BORN ABLAZE 🔥🔥👍🔥🔥 I WAS ONLY TWELVE years old when I was converted. From that day, I wanted to be a soulwinner; I wanted to share with people what Jesus Christ meant to me. I was the seventh son of my parents. My father was the seventh son of his parents. I was raised on a farm where we all worked hard. Lonnie, one of my older brothers, was converted at an old fashioned Oklahoma brush arbor meeting. There was such a change in him that I became very interested. He took me to a revival meeting in the little town of Mannford. That night I received Jesus Christ as my savior. I started doing whatever I could to witness to unconverted people in my area. With a toy press that I received as a Christmas present, I printed Bible verses on scraps of paper—my first tracts, and distributed them among the town's people, a population of not more than three hundred. I never dreamed that within a few years we would be publishing gospel literature in a hundred and thirty-two languages at a rate of more than a ton per working day. I started preaching at the age of sixteen. Daisy and I were married when we were seventeen and eighteen years old and we became missionaries in India at the ages of twenty and twenty-one. I have preached face to face to millions of people in over eighty nations of the world. The more I study the Bible and the further I travel in evangelism, the more I am convinced that the greatest ministry possible for a Christian believer is to lead someone to faith in Christ. The book of Acts begins with a reflection on all that Jesus began both to do and teach. Ac.1:1 His life was the inspiration and model for First Century Christians. He had said to those who followed Him, Whoever believes on me, the works that I do shall he or she do also; and greater works than these shall they do; because I go to my Father. Jn.14:12 They believed His words. Their focus was to continue doing and teaching what He had begun to do and teach. They understood that He was living and ministering through them. They were His voice, His feet, His body. He was now continuing what He had begun but now He was doing it through them. Just before the Lord Jesus ascended back to the Father, He told His followers where to go and what to do: You shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth.Ac.1:8 A First Century map indicates what this means: Jerusalem represents our hometown. All Judea suggests our state, province or nation. No Discrimination But why did He make special mention of Samaria since He had already said in all Judea which included Samaria. He specified Samaria because it was a segregated area. Remember how the woman of Samaria remarked to Jesus, The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. And the Jews slandered Jesus saying: Say we not well that you are a Samaritan, and have a devil? Jesus told His followers to reach all Judea, then He specified and Samaria the forgotten, hurting, unloved people. Samaria could be Indian or Aboriginal reservations, minority communities, migrant settlements, ghettos, rehabilitation centers, immigrant and refugee communities or any place that is considered inferior or is segregated from the mainstream of society. Obviously God is interested in marginal people as much as He is in any other level of human society. He wants no one excluded. - Dr. T.L. OSBORN (SOUL WINNING) - Spiritual Notes