Written by John Coble 

I was involved with doing stand-up comedy many years ago and before I started doing evangelism. It was a fun hobby and I performed at a few open-mic nights in and near Nashville. In hindsight, it seems like God was using stand-up comedy to prepare me for something better – preaching the gospel in public!

1, Introduce yourself, say “hello” – give people a few seconds to recognize you and pay attention. When you are out on the sidewalk, it may take someone a couple seconds to figure out who is talking and where to look.

2. Repeat what a heckler says on the mic—even though it may be an insult. Many people probably didn’t hear the heckler, since he doesn’t have a mic and you do. You want people to know what “heckle” you are responding to.

3. Do NOT let a stranger talk on the mic. Even if it makes it more difficult or makes you seem less congenial, don’t do it. If someone wants to talk on the mic, they are likely drunk and you don’t know what that person is going to say.

4. When using a handheld mic, point the mic towards your mouth and keep it pointed towards your mouth, even when you turn your head. The mic is like an arrow pointing toward your mouth, so people know where to look. Get familiar with using a mic and adjusting the height of a mic stand. Also, it’s counter-intuitive, but covering the mic with your hand WILL cause very annoying feedback.

5. Don’t try to talk over people who are laughing or cheering. Don’t try to talk over traffic horns, sirens, etc. Just wait a few seconds and don’t stress about it. It might be a good time to take a drink of water. (But Do talk over people who are attempting to interfere with your presentation.)

Daily Devotional 2-16-21

Becoming Part of the Bride

When Christ purchased His bride, He bought a bride who was “damaged merchandise.” His bride was sullied by manifest impurities. She was covered by spots and marred by wrinkles. Yet what He purchased He also sanctifies: 

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for herto make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Eph. 5:25–27, NIV)

Christ prepares His bride for His wedding feast envisioned in Revelation:  

Then the angel said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” (19:9, NIV)

Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate not only the redeeming purchase price paid by the Bridegroom but symbolically the marriage feast of the Lamb to which every believer is called.

Coram Deo

Give thanks for the purchase price paid by your Bridegroom.

Passages for Further Study

Ephesians 5:25–27

1 Corinthians 11:23–25

From: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/becoming-part-bride/

Daily Devotional 2-15-21

Feelings Follow

It happens all the time. Housewives and business people find their work piling up and they get depressed. The more the work stares them in the face, the more depressed they are. They become like children who never feel like doing anything. They want to feel good. But those good feelings evade them. In fact, as they dodge their work responsibilities, the worse they feel. You’d think they would get the hint. But they don’t. Their thinking is scrambled. They actually believe good feelings are required in order to accomplish their work.

But the exact opposite is true! When we do what is right, good feelings follow. For example, Jesus exhorted His disciples to be servants. He gave them the example of doing the job of a servant. He washed their feet. Then He said, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them” (John 13:17). In part, when Jesus speaks of being blessed, He has in mind the human emotion of happiness. And He tells us that we will be happy when we do what is right. In other words, good feelings follow.

Now when Jesus wants us to be servants, He wants us to do the dishes, take out the garbage, make the bed, shovel snow, clean the basement, do our homework, and other tasks like these. It is depressing when the dishes pile up in the sink and the garbage can is running over. I rarely feel like cleaning up messes the dogs have made. But it must be done. And as Jesus promised, the good feelings always follow. So if you are depressed, get to work. Do what needs to be done. Don’t wait until you feel like it. You never will Good feelings will follow. To help you understand this better, click here and listen to “The Place of Your Feelings.”

From: http://dennyprutow.com/daily-devotions/

Short report of the Preach-A-Thon in Tampa, FL

Praise the Lord for bringing to us these 32 new evangelists who joined us in Tampa, FL for the SBO ’21. Below is a short report from the Preach-A-Thon as taken from the Facebook page of evangelist Joshua Richards. 

Praise Report Day 1

Tracts handed out – 65

Joshua and David Day prayed with two people and a homeless lady called Alisha. Alisha broke down in tears, desperate to escape the troubles of the world. Just a few years older than David it was clear to see what sin had done to her and we prayed for her. The team were joined by an evangelist called Larry, who wasn’t a member of the SFOI team but had preached in the same location for around 15 years.

Praise Report Day 2

Preaching took place at an abortion mill and beach in Clearwater. Joshua even got to preach on a tug boat! Brackston and Joshua spoke with a man who insisted that without scripture, speaking in tongues was evidence of being saved.

Praise Report Day 3

Tracts handed out – 10

Praying today with Bill Adams in downtown Tampa. A guy named Cory came up and asked what parish I attended. I asked him if he was a Believer and he said no, but appreciated what we were doing. Pray for Cory.

Praise Report Day 4

Tracts handed out – 18

Had a few good conversations about our First Love in St. Petersburg, FL. He that is faithful in little is faithful in much!

Praise Report Day 5

Sixty or so people responded favorably to the Gospel at the Preach a Thon in downtown Tampa, FL. Pray for Sam & Jeremiah. Sam, a vendor, approached me with his friend Jeremiah and said he had been given a Gospel tract from someone else and when I asked him if he was a Believer he said he was but was not born again. I asked him if I could pray for him and he agreed and I shared the Gospel in the prayer. Pray that God and more sinners would be reconciled!! 

Praise Report Day 6 Last day of the preach-a-thon and the first day of the official Super Bowl Outreach! Today I ministered in downtown Tampa, FL and I prayed with a homeless man named James, we met a man named Eric and two of his friends sharing the Gospel, and prayed with a man named Dennis and his wife and shared the Gospel in the prayer. My friends from Ohio arrived and we broke bread, prayed, worshipped, and fellowshipped together along with solid teachings from team leaders Alex Burt and David Day. More answered prayers!

Daily Devotional 2-12-21

Comfort in Trial

There is a perfect balance in this. God in His providence operates the scales; on one side He puts His people’s trials, and on the other He puts their consolations. When the scale of trial is nearly empty, you will always find the scale of consolation in nearly the same condition; and when the scale of trials is full, you will find the scale of consolation just as heavy. When the dark clouds gather, the light is more brightly revealed to us. When night falls and the storm is brewing, the Heavenly Captain is always closest to His crew.

It is a blessed thing that when we are most downcast, then we are most lifted up by the consolations of the Spirit. One reason is, trials make more room for consolation. Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper and makes more room for consolation. God comes into our heart–He finds it full–He begins to break our comforts and to make it empty; then there is more room for grace. The humbler a man is, the more comfort he will always have, because he will be more fitted to receive it.

Another reason why we are often happiest in our troubles is this–then we have the closest dealings with God. When the barn is full, man can live without God: When the purse is bursting with gold, we try to do without so much prayer. But when our shelter is removed, then we want our God; when the house is purged of idols, then we are compelled to honor the Lord. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!”1

There is no cry so good as that which comes from the bottom of the mountains, no prayer half so hearty as that which comes up from the depths of the soul, through deep trials and afflictions. They bring us to God, and we are happier; for nearness to God is happiness. Come, troubled believer, do not fret over your heavy troubles, for they are the heralds of weighty mercies.

1) Psalm 130:1

From: https://www.truthforlife.org/resources/daily-devotionals/latest/?gclid=CjwKCAjwnK36BRBVEiwAsMT8WCR8UteIwaWlAyP4o9ZIuAWio8l7qmAM1nDcB3pFiYr-jOUNkgMsShoC68IQAvD_BwE

Daily Devotional 2-11-21

Revisiting our Father

Martin Luther understood the second commandment as linked with the command to pray. He understood that the negative, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” was also to be understood in the positive, “You shall call upon the name of the Lord.” “For to call upon the name of God is nothing else than to pray. Prayer is therefore as strictly and earnestly commanded as all other commandments…praying, as the Second Commandment teaches, is to call upon God in every need. This he requires of us, and has not left it to our choice” (LC.III.5-6, 8).

But God has provided the resource from which all prayer flows: the “Our Father.” Just as God has given the commandment to pray, so God has also provided, from Jesus’ lips, the prayer most pleasing to him. “Hence there is no nobler prayer to be found upon earth than the Lord’s Prayer which we daily pray, because it has this excellent testimony, that God loves to hear it, which we ought not to surrender for all the riches of the world” (LC.III.23). Thus we pray so as to be drawn into God’s loving presence.

As far as our needs, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:8). We are drawn into God’s presence with that first phrase, “Our Father who art in heaven.” These words are above all a confession of faith that God exists, “For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6). But we confess our faith in God’s existence not in a glamorous, grandiose way after having worked our way through all our doubts.

We don’t confess that “God is” after we have resolved all enigmas regarding the existence of the universe, or how general relativity is reconciled with quantum theory, or the nature of dark matter, and the many other questions that assail scientific thought. We confess God’s existence mainly with the faith of a child, crying out “Our Father.” Or, as the apostle puts it, “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15). Abba, in Aramaic, was the infant’s first babbling words for the English equivalent of “Daddy.” Thus, faith in the existence of God is confessed with the words of a child toward “Our Father.”

But this is not a pantheistic confession that God is everything and everything is God. It is our Father who art in heaven. There is a marked distinction between the one confessing and the object of his confession. The expression could well be phrased, “Our heavenly Father of those of us who art upon planet earth.” We don’t look upon our earthly abode for help. We look beyond ourselves to the one whose abode is simply “in heaven.” Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.

In the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, we say:

“Hallowed be Thy name.”

The first petition is nothing but a confession of sin before the holiness of God.

Luther himself conceded in reference to the word hallowed, that “this is, indeed, somewhat obscure. (1) However, the clearest and most precise meaning is, “Sanctified be thy name.” (2) It is a declaration of God’s holiness vis a vis man’s sinfulness. The first petition positions the supplicant in relationship to God. The Father is holy, the supplicant is a sinner. Just as the Father has a holy name – The Holy One, The Eternal One – so the supplicant has a name – sinner. The first petition is nothing but a confession of sin before the holiness of God. The supplicant is not beseeching that God’s name be made holy, for it already is. The supplicant is pleading for God’s mercy in light of his own sinfulness. The plea is “I confess that your name is holy, because my own name condemns me as unholy. I am in need of your holiness due to my sinfulness.” In short, it is a plea for justification before God, based on one’s position before God, and God’s capacity to justify based on God’s own holiness.

God’s name is invoked because the name is the living representation of God’s actual presence; the Holy Name is one and the same with God’s Holy Being. In saying, “Sanctified be your name” we are joining our prayer to the publican’s prayer in the temple, “God, have mercy on me a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). And of him, the Lord said, “this man went down to his house justified” (Luke 18:14).

We may also look at the meaning of the inverse of the plea. Instead of the imperative, “Glorified be your name!” we are more prone to exclaim the other imperative, “Glorified be my name!” This indeed was the prayer of the pharisee in the temple, as he recounted his good works in his prayer to self. That prayer is the constant and futile cry of our sinful, idolatrous nature, “Glorified be my name above all others, including God’s!” Thus, the cry “Sanctified be your name” is also one of repentance. “I repent of seeking my own glory and holiness before men and before God. I rest my soul upon your holiness alone.”

When we pray for God’s name to be sanctified, we are praying for God’s glory alone to be praised throughout all creation for all his gracious gifts of grace.

“To sanctify” also means “to glorify.” It is a cry of praise, for the gifts of repentance and justification cannot be received without resultant praise. When we pray for God’s name to be sanctified, we are praying for God’s glory alone to be praised throughout all creation for all his gracious gifts of grace. His glory is the glory of the cross by which God reveals his name in Jesus as the one who “shall save his people from their sins.”

Thus the “Our Father” begins with a confession of sin, a plea for justification, a groan of repentance and an exultant cry of praise for the salvation that is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.

From: https://www.1517.org/articles/revisiting-our-father

Daily Devotional 2-10-21

Have You Not Heard…?

The resentment, bitterness and pain that many have experienced through the pandemic have tended to drive people further away from any sense of belief in God. ‘If God is there,’ I hear people say, ‘he certainly is not kind and compassionate. He can’t be good.’

Where can we find answers to comments like these? Let me suggest we need something more than our own testimony and wisdom.

Come with me to one of the great chapters of the Bible – Isaiah chapter 40. Isaiah tells us that when we are confronted with this world’s evil and suffering, rather than deny God, we need to think again about who he is.

Turn back the clock some two and a half millennia to a scene in the Middle East. Picture a great nation of the ancient world, brought low by conquering armies. Picture those people having been taught for hundreds of years that they are God’s special people. But the unthinkable had happened; the Babylonians had devastated Jerusalem and their lives. The temple was in ruins; the economy in tatters; and their homes destroyed. Now exiles in a foreign land, the temptation for the Jewish people to reject the God who had made promises to their forefathers would have been enormous.

Yet Isaiah 40 opens with these words: Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. There’s a timelessness about them that Handel’s Messiah identifies, for they speak to people suffering in every age. The language, ‘Comfort’ speaks of the tenderness of God. Indeed, the theme continues in verse 11: ‘He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom…’

Isaiah knows that in tough times only a big God can sustain us. And this is who God is. Only he can overrule our world when it is falling into chaos around us. Only he can say to us with any degree of credibility, ‘Comfort.’

Isaiah draws us into his picture of God’s awesome majesty and kindness, with questions such as, ‘What is God like?’

Can we compare him to the great ones of the world? Some try to pose as gods! Nebuchadnezzar, the great emperor of ancient Babylon, tried it for a while. So did Augustus Caesar and other Roman emperors.

Isaiah’s response is telling: Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to nought and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing…

God’s throne fills the universe. He needs no capital city: the heavens are his palace. God has only to blow on the arrogant and power-hungry and they wither away.

‘Who created the heavens?’ Isaiah asks. Don’t you realize that every night God summons the stars because he controls the vast cosmic gravitational field? The universe is the arena of God’s artistry. We search the universe in vain for an adequate comparison to God’s majesty. There is nothing that men and women worship – be it science or technology, intelligence or wisdom, military might or political power, or even the sun or the stars – that can be compared with him.

 Yet our world today has walked away from the very thought of God.

Which brings us to another question: Is God kind and compassionate?

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Isaiah asks again. The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable (40:28).

No matter how heart-breaking our situation, no matter how perplexing, it’s not out of God’s control. We are in the hands of a kind and limitless intelligence, who knows what he’s doing. Events like Covid-19 don’t mean that God’s hands have slipped from the helm. They are permitted sufferings and a wake-up call to a world that has forgotten him. We may not always understand God’s ways, but we have every reason to trust him.

Indeed, God is good and caring. In verse 29 we learn: He gives power to the faint, and gives strength to the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, and note this: they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

We may wonder at the order of the words here. Why not conclude on the note of soaring higher, like the eagles? Yet concluding on the note of walking makes sense, for that is what life with God is like.

In life’s struggles, it’s not the wings of an eagle we need but the endurance of the long-distance walker. Flights of spiritual experience are no use if they are followed by plunges into the darkness of depression.

Walk and not faint. That’s what we need when life is tough and incomprehensible. That is the strength that the God of all strength, provides for his people.

In those times when resentment, bitterness and pain make it hard to believe and hard to pray, hard to sing and hard to read the Bible, turn afresh to Isaiah 40.

Let’s fill our minds with the awesome majesty and love of God. The greatness of his power is matched exactly by his love and compassion. The opening words of the chapter, ‘Comfort, comfort my people’ tell us that in the midst of disaster, God provides us with the strength we need to endure. Like God’s people in Isaiah’s day, let us hear the Word of God and believe it.

From: https://anglicanconnection.com/have-you-not-heard/

Daily Devotional 2-9-21

Longing For God’s Law

A survey by George Gallup Jr. revealed a startling trend in our culture. According to Gallup, the evidence seems to indicate that there are no clear behavioral patterns that distinguish Christians from non-Christians in our society. We all seem to be marching to the same drummer, looking to the shifting standards of contemporary culture for the basis of what is acceptable conduct. What everybody else is doing seems to be our only ethical norm.

This pattern can emerge only in a society or a church wherein the law of God is eclipsed. The very word law seems to have an unpleasant ring to it in our evangelical circles.

Let’s try an experiment. Read the passages from Psalm 119 that accompany this devotion. Try to crawl into the skin of the writer and experience empathy. Try to feel what he felt when he wrote these lines thousands of years ago.

Does this sound like a modern Christian? Do we hear people talk about longing passionately for the law of God? Do we hear our friends expressing joy and delight in God’s commandments? 

Coram Deo

Do you long passionately for God’s law? Do you express joy and delight in His commandments?

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 119:97

Psalm 119:11–12

Psalm 119:131

From: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/longing-gods-law/

Super Bowl Outreach 2021 – Tampa Bay, FL

Adam Gott loving his neighbor at the Super Bowl in Tampa, FL.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

II Timothy 3:16-17

Super Bowl Outreach Highlights – February 4th – 7th

Day 1 – February 4th, 2021:

W  atch Bill Adams SBO Recap on Facebook here: https://fb.watch/3x5KPdkZzl/

D  ay 2 – February 5th, 2021

Watch Bill Adams Day #2 update on Facebook here: https://fb.watch/3x6DbIWvYV/

See Heath Pucel Day 2 Training Highlights here: https://fb.watch/3x6HrOb7Np/

or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/SportsFanOutrea/status/1357698176287916034?s=20

Day 3 – February 6th, 2021:

Mark Yoho and Peter Firth teaching at the #sbo21 Day 3 in the morning before going out to the streets.

Watch Bill Adams Day 3 update from Clearwater Beach on Facebook here: https://fb.watch/3x7lxcX7_u/

Watch Jaycen Saab’s update in Ybor City on Day 3 here: https://fb.watch/3x7qv0JyF_/

Watch David Day’s update from Day 3 SBO here: https://fb.watch/3x7uLiRB9i/



Day 4 – February 7, 2021:

Watch David Day’s SBO Final Day Report on Facebook or Twitter: https://fb.watch/3x7PfaFUzS / https://twitter.com/SportsFanOutrea/status/1358471035553742848?s=20

Daily Devotional 2-8-21

Christ’s Return

Have you ever been to a sporting event and hollered at the officials? It’s becoming a national pastime. Why? We cry out for justice. In many cases our court system seems to be playing favorites rather than seeking the truth. And justice is perverted. So it goes. We long for true justice. But our instincts tell us that since the scales won’t be balanced in this life somehow perfect justice must still prevail. An after life is required. Not only so, God must exist. Only a perfectly just God who is all powerful and all knowing can set the record straight. Instinctively we understand this is the case. Instinctively we know the truth, “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

And so, we should have no problem accepting the God of the Bible. He is the all powerful, totally righteous, all knowing God. And He plans on bringing judgment through His Son Jesus Christ. “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). This man is Jesus Christ. And Christ will come again. “Then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left” (Matthew 25:31-33). Then the scales will finally be balanced and perfect justice will be measured out.

To help you understand this better, click here and listen to “Christ’s Return from the Holy of Holies.”

From: http://dennyprutow.com/daily-devotions/