Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another session on lifestyle evangelism. Shall we just begin with a word of prayer? So, just request any one of us to please lead us in prayer. Go ahead. Anyone, just lead us in prayer, please. Siddhi Kano, you want to lead us in prayer? Pastor, yes. Pastor, my pleasure. Go ahead. Father God, we come to the throne of grace in the name of Jesus. We thank for this time you have given us. We thank for all the system you have given us. We thank you for the pastor, for the students. Whatever you are going to learn, Lord, let that be abided in our spirit, in our heart. And we should be practicing in our daily life, Lord. We will be learning about evangelism, Lord. You should make us the vessel we should use in the King's Table, Lord. Thank you for the Master for all the blessings you have given us. In Jesus' name you pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Siddhi Kano. Okay. Before we go ahead, let's just do a quick review of what we did last week. So last week we started off with Chapter 5. We talked about asking leading questions. How important it is to ask the right questions. So evangelism is not only about, you know, just giving the gospel, or it's not only about talking, but also asking appropriate questions. And then we also looked at how Jesus himself, when he ministered the gospel, ministered to people, and he asked a lot of questions. And the reason we ask questions is to get an understanding of, you know, what is their perspective, the other person's perspective about God, about life, about purpose, about meaning. And so asking appropriate questions. Now, it's not only about asking questions, but asking appropriate questions, right?   We need to ask the right questions at the right time and ask God for wisdom when we ask questions, right? We also learned about a very important aspect in evangelism, which is to get to know the person, right? It may not be applicable everywhere. Now, for example, if we are in the street and we're doing street ministry, we may not get to know the person, right? We just probably have like two or three minutes with that person. But if there's somebody in your workplace or your college, your friends, and you're ministering to them, you're trying to bring in the gospel, be sure to get to know them, right?  So we looked at how to build conversations, build rapport, build genuine friendships. Now, yes, we want to lead our friends and the unknown people to the Lord, but it's also important to build genuine friendship, right? It should not be that, okay, I'm a friend with this guy because at the end, the end result should be that I, you know, I should share the gospel. It should not be that, okay, only to share the gospel, you know, I'm making friends with this person. No, you and I should have genuine care, genuine love. Remember chapter four, we talked about how Jesus, right? He ministered out of compassion and love, right? He had no other agenda. Jesus didn't have an agenda of, okay, I minister to them.  No, his agenda was to just genuinely care and love for them. And then we also briefly touched upon getting to know their belief system, right? There are some people who are spiritual, some people who are not.  Some people think God exists and have they been to church? Have they been to, you know, any prayer meetings? Now, eight out of 10 times, you know, if there's a person who is from a different faith, eight of 10 times, you know, they would have heard about church.  But there are those two out of the 10 who have not been so get to know about them, right? So maybe sometimes, you know, there's this one time, a friend of mine, I told him, why don't you come to church? He said, no, no, I don't want to come to church because I had a bitter experience the last time. So then I realized, hey, it was, it's good for me to ask them whether they have been to church before. Because the last time he went, you know, there was, actually it was a deliverance service and there was manifestations and, you know, people started to manifest and all of those things happened then. So he was feeling very uncomfortable. He felt that that's what happens in church every time. So then I had to explain to him, you know, it doesn't happen every time. This is what happens. This is the order of service and this is what we do. So it's good to get to know that, right? And also inviting them for special events like worship evenings, Easter Sunday, Christmas. These are the special occasions where, you know, we can invite people. So let's pick up from the next point. I'm on page 16 on our notes if you're tracking along. So the first approach was asking good questions. The second approach is called the prayer approach. Now this is one of the most important approach that we should have as believers. Now Jesus himself, when he ministered to people, right? In many places in the Gospels, he took his disciples and went up to the mountains to be alone with God. There are times he went alone. Sometimes he went with his disciples and he would spend many hours praying to God. And so the first thing as believers that you and I should have is a good prayer life, right? Prayer is very important. And when it comes to evangelism, why? Because, you know, when we pray, I'm sure you will have a subject prayer on intercession and prayer and intercession. You'll learn more about that. But when we pray, we are already in the spiritual, we're already sending forth the word of God, the power of God into those people's lives. So for example, I'm praying for somebody who's unsaved and pray, God, make his heart ready, right? Rebind every work of the enemy that is stopping him from believing. Open his eyes that he may seek the truth. Open his ears that he may understand the word of God and what we are going to share with them.  It is a powerful approach. You know, many times I have failed in evangelism because I thought, okay, I can do it on my own. I've done it for so many years. I can do it on my own. But here's the thing, the foundation needs to be prayer. We need to spend time in prayer and say, God, enable me, bless the people around as I go minister to them.  You know, the most we can do is present the gospel, but the conviction comes from the Holy Spirit, right? So we see a few verses. Let's read a few verses. Acts chapter four and verse 29. This is not on your notes, but let's just read two verses. Acts four and 29. Can one of us please read that? Acts chapter four was 29. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word. Thank you, Divya.  They're moving forward. And now there's threats coming from, you know, people around. And what do they do? They pray and they say, God, look at them. They are threatening us, yet give us the strength, give us the boldness to preach the gospel. Right? So there was always prayer. Let's read Philippians, Philippians chapter four, six and seven. Philippians chapter four, verses six and seven. Do not be unanxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your request to God. Seven and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your heart and your minds in Christ Jesus. Thank you. So we see here, Paul is writing to the Philippian church, right? And he's telling them, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything through prayer and supplication. Now it's interesting that Paul is writing to the Philippian church. The Philippian church was a church that was always under persecution, right? Being a church in Asia Minor, they were always under persecution, right? But he writes to them and says, do not be anxious about what's happening. Do not be anxious about the church. Do not be anxious about people. Do not be anxious about persecution, but in everything through prayer and supplication. Now there will be times, you know, even in evangelism, we may get anxious.  I'm giving him the word, invited him to church, asking the right questions. I don't see any result. He's taking everything, but there is no response, right? Maybe we need to sit and pray. God, open his heart, right? Let the Holy Spirit convict his heart. So very, very important, each one of us, right? We need to remember this. If our life as believers, if we want to involve in evangelism, if we want to be powerful in our ministry, rare is the key, right? There's this saying by Leonard Ravenhill. He writes in this book and he says, Satan is not afraid of preachers.  Satan is afraid when people know their God and pray to that God.  Okay, what sir has a question? How to reach out to a satanic worshiper? Okay, now there are a few things what sir that we must understand. Firstly, it involves, it is a spiritual battle, right? Remember in the book of Daniel, Daniel was praying, but he says that the, the, the, you know, his prayer did not reach the heavens because of the spiritual ties on, in the, in the clouds, his prayer did not reach the heavens. Now, firstly, we need to ensure that we are strong enough in the spirit to be able to minister to a satanic worshiper. Now, of course, we know that our identity in Christ God has given us the authority to trample over snakes and scorpions. We got plenty of verses in all of that. And, and that first point is we should know whether we are strong enough, right, whether we are ready to do some. Now, for example, if somebody is in the Lord for two years, one or two years, and they directly want to go and start ministering to satanic worshippers. Now, I personally would tell them to hold on, wait, build yourself, get stronger in the Lord. And then as you do that, seek the Lord, because is that your calling? Is that what God has called you for? Now, we need to understand that, yes, the great commission is for everyone, right? All of us are in the great commission. Yet, in Ephesians chapter four, Paul writes to the church in Ephesus and he says, the body of Christ has a five-fold vision, right? And we know that, right? Apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists. And so you've got the five-fold ministry. So we are to check ourselves. Okay, is this what God is calling us to do? Right? Now, if in another situation, say, for example, you are at a workplace or in your college and you see, you know this person does not believe in God and is more inclined towards satanic worship, I would say spend time in prayer. Spend a couple of days in prayer. Do maybe 10 days, 12 days of fasting and prayer. Now, it's important because remember you're engaging directly against the demonic spirit.  Be prepared. Now, not being afraid does not mean that we go and do whatever we want to, but be prepared. Prepare yourself and then go ahead and minister. So the ways of ministering would be the same. That is, you know, remember we spoke about how in chapter one, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We don't need anything more than that, right? Whether he's a satanic worshipper or whether whoever that person is, maybe a murderer or whoever, maybe the worst person in the world, the gospel of Christ is enough to save him. So what's my answer to you would be the approach is the same, you know, sharing the gospel, the message of the cross, what Jesus did on the cross or your testimony and praying for their need. Those things are the same approach, but on when to go and minister, I would say take some time, pray fully, and then go ahead and step into that. I'm reminded of in the book of Acts, you know, remember the sons of Scewa, they said, Hey, Paul did this in the name of Jesus. You know, he drove out demons and all of it. So when we'll do it, so the sons of Scewa went and tried to do it. But what happened? The demons overpowered him and beat him, beat them up and they ran out. So the point I'm trying to say is we need to build a good relationship with God, with the Holy Spirit, and then step out into this. What's I hope that answers your question? Yes, Pastor, that was very helpful. Thank you so much. All right, God bless. Okay. Okay, so Kenos is my great grandmother. She's 87 now. She believes in God. Praise would be and tell me read Bible for her. She's not bad that she says my husband died Hindu. I will also die the same way, but she believes in God. But she go to heaven. She will also, she also does a lot of charity. Okay. Now the Bible clearly says, you know, that those who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Right. So there's two things. One is the knowing within. Now it seems like your great grandmother, you know, I'm just going to be Frank, right? If she says that, you know, she says she wants to die a Hindu. She believes in God. Okay. She believes in God. Is that right? Is that what I'm saying? Pastor, she believes in God and she reads Bible with me, but the thing is she don't want, but when she says when I will die, bury me like, bury me as if I'm not a Christian. I'm a Hindu. He got my great grandfather. He died in Hindu. Okay. Okay. So, okay. So that, that is something that, you know, we cannot say that she's not a believer, because she knows Jesus. She knows all of this. She's just trying to, you know, make sure that the cultures see it doesn't matter that after death, whether we are burnt, whether we're buried, it doesn't matter. But, you know, maybe your great grandmother is looking towards the culture to keep the culture going. Now, if she knows Jesus, if she has a personal relationship with Jesus, she will go to heaven because Paul says that to be absent in the body is to be present with the Lord. So, the other things come second. This is a truth that we must stand by. Okay. All right. So, let's move on. So, in the prayer approach, here are certain things that we must do, right? We need to pray first, right? Because, you know, why, why I say this? Because a lot of nowadays in ministry, a lot of people want to join ministry. That's good. But they're not willing to spend time in prayer, right? Prayer is essential. Now, a prayer-less ministry is not going to be an effective ministry. It's not going to be effective. We need people and preachers and leaders who pray, spend time in prayer, right? When I read about all that is happening in the body of Christ, you know, there are so many pastors, so many evangelists who've gone astray from the word. Some have even denied the faith. Why is that? It's because of the treasures of the word. They have focused more on ministry. They've put ministry up and then prayer is down here. That's not how it should be. It should be prayer and out of prayer will birth the ministry, right? So, out of prayer should birth our evangelists. And so, when we pray for people, we can pray for their difficulties. Maybe some of them have financial needs. Some of them have health needs. Family is going through problems. Then you can pray for job, marriages, people that are looking for over this whole season of COVID. Who's able to minister to a lot of people, right? Even though church is closed, there's a lot of young people. And all of them didn't have a job. They were fearful, right? There were some of them who called me and they were not believers. They called me. They said, I've taken a loan. Now, I don't have a job. I want to end my life because I don't know what I'm going to do. How am I going to pay this? I don't want my parents to go through all this trouble. And so, we need the wisdom to give them the right understanding, give them practical steps and also pray for them, right? And so, this is a good time. If you know people around you looking out for jobs, looking out for financial help. Now, we may not be able to help them financially, but we can pray for them, right? Health, oh, I remember going to hospitals during the initial time of COVID in the early 2020. God opened so many doors for us as we went into a few hospitals. We began to pray for people who were admitted and we prayed for them. We felt that God can minister to them. And God really minister to them. Some of them are still, you know, started attending our online church services, online Bible studies. So, we, you know, the enemy is given an excuse saying the church is closed. The church is not closed. God is still building his church. It's just how we look at it, right? So, use these opportunities, right? And bring in the prayer approach. When possible, very important. Ask the person, hey, I heard you were looking out for a job. Have you got a job? No. Okay. Can I pray for you? Now, nine out of 10 times, they will say yes, because they're in need, right? They're not going to say which God are you going to pray to? What is his name? They're not going to ask all that, right? I remember meeting a young family in mango a couple of years back. They had a small baby and the baby was admitted in the hospital because of a lot of complications and all of that. And so, they were Hindus. And so, I asked them, how is the baby? I didn't go ahead and say, you know, what Jesus can heal immediately. I didn't do all of that. I just began to ask them what happened during the whole process, you know? Was the delivery normal? Was there something that was, you know, during the birth, did you notice anything? Just normal talk, right? How many people in your family? How are you managing financially? So, I got to know their whole story. Where are they from and what they do? And then I said, you know what, in all of this, you know, God can heal. God is our healer. When even the doctors say no, God can heal. And they said, can I pray for you? They said, please pray. And then I prayed, right? They didn't ask which God and all of it.  So, they didn't ask me which God. I prayed. And then they said, can you come again? We prayed. We did this over a period of five months. And eventually that little girl was brought to healing. And during those five months, I slowly brought in the word. I told them what Jesus can do.  And I would explain to them, so over six months, finally when they came out of the hospital, they knew that it was only Jesus who healed them. It was only Jesus. So there will be times when you write then and there in the hospital, you know, I was waiting in that waiting room and I asked him, can I pray for you? He was not ashamed at all. He said, yes, pray. Now I was feeling, okay, should we do this here? But he said, no, no, pray. The need was there. So I said, okay. And in front of that reception area, I just put my hand on him and I prayed for him. So all of this coming out of your comfort zone, overcoming inhibitions, right? Sometimes we feel it's not cool to do it. Everything is cool in God's presence. Don't worry about what people think, right? When possible, offer a short personal prayer and it in the name of Jesus. Now when you do that, they will see you. Firstly, they are authorizing God to begin a work in their life. It's like they are authorizing Jesus to come and do a work. They may not know who Jesus is or they may not understand things, but there's a door that is opened in their heart, right? And you pray in Jesus' name and end it there. Then when you do that, another important thing is they will see your relationship you have with God. Your personal relationship with God will manifest every time you evangelize. I don't know if you've noticed it, but I have noticed it. The day when we spend a lot of time in prayer or worship and spending more time in God's presence, when I go out to evangelize, I know the power of God will do a work in people's lives. But there are times when we get busy with family, ministry. We haven't spent that much time in prayer. We just know that something's not right in us. So it's very important to go back and build on that personal relationship with God. And when they see that this person has a personal relationship with their God, they will want to know more about it. Now Christianity is the only religion that has a personal relationship with God. No other religion. We learn more on that and world religions in your third pure. And no other religion is there a personal relationship with God. No other religion. And so here you can call God your father and they see that personal relationship. Many a times they will want it. People who are going through loneliness, depression, they will want it. They want that personal relationship. So your personal relationship with the Holy Spirit will directly impact your evangelism. A lot of people have asked me, how is it that you just go to a Muslim or a Hindu? You just go and talk to them about Jesus. Aren't you afraid they will catch you? They will beat you up? Aren't you afraid of it? I said, yeah, sometimes when I think of it, I am afraid. What if this happens? But immediately I tell myself, I have a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is with me. He empowers me. Now it doesn't mean that Jesus empowers me so there will not be persecution. That will be there. But through that persecution, through those challenges, the Holy Spirit empowering is with us. I remember 2015, the first time I went to Varanasi and I don't recommend any of us doing that. But 2015, I forget, I think it was 2014, somewhere around that time. We had our first short term Bible college and we went to the River Ganges. And if those who are from other parts of India, that place is known for its, you know, the River Ganges. It's known for its place of, you know, the Hindus have their prey there. And it's like a religious place where they come and pray.  Sometimes they would burn it and throw it into the river. And so it's a sacred river. And then it was somewhere during that time and, you know, I always carry tracks in my pocket. And that whole place was infested with people. It was hundreds of people there. I thought to myself, I need to be wise, right? I should not do the wrong thing at the wrong time. But somewhere in my heart, I felt, I kept looking at this one person and felt I need to go talk to him. And I went and I, he was like a hardcore Hindu guy. And I just went and I told him, how do you like this festival? And I was speaking to him in broken Hindi, whatever little I knew. Then I asked him, what is this about? I wanted to know. I'm from South India. I don't know anything about this. So he started to explain the whole thing to me. I started listening to him.   He said, no. And then I said, why are you doing this? Then if you don't know something. And so it went on that way. And then I took his phone number and then we kept on sending messages and over a period of time and to the phone. I remember praying so fervently for this man. He was probably about in his early 40s, young man. He had two small children as well. But very religious, you could make out, but only over the phone. Remember spending hours in prayer for this man. I would say, God, you have to touch him. You have opened this, you have to touch hours of prayer. I told people, I told my prayer team, there's this man, give their name, give his name. We prayed for hours after nine months of, you know, just ministering to him over the phone messages. He said, I'm convinced that, you know, this is the truth. Nine months. Right. So there are times when, you know, when the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom, gives us the courage, but there are times we need to, you know, use wisdom, right? That's why I said, I don't recommend any of you doing that because that place was not a good place to start off with. But there will be times God will ask us to step out of our comfort zone, right? So be open even when you pray for word of knowledge, for prophecies, the Holy Spirit may give you. One of the things, you know, we as a church, and I always tell our leaders in the church is when you are ministering to people, first pray for two hours. Then you write down what God has spoken to you. And then when you go and minister to them, ask God to speak to you through a word of knowledge, through, you know, a prophecy. And when we do that, these are extremely, extremely powerful ways to impact the other person's life. Imagine you just know something about the other person, right? There was this one time we were in a train and we were in, I think it was 40 days of fasting and was traveling to another place. And this guy came in with, I don't know if you've seen that, coming with the bird and then the bird picks up the carrot reading or something. I forget what it is. And he said, show me your hand. I'll tell you about your life. I said, okay, let me show me my hand. I gave him my hand. He started saying, you are this, you are this. You're not, you know, you're not, you're not a, I know that by looking at your hand, you're not a Hindu and this is what you do. And he started saying all this. So yeah, that's good. I said, can I read your story? So I asked him, can I pray for you? He said, no, I don't want you to pray. I said, see, I let you speak. Now you need to let me speak. And so he said, okay, he sat and he got to know I'm a Christian. So I said, I'm a Christian. I'll pray. Now this was when I was in fasting. Okay, so don't try this and say this happened. So we need to be wise. So this was in the train. So I told him, let me pray for you. And we kind of pray for him. And I got to know that this boy was in the prayer. I just felt and I knew that this boy was like this. When he was a little boy, he went to a Catholic or a Christian institution and he studied. So he knows about Jesus, right? I knew that he had two brothers. I knew that his mother committed suicide. So I told him all this.  You have two brothers. Both your brothers are doing well. You are roaming around here because you don't have a job. You don't want to work. And you feel that by doing this, you know, you can earn a living and he was shocked. So how did you know this? I said, that's what God does. That's what the Holy Spirit does. And I said, why don't you... Now I began to talk about Jesus, took down his number, ministered to him. Now all this is not in English. Okay, so it is all in broken Hindi or broken Kannada and all of these things. But here's what I'm trying to say.  Will give us prophetic words. Now, why, why, when, how do we get that? The more we spend time in God's presence. I love what Jesus wrote. He said, my sheep, hear my voice. Right. I always tell this to the students, you know, if the door is all closed, you're in your room, right? And your father calls you from the other room. Will you, will you not open the door? You know, it's, that's my dad is calling. I need to go. Wow. Because you recognize his voice. But if a stranger calls you say, hey, who's that? I need to go and check. Right. You may not recognize that voice. My sheep, hear my voice. So as believers, we need to hear the voice of God. Now, when I say the voice of God, not the physical voice of God, but we can hear it in our hearts. We can hear it in our spirit. The Holy Spirit is our guide. He speaks to us in different ways. Right. So take this approach of praying. First, personal prayer. Right. That is, that needs to be there. And then when you meet somebody, be open to pray for them as well. Right. Then you got another approach, which is the two minute approach. We looked at this before your salvation experience. You tell them, Hey, before Christ, I was like this. And then, you know, I prayed this is what had happened in my life. I experienced the love of God. And I was able to move ahead in life and God changed me. You know, I didn't have purpose. I didn't have direction. I was lonely. I was fearful, but this is what Jesus did for me. So I believe that he can do it for you as well. So if you're okay with it, can I pray for you? Right. And then there is the power encounter approach, a very powerful approach. The power encounter approach is, is there are four points here. Let's look at each right on page 17, the power encounter approach. So first one healing. Now, if somebody in your, you know, your friend or your person that you want to minister to is sick, what you can do is you can directly pray for that need. Say, you know what? Hey, you've been suffering with this migraine headache for the past five years. Let me pray in Jesus' name that, you know, this headache will go. We'll never come back again. This is what Jesus did on the cross. This is what the Bible says. Right. So if you can allow me to pray. So that's the power encounter approach. Jesus did that. Right. Remember, he brought healing on that blind man. He said, do you want to be healed? He said, nobody's there to take me. You know, don't worry about that in Jesus. You're healed and he places his hand. He said he and he's healed. Right. And there are plenty of power and counter approaches that Jesus took. Right. Lazarus.  And what does he say? Lazarus, come forth. Right. I can picture the, the Gentiles, the Romans, all of them standing there and looking at this, a power encounter approach. Right. Then there's a word of knowledge approach. Right. That's what Jesus did at the, as this, to the Samaritan woman in John chapter four, where, you know, through the word of knowledge, God was able to reach this woman's heart, the Samaritan woman's heart. And eventually she gave her life to the gospel as well. And also an interesting chapter is first Samuel chapter nine. I encourage you to read those, you know, first Samuel eight, nine, 10. It's wonderful how Samuel chooses Saul as, as a king of Israel. But Samuel is more worried about his donkeys that have got lost. Right. And, and, you know, sorry, Saul is more worried about his donkeys that got lost.  He says, Samuel, Saul, when you go ahead, you will meet three people. After you meet those three people, you go ahead further on. You will meet two other people. And those two people will give you bread. And then you walk on further on. You'll see a whole army of people praising the Lord. And then you will join with them. The moment you join with them, the Holy Spirit will fall on you. And you will be anointed from God to be the king of Israel.  Samuel knew it before then. And he, and he just gave it to Saul. And we see later on it's the exact same thing that happened.  Next one is prophecy. In 2 Kings chapter five, Naman is in leprosy. And he's got, Naman's got leprosy. And what happens?  And then after that, Elisha prophesies. And he says, if he comes, I will, and when he comes, I will send him forth and he will be healed. And then later on he comes and he gets his healing. So healing, word of knowledge and prophecy are three powerful ways of approaching people in evangelism. Right? Pray for the immediate need. That's maybe healing and two word of knowledge. Right? And three prophecies. And then there's the miraculous interventions like, you know, pray for jobs, pray for visas or college admissions, financial needs being met and all of that. So, so these are the four approaches that we have. Now, important is while we are ministering to people, don't worry about, okay, which approach do I take? Should I take this approach or this approach? You can always combine these approaches. Right? You can share your testimony and do a prayer approach. You can combine all of it. It's not like I have to follow that. But the important thing is to know, to practice, to be bold, to know how to speak, to speak in wisdom. Very important. Right? Now, any questions before we go ahead, just any questions? Any thoughts, any questions? And then I just want to a little more points that I want to share. Any thoughts, any questions? Should we go ahead? All right. Let's go ahead. So, next point is more about taking the appropriate steps. Right? After you have shared the gospel, there are steps that we have to take. Right? Now, you can invite them to church. Right? Invite, firstly, invite them to pray right then and there that you've already done. Maybe you can tell them, hey, why don't you go pray at home? Right? That's another option. Then you can encourage them to ask questions or search for answers. Guide them to a website. Now we have apps and so much of material online that they can go and check. Invite the person to discuss later as well. So now remember that it is complicated. I mean, in the sense that, you know, the whole thing of understanding the gospel may not be easy always. Right? So they may need some time. So give them their time. If you have a gospel of the book of John, the reason I say the book of John is because John writes most eloquently about the Trinity. And it's the most precise book that, you know, especially unbelievers, people from other faiths can read. So give them a copy of the book of John. Invite them to a small group, maybe a live group or meetings. And now here's the thing. If they continue to show disinterest, let them go. Right? Don't push things on people. Now, the wrong thing to do is to push people to, you don't know, you have to do this. You have to give your life to Christ. If, you know, it's happened many times when I've heard where, you know, people say, you have to, if you do this, if you give your life to Christ, that's when your school admission will become less. Or if you, your children's school admission fees will be lesser.  Now, these are the wrong ways for approaching evangelism, right? Because I've heard of plenty of testimonies that people have said that, you know, if you believe in Jesus, you'll be healed. So now only believe in Jesus. And then after they prayed, they did not receive the healing, right? Or, you know, they were on a loan.   And then a couple of years later, the loan is the same or even gone worse. And so what happens? Not only becomes a bad name to you and I, but it becomes a bad name to Christianity and to the person that we represent who is Jesus, right? So be careful, give time to people who need time. It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take one month, it may take five minutes. Different people are different, right? So give them their time. Now, even as you engage just a few points from page 18 rules of engagement, like we saw, show genuine care and love. Don't treat people like projects, right? Now, project one is what? Okay, getting this boy, this Muslim boy into the faith project to getting this boy. No, people are not projects, right? I'm always reminded of this such a wonderful, wonderful saying Paul writes to the, to, I'm not sure. I think it's Timothy to Timothy in his last letters. He says, he says, Timothy, you are a crown in the Lord, right? Now Paul had so many things to boast about, but he could have said, you know, started my first second third missionary journey Lord. Then I did this, I did this, I did this. These are the number of churches I planted. 12 years of ministry. I did more than all the 12 disciples did together.  So it's not about the number of people we have reached out to, or it's not about how many hundred people have come to know the Lord. It's not about the numbers, but it's more about the genuine love and care that he showed the people. The numbers will not matter in heaven, right? It's how genuine, how well, how lovingly you have ministered to the people. Right? So don't treat people as projects. Two, don't be judgmental or criticize other world views and religions. Now Christians are guilty of this, right? I remember, you know, I moved from Bangalore to Mangalore, and I began to talk to a few pastors around and I asked them what happened in the year 2008, 8 to 10. It was a very difficult year for Christians in Mangalore because the churches were being persecuted and, you know, the fanatics would come and beat the church, destroy the things in the church. Now when I came to Mangalore, I saw that there was nothing wrong in Mangalore. I mean, there are people, fanatics are going to be everywhere, but we did outreaches openly. We did Christmas carols openly. I have never in the past four years seen any kind of problem. So I began to ask a few pastors what happened. I got to know that, you know, some of them, some of the pastors around in the city of Mangalore, they began to preach saying that, you know, don't worship idols.  And now that went, you know, it spread around. And so the news went to these people and they say they came and they just, you know, started doing all these problems. Now whose fault is that? That is our fault because the pulpit time is not time to say stories and, you know, what other people are doing. The time on the pulpit is to preach the word of God. Right. And so that was our problem. And, you know, it was our, the body of Christ, the Christians who caused that to happen. Right. So never judge other people, never criticize their ideologies. Or how is it? You know, how can it be? It doesn't make sense. It may not make sense, but never criticize. Right. Do not condemn people because when you condemn them, you will immediately lose them. Right. Don't be judgmental saying, oh, I have accepted Christ. So I am the holiest of holy people and only I can enter the holy of holies and all of those things. Right. Nobody, people from other faith don't care about the holy of holies and all of that. Right. So just don't be judgmental. Our goal is to share Christ and let them encounter Christ. They will come to understand later on, you know, what pleases God, what does not please God. Right. Avoid arguments. Right. When you're going through debates and you're talking with people, if they're genuinely asking questions, give them the right answers with love and care. But if it's going into an argument, cut it right there. End it. Just stop the discussion. Go further on. You don't have to win all the, you know, discussions. Last point, let me close. Don't let negative responses pull you down. There will be times when people don't respond well or they respond negatively. Don't let that pull your spirit down. In the natural, it's very easy to get discouraged. Oh, you know, I've been sharing with this person, but nothing's happened yet. Don't be discouraged in the spirit. Stay strong. Stay in love. Stay in the joy of the Lord. Go on to move on to the next person and, you know, share the gospel. So we will close here. Anybody have any questions, any thoughts you want to share? If not, we can close in prayer. Any thoughts, any questions? Am I going too fast? Is it okay? Are you able to understand everything? Okay. Yes, Nicholson. Yes, but everything is going well. Yes, Nicholson has raised his hand. Yes, Nicholson. Hi. Hi, Paul. Hi. Hi. I mean, it's kind of related to what you're talking about, but not completely. So I want to know now, with regard to your talking about how people, if they don't really respond and you've given your best and you said, okay, just move on, which I understand. Let's see this plant that it might bear fruit in its season. And I get that. But in terms of sometime, this is a special case, of course, but I've seen it about one or two. And these are believers who attend church, okay? And they know the Word of God. And I feel like they don't even know the salvation message. And I'm very stuck on what approach to take to even, like, really tell them where this, what is the truth? Because we attend church, they know the Word of God. They understand everything they're worshiping. But how do you really make them understand? I hope I'm clear. A little vague, but I hope you understand. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Nicholson, for that question. So a very good question. I think I was in that spot many years back where, you know, we just go to church where you don't really know what the gospel is. It happened even to the Jews, right? The Jews knew the scriptures. They knew everything, but they just following it. There was no relationship. So the best thing that we can do in these kind of situations, especially it happens when, you know, your parents or your whole generation have been Christians and you know, okay, Sunday you've got to go to church. You come back.  You know, it just becomes a normal thing. So it's a dangerous thing because we lose that relationship. So the best thing to do is to again and again and again present the gospel, the clear gospel. Now they may know it, right? But the more, you know, we present the gospel. We're saying, hey, you know what? This is what Jesus did. They say, I know, but do you believe what Jesus can do? This is what the word says. Remember, Hebrews chapter four talks about the word of God is sharper than a double-edged sword. Right? So at times the word is just given once. It just touches people's lives, but at times you need to dig in. You need to, you know, continually give, give, feed the word of God. Right? And Paul writes to the, writes to Timothy and he says to the Ephesus, to the church in Ephesus, he says, but each the word in season and out of season. So a lot of emphasis on the word. So in this kind of a case when there are already, you know, Christians and, you know, they know everything. The best thing is to continue to, you know, drill them with the word of God. And eventually the word of God will bear fruit in their hearts. So, and then it's good to, you know, ask other questions. Are you bearing fruit in your life? What is it that God has called you to do? All of those things. But when you give the word more and more, there will be a change in their hearts. So, yes. I hope that answers some of your questions. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks. All right. Let's, let's close in prayer. I know. Sorry. I've overshot them. Let's close in prayer. Could one of us please close in prayer? What's up? Would you mind closing in prayer, please? Okay. What a God. We thank you so much for this time. We want to thank you for Buster's life. Thank you for the clear teaching which he has taught us. Help us to put that in our life. And Holy Spirit continue to guide us, lead us, Lord. Bless each one of us, Lord, in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, everyone. We'll catch up next week. Have a blessed week ahead. God bless. Thank you, Buster.


This lecture is going to introduce the idea of mixed strategies and extend our previous concept of Nash equilibrium to this new definition. Let's begin by looking at the matching pennies game. Recall that it would be a pretty bad idea to play any deterministic strategy in this game. For example, if player two were to play heads, then player one would want to respond by playing heads to get a payoff of one, meaning that player two would prefer to change to tails so that he can get this payoff of one, meaning that player one would prefer to change to tails so he can get this payoff of one, meaning that player two would prefer to change back to heads to get this payoff of one, meaning that player one would prefer to change back to heads as well to get this payoff of one where we started. And so you can see there's kind of a cycle where we just bounced around between the different cells of this game matrix and essentially argued that no pair of deterministic strategies works for both players. So what does work for both players? Well, essentially it does make sense for players to confuse each other by choosing to play randomly.  So let's try to make this idea formal. Before we talked about the idea of pure strategies, which we just equated to playing actions. Now let's think of things in terms of probability distributions. So let's say that a strategy for an agent is any probability distribution over the actions that the player has available to him. And a pure strategy then is the special case where I play only one action with positive probability. A mixed strategy says I'm just going to play more than one action with positive probability. There might be a couple of different actions that I assign positive probability to, like in my example with matching pennies. I'm going to call the support of my mixed strategy the set of actions that get positive probability. So for example, when I flip a coin when I'm playing matching pennies, both heads and tails are in the support of my mixed strategy. My support is the set heads tails. I'm going to define the set of all strategies for an agent i to be capital S sub i. And I'm going to define the set of all strategy profiles capital S to be the Cartesian product of these strategy sets for the different agents. Now I have the problem that I've elaborated my definition of strategies in the game to include not just this finite set of things players can do, but this infinite set of all of the probability distributions over these finite sets. The reason this is a problem is I only have a utility definition for action profiles. And now I'm allowing things to happen that I don't have utilities for. That is to say, I can't just read a number out of the game matrix to figure out how happy the players are when something happens because under a mixed strategy with a support of size greater than one, I won't always end up in the same cell of the matrix. So I can extend my definition of utility here by leveraging the idea of expected utility from decision theory. So these equations explain what this means. It looks a lot more complicated than it is. So what I'm saying here is that I's utility under mixed strategy profile as where little less is some element of the set of all possible mixed strategy profiles big as is equal to the sum over all action profiles in the game. You can kind of think of this intuitively as the sum over all of the cells in the normal form of the game where I take the utility of each cell and I multiply it by the probability that that cell will be reached in the given mixed strategy. The probability of getting to sell a strategy profile a sorry action profile a given strategy profile as And then of course I need to define what this probability actually is and that's given here the probability that I'll get to a given action profile. Given a strategy profile as is just the product of the probability of each player playing his part of that action profile. So in, for example, if this player was playing with probability point five on each action and this player was playing with probability point five, then the probability that I would get to this cell is point two five. This action profile arises with probability point two five because this thing happens half the time and this thing happens half the time. And so we have to multiply those two probabilities together to get the joint probability of this action profile. So that's that's what this definition here is saying. So in total my utility for a strategy profile is my expected utility taking an expectation over all of the action profiles in the support of that strategy profile and waiting each of them by the probability that that action profile would actually arise. Well now that I've defined what strategies are, I can go back to my definitions of best response and Nash equilibrium. And basically they work the way they did before except I change all of the A's to S's. So, so that means I have to write these definitions again and I'll go through them again but conceptually if you understood what best response and Nash equilibrium meant in the case of actions then everything will work again. So I will say that a strategy S star I is an element of the set of best responses to strategy profile S minus I when the following condition is true. For all other strategies S I that player I could take for all of the strategies in the set of possible strategies for that player notice that these this is an infinite set but that's okay the definition still works. Then the utility that the player would get for playing S star I when everybody else plays the strategy profile S minus I is at least as big as when he plays this other strategy S I. So let me say that again S star I is a best response to strategy profile S minus I if it's at least as good as anything else given that everybody else is playing S minus I. Now we can say that a strategy profile S is a Nash equilibrium. If it's the case that for all agents everybody is playing a best response. Incidentally you might notice that I'm using a set membership operator here rather than an equal sign which is what you might have expected to see. Well the reason I don't use an equal sign is because the set of best responses might have more than one thing in it. So the best there might not be only one best response sometimes they'll be multiple best responses. And so here what I'm saying is a strategy profile is one of the best responses if this condition is true. And I'm saying a strategy profile is a Nash equilibrium if everybody is playing one of their best responses. Well this might seem like much to do about nothing I've introduced this idea of randomizing as a strategy I've redefined utility. Then I've leveraged this redefined definition of utility which is incidentally what I'm using here when I talk about the utility of a strategy profile to define best response. I've then leveraged that definition of best response here to talk about Nash equilibrium. And in total I've just ended up kind of saying everything that you've already heard us say. But what does matter is that now that we have a new definition of Nash equilibrium we're able to state a theorem that we didn't have before. And this is Nash's famous theorem. This is the reason why Nash gets the Nash equilibrium named after him and this is one of the main reasons why Nash got the Nobel Prize. This theorem actually didn't take very long to prove but it's a really important thing for game theory. And the theorem is that every finite game has a Nash equilibrium. First of all what is a finite game? This sounds like I'm hedging here but it's not much of a hedge. A finite game just means that the game takes a finite amount of space to write down. So it has a finite number of players. It has a finite number of actions for every player. And that means it has a finite number of utility values in the game because the number of utility values is determined by the number of players and the number of actions for each player. So as long as the game has a finite number of players, not just two players but any finite number of players, and a finite number of actions for each player, not just two actions but maybe a very big game, then no matter what the payoff values are, no matter what strategic situation we're talking about here, no matter what real world interaction this is modeling, there's going to be at least one Nash equilibrium in this game. That's a pretty deep thing. That's saying there will always be some stable thing that all of the players can do which has the property that if they knew what everyone was doing, none of them would want to change their strategy. That's basically one of the main reasons why we care about this idea of Nash equilibrium because we know that no matter what the game is, we can find such a Nash equilibrium and reason about it. That's why Nash equilibrium is such a powerful thing. And that's only true when we have this fuller definition of Nash equilibrium here that we've just defined in terms of strategies. We saw that when we talked about Nash equilibrium in terms of just actions before, what we'll now from this point on refer to as pure strategy Nash equilibrium. So pure strategy Nash is when we do all of this with A's instead of S's, that's a pure strategy Nash equilibrium. And the sad thing about that is that we don't get a theorem that says that every finite game has one of those. But this mixed strategy Nash equilibrium always exists. Let's do some examples. So remember matching pennies? Well, we just argued at the beginning of this video effectively that matching pennies doesn't have a pure strategy Nash equilibrium. But it does have a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium. It has one, and that is, as I suggested before, for both players to randomize 50-50. And that doesn't mean that it always has to be 50-50. That just happens to be what the Nash equilibrium is here. That comes from the symmetry of the payoffs. But that turns out to be the Nash equilibrium here. Let's come back to the coordination game. Well, we've previously seen that these two strategy profiles, I'm circling outcomes, but remember, an outcome isn't an equilibrium. You know, one-one isn't the equilibrium. That would be wrong to say. The right thing to say is that left, left is an equilibrium. Right, right is an equilibrium. But it turns out there's another equilibrium here. So it turns out, again, 0.5, 0.5 is a Nash equilibrium here as well. And that's kind of funny because it doesn't seem like 0.5, 0.5 is such a good thing to play in this game. But you can confirm to yourself that if player one is randomizing by playing 50-50, then player two can do no better than to randomize 50-50. Now, you'll notice that player two could do just as well by playing something else. If player one is playing 50-50, player one is just as happy to go left all the time. But in particular, if player one is going 50-50, player two can do no better than to go 50-50 himself. The reverse is also true, and that makes 50-50, 50-50 a Nash equilibrium of the coordination game as well. And let's look at prisoner's dilemma. In prisoner's dilemma, we've previously seen that this is an equilibrium, and it's an equilibrium in strictly dominant strategies. And we argued before that equilibria in strictly dominant strategies are unique. And so what that means is indeed there aren't any mixed Nash equilibria of the prisoner's dilemma. This is in fact the only Nash equilibrium.