Complete Joy: The Best Kept Secret of Sharing Your Faith

By Dr. Todd Phillips and Max Lucado

Many books on evangelism focus on "how" to share our faith. Other focus on "what" we should share with those around us who don't know Jesus. In COMPLETE JOY: THE BEST KEPT SECRET OF SHARING OUR FAITH, Dr. Todd Phillips share the compelling reasons "why" we should share our faith with those around us and makes the case for the inescapable connection between those who share their faith and those who experience complete joy! Reading this book will change you - change your heart for others, change your mind about witnessing,, and your actions as they relate to a word that needs Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483563367

Book preview

© 2016 Dr. Todd Phillips All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-4835633-6-7

Dedication/Acknowledgement

God, thank You for reigniting my passion to impact the lives of people I may never meet this side of Heaven.

Contents

FOREWORD

USING THE STUDY GUIDE

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1: The Terrible Twos

Never-Never Land

Study Guide

Chapter 2: That’s My Cover!

Study Guide

Chapter 3: Profound Truth from a Janitor and an Episode of Charlie’s Angels

Study Guide

Chapter 4: Complete Joy

Study Guide

Chapter 5: One Very Important Ingredient

Watching Someone Being Born Again is Pretty Awesome, Too

It’s All a Matter of Perspective

Study Guide

Chapter 6: Joy Isn’t Complete Until It’s Shared

Joy Isn’t Complete Until It’s Shared

Study Guide

Chapter 7: Giving All You’ve Got

Study Guide

Chapter 8: Totally Devoted

Staying Connected

Study Guide

Chapter 9: People Matter

Study Guide

Chapter 10: Mercy vs. Grace

The Haves and the Have Nots

Grace for Me, Justice for You

Mercy vs. Grace

Study Guide

Chapter 11: The Priceless Value of One Individual to God

Study Guide

Conclusion

Prologue: Getting Practical: What is the Result of Our Misunderstanding?

Spirituality or Religion?

Sharing a Clear Message

The Signs of the Times

Appendix: Personal Evangelism Tools and Resources

About the Author

Contact Information

THE LAST WELL

Foreword

Todd Phillips the optometrist. He wants to correct our vision. Lifting our eyes up off the world at our feet, he calls us to see the world in need. No more myopic agendas driven by what I want. More God-centered decisions spawned by what God wants.

Todd Phillips the cardiologist. Digging deep with the scalpel of truth, dislodging the sediments of self, invigorating a fresh flow of joy and gratitude.

Todd Phillips the expedition leader. Bidding all who dare board his ship to explore the rarely-charted waters of faith living and faith giving.

My friend Todd wears many hats in this book. If you’re open to fresh vision, stronger heart, and a greater adventure, then you are holding the right book.

-- Max Lucado

Using the Study Guide

One of my hopes in writing this book is that Sunday School classes and Bible Study Groups would use this book as a group study. If you choose to do so, I’d recommend using it as a six-week study. Just do two chapters of study questions each week and you’ll be done in six weeks. You can extend it to a seventh week by having a discussion about the extended Prologue.

Bible Version:

All Scripture is from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Introduction

My goal in writing this book is to use whatever motivates you to compel you toward a preoccupation with sharing the Good News of Jesus with people around you. I’ll try to appeal to the selfless and the selfish, the giver and the taker, the empathetic and the apathetic, the protected and the damaged in you. I pray that you’ll find a word, a chapter, or a story that pierces your heart, and you’ll be compelled to action by your time with this book.

If you don’t regularly share your faith, or if you’ve never shared Jesus with another person, I wrote this book for you.

I believe you’ll still be encouraged if you already have a passion to share Christ with others, but my goal is for Christ followers who may have never started a spiritual conversation with a friend or co-worker to move from timidity and inaction to bold and daily action when it comes to personal evangelism. If this describes you, I sincerely believe that God will use this book to fundamentally shift your current thinking about personal evangelism.

You may be sitting in a chair or on your couch right now or in a bookstore deciding whether or not to buy this book and wondering what anyone can possibly say that’s new about evangelism. Hasn’t everything already been said? you wonder to yourself. For you, this book should be a very fresh read and something you’ll want to share with all your other friends who don’t yet see evangelism as part of their everyday lives.

You may have this book in your hand, the receipt sticking out from between the pages, thinking, I can always return this book if it’s just another every Christian is required to share their faith because Jesus said so kind of book. You read the title, though, and thought maybe, just maybe, there really is a fresh way of looking at evangelism. For you, this book should shift your paradigm forever.

You may be reading this introduction right now when you would rather skip straight to the meat of the book because you feel a deep sense of conviction and obligation to share your faith with others. This is only one of dozens of books on evangelism that you’ve already read in your continuing passion to have an impact on this world for God. You know the Bible, you are involved in several ministries within your church, you pray with fervor each day to God, but you just can’t seem to bring yourself to share your faith. For you…well…this book is especially for you!

No matter. Change. Change in your heart for others, in your mind about witnessing, and in your actions as they relate to a world that needs Jesus, is coming.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child,

I reasoned like a child. When I became a man,

I put childish ways behind me."

-- 1 Corinthians 13:11

Chapter 1:

The Terrible Twos

Do you remember back in middle school when you could get a date just by writing a note? You’d write, Will you go out with me? Then there would be a box below the question with yes beside it and another box below that one with the word no beside it. If you weren’t sure that your future soul mate would say yes, then there was a third box with the word maybe next to it. Would you give the note directly to the person you liked? Absolutely not! You would give the note to your friend so they could give it to their friend, who would then give it to the person you liked. Hopefully, many of us don’t get dates that way anymore because we’re adults and we’ve matured beyond our childish ways.

In our everyday lives, there are cultural markers that symbolize our maturity into adulthood. Most everyone moves through these rites of passage as they mature. A baby moves from crawling to walking, and then to running. A few years later, the child is learning to talk. A young child’s first day of school is a huge marker of maturity. From their first crush to high school graduation, there is an expectation from parents and society that a child must become a mature adult. To expect anything less is to damage the child and, ultimately, damage the society in which she lives.

Never-Never Land

When I was very young, I’d get excited any time we went out to eat at a specific restaurant because there was a huge bowl of mints at the front door. They were free! So, instead of getting one or two mints and being satisfied, I would always dig both hands into the bowl and walk out with ten or fifteen. Why? Because they were free! Walking out with a pocket full of mints seems totally reasonable for a nine-year-old, but we’d question the maturity of a forty-year-old who did the same thing.

I have a long-time friend who, like me, had an attitude when he was a child that getting something for nothing was the best thing in the whole world. This friend of mine never let go of the idea of getting something for nothing. Instead of maturing beyond that childish philosophy, he carried it into his adult life. Being extremely intelligent, he completed two degrees in college, but ended up continuing to work at the video store where he was working during college, even after he graduated. I asked him one time why he kept working at such a dead-end job, even though he had two degrees. I’ll never forget his answer. He said, "I