Introduction
If you’re a Christian, isn’t what you want most to touch the lives of the people you know - the people you love - who are far from God?
Sharing your faith should be as simple as taking a walk across a room. And that is something we can all do, isn’t it?
This “just walk across the room” metaphor comes from a true story about one person who was living really far from God until one day, his entire world got upended because a Christian touched his life by walking across a room and starting a conversation with him. You can read about that in chapter 1 of the book. It’s an amazing and exciting story.
The single greatest gift Christians can give to the people around them is an introduction to the God who created them, who loves them, and who has a purpose for heir lives.
This is what sharing faith is: it’s watching for ways to give this single greatest gift to someone else. Today, we are going to try to understand how God can use us to do that. What does it take in order for us to give this “single greatest gift” to someone we know?
1) Enter the Zone of the Unknown
Think about this with me for a moment. A Christian in a social setting is standing in a conversational “Circle of Comfort.” It is easy and unthreatening. There is every reason to continue talking in that little circle. You have been in situations like that haven’t you? Across the room you notice someone standing alone, who needs a little encouragement or friendship.
Something inside you says, “What if you went over and extended a hand of friendship on the other side of the room?”
You see the situation. You sense a prompting - apparently from the Holy Spirit. Then you actually say to the people in your Circle of Comfort, “Excuse me a minute.”
Now remember, you have no idea what is going to happen once you cross the room and greet this stranger. You don’t know what the reaction will be. But once you have left your Circle of Comfort there’s no turning back.
And so you walk … inwardly praying every step of the way. You walk all the way across and enter what we’re going to call the “Zone of the Unknown.” Have you ever been there - the Zone of the Unknown? It’s where God often does his best work! Here’s the question I want us all to ponder: what would happen if we were all to enter the Zone of the Unknown more often?
Is it possible that we could actually impact someone’s eternal destiny and even that of their family?
I took some time to read through the book this week, and here’s a quote that should stop all of us in our tracks: “The day Christians like you and me stop taking walks across rooms in this manner, the day we stay glued to our Circles of Comfort, refuse to make the walk, refuse to enter the Zone of the Unknown … the day Christians like you and me stop doing that sort of stuff, it is lights out for the kingdom of God here on earth. It is the beginning of the end of redemptive history. It’s the slow defeat of the church - the bride of Christ. It’s the end of the dream of Christ that people on earth would come to know him.”
If you’re a living, breathing Christian, then the Holy Spirit is asking you to walk. He’s asking me to walk. He’s asking us to make a difference in the lives of the people we see each and every day! At work. In social settings. At the gym. At our kid’s football game. Wherever. Whenever.
If you’ve submitted your life to Christ but wonder why you’re not surging ahead in your spiritual development or your spiritual maturity, could it be that, for too long now, you have clung to your Circle of Comfort, and avoided that Zone of the Unknown?
If you have made the choice to follow Christ - if you have found him to be truth, if you have found what the Bible says to be truth - then why would you - why would any of us - think that other people wouldn’t be interested in knowing about what we have discovered to be the most life-changing, heart-stimulating, eternity-altering encounter of our lives?
2) Listen for the Holy Spirit’s Promptings
In order for us to be effective in the Zone of the Unknown, we need to learn to listen to the Spirit’s promptings every step of the way.
Before you get the wrong idea about what this looks like, let me tell you that being available to the Holy Spirit doesn’t always work out the way you think it might. Sometimes we hear about these evangelist types who travel abroad and on their journey they lead everyone they come across to Christ - the taxi driver, the airline agent, the flight attendants, the poor victim sitting next to them on the plane, the family across the aisle - the whole plane becomes a church before they land! Stories like that make us feel like we’ll never measure up don’t they? But it’s actually possible for ordinary people to do this.
About two years ago, when Benjamin was at Preston Primary, I noticed someone new waiting at the school gate. She was always on her own and seemed to know anybody at all. After a few days I felt prompted to just walk across the playground, offer a hand of friendship and welcome her to the area.
It turned out that her name was Sohini. What I discovered was that Wendy and Kathie had already walked across the playground when they were waiting for the children on other days. She was surrounded by Christians! Soon after, she brought her son along to Fuse.
A few months later I invited her to do the Alpha course and she said “no.” But a few months after that I invited her to do the Journeys Course with her husband and they said “yes.” They loved Journeys and it really helped them think more deeply about faith. Then Sohini said she was interested in the Bible so Kathie and I bought her one. When we gave it to her, her face lit up! By that time she’d got to know Julia as well and was volunteering as a helper at Fuse. Every time she came she just drank in what Julia was saying about Jesus. Recently, she has started to come to the Wednesday Communion service and this week, for the first time, she called herself a Christian. Praise God! But if Wendy, Kathie, Julia and I hadn’t left our Circle of Comfort and followed the prompting of the Spirit I wonder if it ever would have happened. I asked Sohini if I could tell her story today and she agreed very enthusiastically.
The key is this: fundamentally, being walk-across-the-room people means that we walk when the Spirit prompts us and we don’t walk when the Spirit says not to. Frankly, it’s what keeps the edge and the adventure in the Christian life.
In Matthew 5:13, Jesus said this about his followers: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
You’ve got to have savour. You’ve got to be enthusiastic about the Lord. But, more than that, salt needs to be where the food is. I can be the strongest, most salty salt the world has ever seen but salt is useless unless it actually gets on the meat! I won’t make any impact unless I get close to the people who need Jesus.
Based on the law of averages, there are some of you sitting here this morning who are thinking, “I agree with this. But I think this is for spiritual superstars. I don’t have the right training, the right skills or enough confidence. I don’t have a quick mind or a way with people.”And if you’re in that camp, I understand you. I know what it is like to walk across the room and think, “I’ll be so glad when this is over.”
I dread the Zone of the Unknown. I get nervous inside when a normal conversation shifts gear into spiritual territory. But I want to grow old with no regrets. I’ve said this before but I’d much rather spend my life being scared than bored. In the Zone of the Unknown I’m scared. In the Circle of Comfort I’m bored.
I want to walk by faith and not by sight. There is something a lot like Jesus that is going on in you and in me when we leave a Circle of Comfort and take that faith-walk across the room and reach out a hand.
Last Sunday night I had a sensation in my left shoulder as I was praying and I just had a hunch that God was saying someone had pain in that part of their body and that he wanted to heal it. So I said so in the 6:30pm service. At the end of the service, someone came forward who I have never seen ask for prayer ministry.
And she said, I’ve had a pain in my shoulder for about 15 years and the doctors can’t do anything. Last night it was particularly painful. We prayed and she said it started to twitch and feel strange. So we guessed that might be God a work. We kept praying and blessing what God was doing. She looked astonished, saying the pain was completely gone. What is true in prayer ministry is surely true for personal evangelism. As we tune into the whispers of the Holy Spirit and step out in faith God will lead us into the exciting things that he's doing.
But, bottom line, what’s the reason we want to get better at all this?
3) Just Walk!
Romans 5.8 is familiar to some of you. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Let me push the Pause button here for just a moment.
I spent some time this last week reflecting on what this reality means in my own life … God took hold of me as an annoying, self-centred, slightly geeky 17 year-old, wondering if I’d ever find a job, despairing that I’d ever find a girlfriend, (everyone else probably wondering if I’d ever get a life!) and God extended grace to me through Jesus Christ. He took hold of me and changed my life forever.
And how was it that Jesus demonstrated the love of the Father? What was the radical move he made to prove to you and me that he really does love each one of us? He took a walk.
The verses from Philippians you see on the screen say that at a specific point in history Jesus left the ultimate Circle of Comfort - heaven itself - walked across the universe and reached out his saving hand to people like us. And because of that one walk, humankind was able to be saved and secured in the family of God forever.
Every person who has ever inhaled air has been (or is) in dire need of being rescued.
And these days - right here in our everyday lives - what God tries to do with us between now and heaven is to say, “What I did, leaving that circle, making that trip and reaching out to you… is what I want you to do. I want this to be characteristic of my followers whenever I give them opportunity to do so.”
If you will stay open, with an eye focused on people and an ear tuned to God’s whisper, I think you will be amazed by what unfolds.
God says to us all today, “I am going to ask you to walk across the street; across a restaurant; across an office... I am going to ask you to take that walk, leave whatever Circle of Comfort you are in and enter the unknown - and then something exciting is going to happen. That is what I want you to do.”
And that’s the third point: Just walk!
Why? Because Jesus “just walked” for you. For me. For us. And for every, single person on planet Earth today.
This is why we’re setting aside an entire month of our calendar to this. Our vision is that every home in our parish will know we are a vibrant Christian community ready to pray for them serve them and lead them to Jesus. That’s why we’re doing this.
So that we can all get better about hearing the Spirit’s promptings, but also so that we will start taking action with a sense of confidence … and in the process, become more like Jesus!
One of the most dramatic occurrences of Jesus taking action in this way is found in John 4. Jesus and his disciples had been travelling all day and had come to a well.
It’s the middle of the day, and these men are hot, hungry, and thirsty. They see a woman standing by the nearby well. We learn later that she had been through five divorces and that she was now living with someone unmarried. In highly-spiritual terms, that’s what you call having a lot of tread worn off your tyres.
Make a note to take a closer look at this story this week - again. When you review it, you’ll notice that all thirteen men - Jesus plus his twelve disciples - come up to Jacob’s well. The disciples size this woman up, think she’s not the kind of company they want to be seen with and head off somewhere else for lunch.
Jesus turns around, sees the woman, and simply walks from one side of the well forecourt to the other - which catches the woman off guard.
Because of the customs in that region, she’s not expecting him to have anything to do with her. In their society, Jesus wasn’t just walking across a typical “room” - he was walking through barriers of gender, race, culture and religion.
Because of her lifestyle, this woman would’ve been labelled a “sinner” by the religious establishment. She was a Samaritan. Most Jews wouldn’t have walked through this town because they believed they would have become “unclean.”
But despite all of the protocol and sensitivities, Jesus left his Circle of Comfort anyway.
Moreover, he directs the conversation from the everyday topic of drawing a cup of water from the well to something much deeper … “living water,” and this catalyzes her eventually coming to faith.
The text says that she leaves her basin, runs into town, and drags half of her friends and neighbours out, telling them that they just have to come meet this man who knew all about her past but who accepted her and showed her… grace.
And for the next two days everyone listens to Jesus teach. It says in the text that many people from the town crossed the line of faith and joined God’s family during that timeframe. All because one man took a walk across a room - okay, a well forecourt - to reach out to someone living far from God.
But here’s the picture I want to leave with you from this story: Imagine fifteen or twenty years later when all these people’s kids and grandchildren are sitting around enjoying the beauty of Christian community.
Imagine that they begin to tell stories about where their faith journey began. One of them says … “How did all of this start?”
I know that, like the disciples, we can be tempted into staying in our safe circles. We too can make a habit of rushing off to our lunch appointments or family gatherings instead of engaging with the people standing in front of us. But hopefully, the longer we keep company with Jesus, the more our eyes will be opened to seeing the things that he sees; people around us who need love, friendship, community … and hope.
Ending
And so if you are a Christian, then probably someone took a risk for you along the way and did something that interested you in the possibility of knowing the love of God and the opportunity to be freed from your sins.
If this is true for you, thank God today for the person who “took a walk” to hand you the single greatest gift you’d ever receive in your entire life.
I hope you’ll become the kind of person for whom others will thank God at times like this.
I close by reminding you that, if you want to get the most out of this teaching series, you have an assignment this week to read the Introduction and chapters 1 and 2 of the book. There are still copies available from the bookstall and in the library to borrow.
Those who actually do the reading were probably the ones in school who asked the teacher for more homework! I know that. But if you do the reading you will become better at all this than if don’t.
Over the next three weeks, we are going to get very practical. We will learn in detail how to excuse ourselves from our Circle of Comfort. We’ll learn to look across whatever room we are in and open our eyes and use our ears and discern from the Holy Spirit if there is someone on the other side that God is drawing our attention to.
If you’re in a home group and your group has decided to use the material offered you will get even more out of this. Our staff team are doing this as a group over the next four weeks.
And as we learn together I offer you a few predictions about the month ahead:
• Firstly: we will all grow in our relationship with Christ.
• Secondly: those looking at this in groups will grow in relationship with one other.
• Thirdly, we will get better at pointing people to faith.
• And finally, we will have an absolute ball doing it!
Let’s stand for the closing prayer…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 23rd January 2011
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