If you want to be a soul-winner for Jesus, don’t start with a hammer or a club. One of the greatest things you need in order to be a soul-winner is love. You need to have on a robe of love that will cover you from head to foot—the love of Jesus. We need to get close to the Lord Jesus Christ. We need such a baptism of love for souls as Jesus had. Then we should see through His eyes and feel through His heart.
You say people would not know it? Yes, they will. Love bears a message all its own.
I know so many precious ministers, winning souls for Jesus, who have the baptism of love. I know other Christian workers who have not, or they have effectively concealed it if they have.
We may have our training and our theology; and we need it. Our teaching and our doctrine may have the ring of solid gold. We may stand for the fundamentals of the gospel, for the inspiration of Scripture, for the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, for the atonement, for the resurrection and for our Lord’s return. If we just make our preaching theology, even though our theory is absolutely correct, and have not the love, some way we do not get the results.
You can tell if you have that love when you are winning souls for Jesus. It seems to me sometimes, when preaching, I have not the love I ought to have. I do want more. I am not setting myself up as an example. Jesus is the example.
Yet with that little love He has given me, it seems to me sometimes, when I am preaching to sinners, my heart is bleeding for them. I am trying to blink back the tears, trying to keep on smiling at them, yet my heart is breaking with longing to see them come to Jesus while I am talking about Him and His goodness, glory, mercy and love.
I feel while I am speaking in the Spirit as though a beautiful, shimmering silver net was going out, out, out. Then at a certain time in my sermon, I see the silver love net dropping and going around people; then at altar call fairly feel the tugging of nets full to the bursting as strong and willing hands help me pull these souls to land.
If you want to be a soul-winner, get the love of the Lord Jesus in your heart. “But Sister, how will I get it if I don’t feel it?” Just come close to Jesus, seek His face, put your all upon the altar, and ask Him to draw you so very close to His heart, so that His love just fills your heart for a lost and dying world.
And oh, when He fills you with His Holy Spirit, you know the first fruit of the Spirit is love. It doesn’t matter what other gifts we have—speaking with tongues, healing the sick, raising the dead, performing every miracle. If we haven’t love, we are nothing.
I remember when Jesus had called me first to go and preach the gospel. When I was going out into the work, Mother asked: “Aimee, who is going to buy your things? You know Robert (to whom I was just to be married) hasn’t any salary.”
“Mother, I know.”
“Who is going to buy your shoes, your dresses, and look after you?”
“I don’t know, but I will ask the Lord about it.” I prayed before my open Bible. Jesus spoke from the pages: “Child, take no thought of what you shall eat, drink or put on. The Lord knows you have need of these things. Consider the lilies—they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
I said, “Oh, thank you, Jesus.” And from that day to this I have never worried one second about what I had to eat, drink and wear. Many a time we have gotten down to the last five-cent piece, then given that away. Jesus always protected and supplied. It is glorious to be a Christian—glorious to be a soul-winner.
Part three of a four-part series highlighting a selection of Sister Aimee’s famous messages:
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Adapted from This Is That by Aimee Semple McPherson, copyright 1923. Published by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.
