made himself clear. And so he tried again, articulating first how much he cared about this man and that what prompted him to come was that care and that concern.

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And then he moved on from there to speak of how Christ was a reality in his life and he wanted his dad-in-law to have that same reality. And when he was finished, the father-in-law said nothing. But he reached for a pad and a pencil on his desk and he wrote something.

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And he passed it across the desk to his young son-in-law. And the words written were these. "I did not know you loved me so much and I am so moved that if I speak, I shall most certainly weep."

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And the boy got up and walked around the desk and put his arms around his father-in-law and they wept together as his father-in-law became one with him in Jesus Christ. As someone who's been in the ministry for more than 30 years now, I know that most people are very anxious to talk about the things of their hearts and their souls.

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But they don't speak of them because they don't often find people who are gentle and tender and congenial enough, caring enough to hear them. And then notice this also about Philip's witness. He allows the Holy Spirit to work.

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He doesn't try to close any evangelistic deal. He doesn't use any manipulative techniques. He doesn't try to stick his foot in the Ethiopian's door. He waits to see what the Holy Spirit will do.

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In this instance, the Spirit responds immediately because the Ethiopian said, "Here is some water. Why don't you take me right here and I will be baptized." And Philip did so.

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No manipulation, you see. Conversion is a matter of the changing of the heart and that can only come from the outside. And any technique, no matter how subtle or sophisticated, that is used to manipulate

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the heart can produce something which is utterly false. But when the expression comes from the heart itself, then it is real. And that means that when we go to tell others about Christ, we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions.

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Am I leading with my heart as well as my head? Does this person know that I care about her and that I will continue to care about her whether she says yes or no to that that I speak to her of? Is there anything in my witness which is inconsistent with the example of Jesus Christ?

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Are my motives pure? Am I seeking to be an agent of love? We must not blind ourselves with insensitive approaches. Will Rogers said you can't heat an oven with snowballs.

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And 1 John, and I believe this verse is the theme of your conference, sums the matter most perfectly when he says, "Let us love not only in word and speech, but also in deed and in truth." The final characteristic of a winning witness is that he is continuing.

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Now in the instance of Philip in the Ethiopian, the response was immediate. But that doesn't often happen. You oftentimes have to witness for a long time before you notice any results. You're called upon to persevere and to be very patient.

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The enemy of continuance, of course, is monotony. It's very hard to keep your faith shining and your smile sunny and your soul sweet when you're not making any gains in another person's life at all, or at least that's apparently the case.

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When that happens, I would ask you to remember this, that the really great workers in the history of humankind, those whose accomplishments were life-changing, generally fit into one of three different groups. They're first of all extraordinary people who do extraordinary things, like Edison and

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his inventions, or Einstein and his mathematics. Then there's a second group that does ordinary things, but does them in an extraordinary way. Like a poet or a composer, all they do is write, and all of us know how to write, but

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they write in an extraordinary way with a beauty which compels attention and touches the spirit. Then the third group is ordinary people who do ordinary things, but they do them with great persistence.

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That's the secret of a man like Columbus, for example. Many people had sailed ships. Many had sailed their ships to the West, but no one had sailed for as long to the West as Columbus did.

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Those who signed on with him were dreamers as he was, but the monotony of the voyage wore away at them. The wide waters discouraged them, and their visions eventually vanished so that they were ready to revolt against the leadership of their captain.

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But Columbus never surrendered to the tedious, and that is how he covered himself with glory. This was the secret of how Lincoln held the Union together in the Civil War, persistence. This is why Mandela holds the heart of South Africa as he does today, because across all of his years in freedom or in prison, he never let go of his goal.

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This is why that Hubble telescope that is right now circling the Earth 380 miles above its surface, and which will bring such great illumination and discovery to humankind. Why is it there? It is there because the people who designed it and built it were so persistent in their

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efforts. They were one year behind, and then two years behind, and then five years behind, and then eight years behind, but they never stopped. And tonight, the telescope is up there.

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When you find yourself ready to quit, look into what I call your bag, bag. B, blessings. Remember what God has given you. A, accomplishments.

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Remember the victories you've won before. And G, remember your goals and persist in pursuing them. The winning witness is one who is confident in Christ, competent in the things of Christ, congenial in the way of sharing and caring the things of Christ with others, and continually,

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she or he won't quit. During the Napoleonic Wars, a young soldier who was fighting for the Emperor Napoleon was shot in the chest, and a field surgeon was probing, seeking to find the bullet. In those days, of course, there was no anesthetic to be utilized, and it was very painful as

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he probed in the bleeding body of this young soldier boy. And as he went deeper, the soldier said to him, "Doctor, sir, do not press closer to my heart, for if you do, you will wound my Emperor." He had his Emperor in his heart.

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And it's when we have our Emperor, our King of Kings, in our hearts, and when we live out his model in our lives, that we become winning witnesses. And what of those who do not care, and who do not share, who do not bear witness? Well come with me to Napoleonic times again.

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There was a battle at Arkay, and one of Napoleon's generals, a man named Trion, failed to do his duty. He became a coward. When he was apprehended and brought before the little Corsican, Napoleon, Napoleon said

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to him only these words, "Go hang yourself, brave Trion, for we fought at Arkay today, and you were not there." May God grant that we will always be where Christ would have us be, fighting the good fight of faith with a winning witness.

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Pray with me. O loving God and Father of us all, thou who has saved us through the gift of thy Son, and thou who dost empower us by the presence of thy Spirit, grant that we might be so thrilled with that which is true in our own lives, that we cannot refrain from sharing it with

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others. Fill us with confidence and competence and a caring spirit and a commitment to continuance, so that others will come to know the same joy in Jesus which is ours. And we will give to you all the honor and the glory, forever and for ever.

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Amen. Amen.