Concepts

The Wise Winner of Souls

The Wise Winner of Souls

• God is the winner of souls.
• Do the number of your friends increase?
• The example of the Lord Christ and Paul.
• You win them socially and spiritually.
• Win souls with love.
• You win souls for God.
• God’s forbearance with atheists.
• What suits their level.
• Overcome evil with good.
• Conflicting curricula and counsels.
• Win people with wisdom.
• Do not make them an image of yourself.
• The wisdom that descends from above.
• The responsibility of the confessor father.
• The example of Abigail with David.
• Be patient and do not weary.

Winning Souls

The most important mission for us in life is winning souls. We win them through our good relationship with them. We win them first of all for God, so that they may become His.

Perhaps this is what the Lord meant when He said to Peter and Andrew: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 4:19), and this is the same mission He entrusted to His disciples when He said to them: “You shall be witnesses to Me” (Acts 1:8).

God is the first Winner of souls.
He won them with love, with seeking their salvation and the return of the lost among them. Luke chapter 15 gives us three examples of this: the lost sheep, the prodigal son, and the lost coin…

For this reason, we say of the Lord at the end of every prayer of the Agpeya:
“He who does not desire the death of the sinner as much as that he should return and live; who calls all to salvation, for the promise of the expected good things.”

For the sake of winning souls for His Kingdom, God sent prophets and apostles to guide them and lead them to repentance.
He appointed shepherds and established servants and men of the priesthood, in order to prepare for the Lord a justified people, as John the Baptist was: the angel who prepares the way before Him.

The Lord Christ gave us a practical example of winning souls. Thus it was said of Him: “Behold, the world has gone after Him” (John 12:19). When He entered Jerusalem, the city was stirred by His coming. When He entered houses, they were crowded so that there was no place even to stand. In the story of the healing of the paralytic, because of the crowd his friends could not bring him in, so they uncovered the roof and lowered him: “Because of the crowd they uncovered the roof where He was. And when they had broken through, they let down the bed” (Mark 2:4). And in the miracle of the five loaves and the two fish, the number of men—besides women and children—was five thousand.

Among the wonderful examples of winning souls is Saint Paul the Apostle,
who said: “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win the Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law… to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:19–22).

He is determined to win souls… a wise fisherman who casts his nets and must return with them full…

So also was the Lord Christ, of whom it was said: “He went about doing good” (Acts 10:38).
He relieved people in many kinds and ways: by teaching and preaching, by healing, by compassion, by love, by personal influence, by kindness, in every form.

And you—how do you see yourself winning souls?

Win people with love…
The first means by which you win people is love. If you do not love people, and they do not love you, you cannot lead them to God, because people tend to listen to those whom they love.

The person who is repelled by you, with whom you have lost your relationship, you cannot draw to God. He will not listen to you. But the one whom you love may love God because of you, and you present God to him with love. Among the manifestations of your love for people is that you endure them.

Every person in the world has his faults and weaknesses. If you keep watching people’s mistakes and holding them accountable for them, the result will be that you lose people and they lose you… therefore endure them.
One person you endure his mistakes; another you endure his chatter; a third you endure his ignorance; a fourth you endure his temper; a fifth you endure his stubbornness… etc.

As a symbol of the priest’s long-suffering and endurance, his garments are wide and flowing, a symbol of breadth of heart. For the narrow-hearted person loses people… remember that the Lord Christ bore the sins of the whole world.

Among the examples of God’s endurance of people is that there are millions of atheists who deny God’s existence or blaspheme Him, and God endures them without punishment!
How easy it would be for God to destroy all these. But He is silent and endures. Perhaps this generation will not be saved, and the next generation will attain salvation. Thus God endures those who mock religion and piety.

Therefore endure people with love, and you will win them, for “love never fails” (1 Cor 13:8). Remember the Scripture: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink” (Rom 12:20).

If someone treats you badly and you endure him with kindness, then by your endurance of him—as Scripture says—“you heap coals of fire on his head” (Rom 12:20). No doubt his conscience will rebuke him concerning you. As one person said to another who endured him: “You kill me with your nobility; you destroy me with your courtesy,” as though his old man is being shattered…

How easy it is to overcome people with nobility, as Scripture says: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21).
Try, for example, when someone wrongs you, to be the first to seek to save him when he falls into a problem… Try refined courtesy in responding to a person loose in his language; undoubtedly he will despise himself and respect you…

But if you want to take your rights from people by force, you will lose people and lose your eternity…

And as you win people by love, endurance, and good treatment, win them also by wisdom.

Win people with wisdom
The Lord Christ cares that we be wise, to the extent that He praised the unjust steward: “for he had dealt wisely” (Luke 16:8). He praised the wisdom in him, not the injustice. Scripture says: “The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness” (Eccl 2:14). And because the deacons also work in winning souls, the apostolic fathers stipulated—in choosing the seven deacons—that they be “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom” (Acts 6:3).

It could have sufficed to require fullness of the Holy Spirit, considering that He is the Spirit of wisdom and counsel and understanding (Isa 11:2). But they emphasized the attribute of wisdom.

The Apostle Paul said: “However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age” (1 Cor 2:6).
Saint James the Apostle spoke at length about the wisdom that descends from above (James 3:13–17).
It is a wisdom fit for winning souls, because it is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits… And he said: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom” (James 3:13).

As for worldly wisdom, we sometimes call it cunning and craftiness, since it contains evil schemes.
How many people thought to win others by deceit and lying, by deviation, by being double-faced and double-tongued, and skillful in devising plans, in methods of enticement and excitement! But you—do not have this wisdom; rather, the spiritual wisdom that descends from above…

Abigail, the wife of Nabal the Carmelite, was able by wisdom to win David the prophet and to prevent him from taking revenge on her husband and from committing murder (1 Sam 25).
David admired her wise approach in which humility was blended with gentle rebuke saturated with praise.
He said to her: “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! And blessed is your advice and blessed are you, because you have kept me this day from coming to bloodshed” (1 Sam 25:32–33). And when her husband died, David married her, having accepted rebuke from her without anger…

The wise person knows when to speak and how to speak, when to be silent and how to act.
He knows the entrances into people’s souls, how to tell them what they can accept, how to advise them with what they can do, and how to lead them gradually toward virtue and even toward perfection… Therefore our holy fathers were characterized by discernment.

The wise man increases the number of his friends, but the fool loses his dearest loved ones…
The wise knows how to win people, and those he has won, he knows how to keep as well…

The wise woman does not lose her husband, nor the relatives of her husband—his mother and brothers… Where wisdom exists, all marital problems can be solved; each party wins the other… Saint John Chrysostom said: “There is a way to get rid of your enemy: turn the enemy into a friend.”

Of course, we cannot deny that there are people whose friendship is not easy to gain. The reason is due to them, as happened with the Lord Christ Himself with the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, chief priests, and elders of the people—though many of them later believed.

Because winning all people is not easy, the Apostle said: “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Rom 12:18).
Therefore, winning souls requires patience and endurance, and it may require time; it does not come with excessive insistence or haste… Perhaps insistence and haste bring a contrary result, because they may weary the nerves and psyche of the person you want to win or reconcile with, or cause stubbornness… or he may feel your insistence and become heavy and impose difficult conditions and solutions…!

With wisdom in conduct, you can win people in social relations and in spiritual matters as well…

Is it not shameful that many people of the world are wise and win others, while the children of God fail where those succeed?!

A problem confronts one person and he becomes flustered or acts wrongly. The same problem confronts another, and he solves it with utmost ease… it is wisdom.

But wisdom is not to win people at the expense of principles and spiritual life, or to win them and lose God!

Win souls for God…
Those who work in this service, the Lord called them “fishers of men.” They must have the wisdom of the fisherman who knows the nature of the fish and the nature of the waters, and who knows how to cast his nets into the deep.

The wise person is one who has tested the spiritual path and walked in it, knew its wars and stumbling blocks; therefore he knows the kind of words he presents to people.

1. From this wisdom is that he does not present to people spiritual matters above their level, lest they despair or fail from the beginning.
   This is a problem the Lord Christ addressed in His rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees, saying: “For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders” (Matt 23:4).

Many servants have certain ideals and want everyone to walk in these ideals from the very first step! Otherwise they reject him, criticize him, and say he is unfit for the spiritual path—while the Lord did not do so. Rather, He was gradual even with His disciples and said to them: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). His disciple Paul learned this rule and said: “I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it” (1 Cor 3:2).

The twelve apostles—in the Council of Jerusalem—observed the same rule. They decided that they should “not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that they write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15:19–20), so as not to place upon their necks a yoke “which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10).

But gradualness does not mean laxity in God’s commandments! No, rather we train people in them gradually until they reach them…
Some servants close the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven before people by making the path difficult; they themselves do not enter, nor do they allow those who are entering to enter (Matt 23:13). Others are lax to the degree that the one served loses his spiritual life and the seriousness of the spiritual life as well…!

2. It is also wisdom that servants do not lead people in contradictory spiritual programs…
   As when a person repents, some lead him to a life of remorse, contrition, and tears, while others draw him to a life of joy in the Lord and “rejoicing and salvation.” One group encourages him to serve and to speak of what the Lord has done for him, while others lead him to a sense of unworthiness and to not hasten to service until repentance has taken its full share of feelings of shame for sin…

Thus the poor person becomes confused among contradictory counsels and does not know where to walk!
The matter becomes more complicated when each group explains to him that the other group is wrong and that if he follows it he will be lost! Here self appears in service, and servants compete unwisely in snatching the served ones from one another!!

3. Likewise, it is not good for a servant to intrude into a person’s private matters and volunteer to guide him without knowledge of his circumstances, inner state, and psychological type!
   Therefore, the Church placed this guidance under the responsibility of the confessor father, who knows the confessor’s psychology and circumstances and can present treatment suitable to his condition, while at the same time leading him in one consistent program that suits his spiritual level…

The wise winner of souls knows when to present rebuke for sin and when to open the door of hope without rebuke, as benefits the soul.
The person submerged in self-reproach and despairing of salvation—we present hope to him. But the one who does not feel the gravity of sin and views it lightly mixed with indifference—we rebuke him strongly so that he may awaken to himself and know that sin is exceedingly sinful and its wages are death.

4. The wise servant does not try to make those he serves copies of himself.
   He does not lead people to solitude and silence if he himself loves that, for perhaps he has a social disciple to whom solitude does not suit.
   Conversely, he does not lead all his served ones to service that consumes all time and effort if he himself loves that, for perhaps he has a disciple who loves a life of prayer, contemplation, and quiet. It is not permissible to stamp them with his own stamp! Every person has his own psychology and what suits him…

Every person has his own circumstances and a certain degree of spirituality, which may not fit the program the servant follows. The servant’s task, therefore, is to guide to the truth in abstraction, leaving details to what suits the type of soul and to the guidance of the confessor father…

Some servants, when they become enthusiastic about something, want everyone to be enthusiastic about it, whatever his condition!
For example, one of them is enthusiastic about a certain reform and is inwardly revolutionary; he wants everyone to be revolutionary like him! This may harm them, cause them to err, and may not be wise… Or someone loves monasticism and calls everyone to it, though it may not suit them!

5. The wise winner of souls should be patient and not weary.
   It is not wisdom to hasten the fruit, nor to despair of one served and leave him if he does not respond quickly to teaching… nor to lose one’s temper with him and multiply rebukes, lest that one also fail.

Service needs long-suffering and gentleness with sinners, just as the Lord Himself is longsuffering, and His long-suffering leads to repentance (Rom 2:4).
By long-suffering, Augustine was transformed from a sinful youth into a great saint, and Saul of Tarsus was transformed from a persecutor of the Church into the greatest preacher who labored in service.

Therefore, do not cross out from your list the names of those you visited a few times and they did not attend, and do not despair of those you advised many times and did not repent… Do not think there is no response. Perhaps there is a response, but it needs time…

In any case, this topic needs another return from us to complete its remaining points…

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