“The Single Greatest Gift”
John 4:4-10, 27-42

Please Note:  This sermon was adapted and used with permission from the “Just Walk Across the Room Four-Week Experience” by Bill Hybels, produced by Willow Creek and Zondervan Publishing who maintain all copyrights.

What if just walking across a room could change a life forever? The call to evangelism strikes fear in many Christian’s hearts because it conjures up images of having to be bold or pushy, or to be able to defend every question asked, or simply the fear of rejection as not all are open to the gospel.  This morning we are beginning a four-week series of how to talk to others about spiritual matters, and ultimately about Christ, in ways that are simple, non-threatening, and match your personality.  And yes, it is often as simple as a walk across the room.

Overview of Series:  This four-week study will include sermons, and a Sunday School class that covers the same topic of that sermon in more detail.  All this material is based on a book by Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek in Chicago, called, Just Walk Across the Room.  Now, just to clarify, even though this packaged campaign series comes with full transcripts for the sermons, it is just not my style to preach someone else’s sermon, not even a Bill Hybels’ sermon!  So, what I am doing is taking his outline, main points, and PowerPoint, and then composing my own sermon around these points.

Pastor Hybels says this: “If we would all do just the small thing that we can do, we would touch a lot more lives!”  If you’re a Christ-follower, isn’t this essentially what you want most … to touch the lives of the people you know—the people you love—who are living their lives far from God?  The “just walk across the room” metaphor that serves as the key concept for this four-week study.” “….Friends, the single greatest gift Christ-followers 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 their life.”  Bill Hybels (BH)  

Not only is it the single greatest gift you can give to another.  It is the single most exciting thing you can do for yourself!  There is simply no more satisfying joy than being used by God to deeply touch another’s life!  Now before we explore our walk towards others, we have to begin with God’s walk toward us.  We read this is Romans chapter Romans 5:8.  “And how was it, exactly, that Jesus Christ demonstrated the love of the Father?  What was the radical move he made to prove to you and to me that he really does feel redemptive, grace-filled, unconditional love for each one of us?” (BH)

“He took a walk!”  (BH)

Everything in the universe that is good begins with God!  Every aspect of salvation from start to finish is God-initiated.  The human race didn’t seek out God’s grace and mercy.  God moved toward us to grant a way of salvation.  

You and I did not choose to seek out God for our salvation.  God relentlessly sought us, then gave us the power by the Holy Spirit to believe and receive the gospel, then it is God who grants us every day the ability to live as a follower of Christ.

Everything begins with God.  God created humanity so that we might live eternal lives of perfect peace, blissful joy, permeating goodness, and exquisite beauty fully delighting in one another and all delighting in the triune God.  We rebelled and said to God, “No thanks!  We’ll take pain over paradise because we prefer running our own lives than living under your rule!”  

What was God’s response to our rebellion?  Father God took a walk and met with Abraham and said, “I am going to make you into a nation through whom I can begin to reveal my goodness and my plans for how I am going to offer my grace to all nations.”  Every aspect of salvation from start to finish is God-initiated.

When the fullness of time had passed, and everything that God needed to do and to reveal through the nation of Israel had been competed, it came time for God to take another walk.  A passage from Philippians tells us more about this walk.

Father God said to His Son, “Jesus, it’s your turn to take a walk.  Now Son, your walk on planet Earth is going to be full of pain.  You see, even though you created them, they will not recognize you.  I’ll send to the very ones I have been revealing us to for centuries, yet they will not all welcome you.  But take courage my Son.  To all those who do trust in you, we’ll reclaim them as our own, I’ll even adopt them as my children, and you’ll gain millions of brothers and sisters who will co-rule with you forever!”  

So Jesus took a walk.

Now while Jesus was on planet Earth, He took many walks in fulfilling His mission to “seek and save all who were lost.”  We are going to explore one of these walks in detail this morning to draw from it three principles for how we can learn to walk across the room to offer others the single greatest gift of Christ.

Jesus took a walk that changed the eternal destiny of many.  The same kind of walk we are invited to participate in again and again with Christ.  The first walk Christ took was out of the comfort zone of His home in heaven where he reigned in glory with the Father and Holy Spirit.  Christ took on a permanent change of form into lowly human likeness, and entered right into the depths of human suffering so that He could conquer such suffering and grant life to all who embrace Him.  

Jesus took a walk in this passage.  Again, He had to step put of His comfort zone to talk with this Samaritan women.  For one thing, we read that Christ was tired from all His ministry work.  (It’s reassuring to know that even Christ got tired!)  Jesus could have said, “I’ve done my share of ministry for today.  I’m just going to ignore this needy women and veg out for awhile.”   

Christ had to step out of his comfort zone of social taboos and prejudice.  As indicated in our Bible passage, Jews would not be caught dead talking with a Samaritan. Samaritans’ were half Jewish, half Gentile, something pure Jews abhorred.  They didn’t worship in Jerusalem, something the Jews also strongly condemned.  And men simply did not converse with strange women in public period.   

Jesus was willing to throw off all those taboos and prejudices to take a walk across the sand to offer life to this woman.  And because of that, she and her entire community found eternal life!

Likewise, we too must allow the Holy  Spirit to empower us to throw off all are taboos, fears, prejudices, and apathy to take walks across rooms, streets, yards, office places, school halls, grocery stores, wherever, to offer the gift of life to others, to plant even small seeds of the gospel.   


So this is our first principle: We must be willing to enter the zone of the unknown.

Point 1: Enter the Zone of the Unknown

As simple as this appears we all find this hard to do!  Our opening video clip captures well how most of us feel in social settings.  A stranger walks into a room full of people who all know each other and sits down all alone.  Finally, someone steps out of his comfort zone, steps into the zone of the unknown, and simply says hi.  This is all Christ is asking us to do.  Take few steps and say hi, and to let such small steps be used of God possibly to plant one little seed of the gospel.

We all have different personality types, some are more outgoing than others.  I personally fall more on the side of being an introvert that extrovert.  Talking to strangers about spiritual matters, specifically about Christ, in settings that are not specifically designed for such conversation, are extremely difficult for me.  As you view some of the teaching clips in the Sunday School class, you’ll hear Pastor Hybels taking about his fear in sharing Christ with others, and this guy is mister personality, mister outgoing, and carries a powerful anointing of an evangelist!  

 “Here’s the question for all of us all to ponder: what would happen if we were to take a few steps across a room?  Is it possible that we could actually impact someone’s eternal destiny—perhaps even that of their family?  That we could change the course of an entire family history by simply taking a few steps toward someone who may be heading for a Christless eternity?  Do you think that would be worth the risk of ten steps across the room?” (BH)

Learning how to walk across the room doesn’t mean we lose all fear and hesitation.  It means that we become increasingly more dependent on the Holy Spirit to enable and empower us to step out of our comfort zones, into the zone of the unknown, trusting in Christ’s power and presence for the sake of being used of God to rescue those captive by darkness and bound for hell!  
The key to all this is we can only do this empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Which is our second principle: We must learn to listen to the Spirit’s promptings.


Point 2: Listen for the Spirit’s Promptings

When we examine closely Christ’s walk on planet Earth, we discover that He didn’t heal or stop to talk with every single person He came across.  Christ Himself gives us a glimpse into how he discern who He would heal, who he would talk to, and what walks he would take.  In John 5:19 we read, “Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

 In our Bible passage, we can see Christ operating in many spiritual gifts to offer this Samaritan woman the living water of the gospel.  Christ knew intimate details about this women, not because He was divine.  Christ chose to do all His earthly ministry in the same manner that we can do ministry, namely in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that He could model how to do it, and because all ministry is a participation in what Christ did and continues to do.  

Just as Christ first discerned what the Father was up to and then joined in, that is how we must do all ministry.  We live in a state of surrender and availability to the Holy Spirit, and He shows us what He is up to in any given situation, and then invites and empowers us to join in on the fun!

You see after Christ went back up into heaven, He and the Father said to the Holy Spirit, “Ok Holy Spirit, now it’s your turn to take a walk!  Go down there and fill and empower all my people to take walks so that our work can be multiplied by millions, so that we can speed up this plan of ours of reclaiming all our wandering and wounded children, so we can soon and very soon bring an end to this age of rebellion, so we can usher in the age of our perfect kingdom.”  So the Holy Spirit is now taking a walk, and He invites us to walk with Him.  

Now this isn’t near as spooky and hard as it might sound.  How does the Holy Spirit lead us?  He leads us through the gentle nudges we feel in our heart or the quiet voice we hear in our heads to say or do something for another.  If an idea comes to you that you should say or do something good for another, trust that it is from the Holy Spirit and obey!  

Now here’s the catch.  The process is this, first we get the nudge or hear the quiet voice of the Spirit’s promptings, and then we must take a step in obedience, and then God’s empowerment comes!  We tend to want all the empowerment first so that little faith is required!  First the step of faith, then the empowerment!  It may be a seemingly small thing like saying hello, speaking an encouraging word, lending a helping hand, writing a note, giving a gift.  It might be to offer to pray for someone, to invite her to church, to share how Christ helped you in some way, or it may be that you will get to share a little or a lot of your testimony.  Christ isn’t asking us to stand on street corners and proclaim the entire gospel.  
We are called to simply “just walk across rooms,” and plant a seed, our last principle.


Point 3: Just Walk!

Why do we walk across rooms?  Because as Christ commands and promises us in our Bible passage, “open your eyes and take a good look at what's right in front of you. The fields are ripe. It's harvest time!”

Christ also gives us this very freeing and assuring promise: "This one sows, that one harvests.’  I sent you to harvest a field you never worked.  Without lifting a finger, you have walked in on a field worked long and hard by others."  

This principle of sowing and reaping is key to overcoming all our fears about walking across rooms.  You see, someone coming to faith is always a process, and it is always God’s work from start to finish.  We don’t have to save anyone, convince anyone, debate with any one.  We aren’t asked to share the entire gospel every time Christ invites us to walk across a room!  We are not asked to bring someone to pray the sinner’s prayer every time we witness.  Christ only asks us to plant a seed.  It is Christ’s job to prepare a person’s heart.  It is Christ’s job to cause the seed to grow!


Closing

We walk across rooms because the harvest is ripe.  We walk across rooms because that is what our missionary God is up to on planet Earth right now to gather in all God’s wandering and wounded children back onto the eternal kingdom.  

Like Christ who said His food was to finish the work the Father had started long ago when He took a walk and talked with Abraham, we walk across rooms because that is why the Father leaves us here on earth to partner with the Holy Spirit in completing their mission of seeking and saving the lost.  

We take walks because we have the message, the gospel that frees, saves, and heals those still captive by the devil, those still in bondage, those still in horrific pain!  We take walks because that is where the joy, adventure and excitement are in being a Christ-follower!

Let me tell you a personal story of one woman who stepped out of her comfort zone into the zone of the unknown, listened to the Holy Spirit, and was used mightily by God to snatch a man out of darkness into God’s marvelous light!

Testimony of Kelly, my wife, walking across the college parking and being used of God to plant the seed that soon lead me to accepting Christ.

I hope you will join us in the Sunday School today, and for the sermons and classes for the next three weeks as we learn together how to walk across the room to invite others to new life in Christ.