Just Walk Across the Room
Living in 3D
(Week 2)
Luke 15:1-15
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
Introduction
We are on week two of a four-week sermon and Sunday School series
learning together how to “just walk across rooms.”
This metaphor captures Christ’s invitation to step out of our
comfort zones to connect with new people in order to be used of God to
plant one small seed of the gospel.
Before we jump into today’s discussion, let’s do a quick
review of last week’s main points.
(Please note: everything up
until “Point One” is taken directly from Hybels’
transcript. After that, the sermon is original in wording, except
where noted, drawing on the ideas & points of Hybels’
transcript.)
1. Be willing to enter the Zone of the
Unknown … by voluntarily extricating ourselves from our
Circles of Comfort and being open to engaging with someone who might
need a touch from God;
2. Listen for the Spirit’s
promptings … by choosing to rely on his guidance instead
of our own;
3. Just walk … reach out
to another in the hope of beginning a redemptive friendship
Today’s sermon gets very practical addressing such questions
about why we walk across rooms and about what happens right after you
decide to “just walk.” In other words, what should
you be thinking about, praying about, and talking about in that Zone of
the Unknown once you step foot into it?
Because if you’re anything like me, agreeing to
“walk” is one thing. But knowing what to do once
you’ve reached the destination, the person standing across the
room from you, is quite another.
This week, we’re exploring what’s called “Living in
3D.” 3D Living is a framework for operating successfully in
the Zone of the Unknown. It’s made up of three
“D’s,” as you probably deduced. Ready for the
first “D”?
Point 1: Develop Friendships
Walk-across-the-room people are those who live life in
“3D”; first, they constantly look for ways to:
• Develop friendships
In our Bible passage for this morning, we discover that this is the
very same method that Jesus used to rescue the captive and restore the
wounded.
Let’s read our text…
The gospels, in recording the life of Jesus while He took His walk on
planet Earth, give us small snapshots that are meant to reveal the
larger story of what was typical of the life of Christ. In this
snapshot, we discover that while Christ took walks to touch lives for
eternity, he evidently choose to connect with some pretty shady people.
We’re learning much from watching how Pastor Hybels takes walks
across rooms to develop redemptive friendships. And this man is
the real deal. Despite pastoring a congregation of 20, 000
members, and being internationally famous, he remains humble, and he
still cannot speak of the spiritually lost without a tear in his eye.
Still, I have to chuckle about the kind of people he is called to talk
walks with. He happens to be called to reach the rather affluent,
upper class of society, so on his “walks,” he gets to go
sailing on yachts! Everyone has their cross to bear I guess!
But this is not the strata of society in which Christ choose to take
walks. Christ was continually accused of being a drunkard and a
glutton because he hung out with sinners. He didn’t just
hang out with them. He joined in on their party, all without ever
sinning, in order to develop redemptive friendships. Our passage
says, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like
old friends."
Those who fit into this category of “sinners” according to
the Pharisees would have been the prostitutes, the swindlers,
adulterers, the smokers, the drinkers, they told dirty jokes, used
filthy language….you know, the kind of people that come out at
night in downtown Dubuque! If I were to take the kind of
walks Jesus took, it would be scandalous and you all would probably
fire me!
Now I don’t know what kind of people Christ is calling you to
take walks with personally. But Christ is calling you to step out
of your comfort zone wherever God has strategically placed you in your
neighborhood, workplace, school, etc. We take such walks to
develop friendships with unbelievers, or those fallen away from active
fellowship, so that we can be used of the Holy Spirit to plant seeds of
the gospel.
Here is a very disturbing reality, and I must confess, it’s one
that describes my life as well. To be a Christian, is to be
someone who is an adopted child of God because the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of adoption, dwells in us making us increasingly more like
Christ. What does it mean to be more Christlike? What
traits best define Christ? Faith…hope…& Love!
What behavior best captures the primary activity that Christ engaged in
while he walked planet Earth, and continues to engage in through the
ongoing work of the Holy Spirit? Seeking and saving the
lost! This is the whole thrust of our Bible passage this
morning! Lost people matter to the Father, Son, &
Spirit. They matter more than anything else in the
universe. They are the central focus of what God is up to right
now!
Christlikeness is best demonstrated through those who live such lives
of love in seeking and saving the lost! The longer we are a
Christian, the greater our love for others, especially the lost, should
increase.
Let’s look at what should be the scale of love in a true follower
of Jesus Christ whom we’ll call “Jane.” (PPT
slide) The closer our walk with Christ, the more love of people
we should demonstrate. Not a feeling of love, but love in action
demonstrated by reaching out to the hurting and lost.
Instead, here is the scale that so many Christians demonstrate
instead. (PPT slide) For most American Christians, myself
included, the longer we are a Christian, the less contact we tend to
have with non-Christians.
Listen to this rather lengthy, but powerful, excerpt from Pastor Hybels:
“Almost all of us find it quite
easy to love some people—maybe a spouse or our parents or our
kids … our friends at work, our friends at church. We see
them, and our initial reaction is love. We want to bless
them. We crave time with them. We’re filled with joy
when these people come to mind. While almost every human being
has a loving heart toward some people, almost every human being also
has a secret list of people they just can’t stand.
Some of us don’t like entire groups of people. Some people
in this room get huffy when we’re surrounded by men and women who
don’t vote the way we vote. Some of us become all
constricted inside when we’re confronted with certain ethnic
groups. Some of us are just plain disgusted with people who
aren’t at our same socioeconomic level.
Ask me to love some people outside of my “circle,” and
seemingly out of nowhere, a whole host of qualifiers and filters rise
up out of me. “All right now, if you’re asking me to
love some people outside of this circle, they better be nice, they
better not hurt me, they better be safe, they better be stable, they
better be deserving!”
They better be white, they better be black, they better be pro-life,
they better be liberal, they better be Democratic, they better be
Republican, they better be young, they better be old, they better be
single, they better be rich.” (Bill Hybels)
And our list of those excluded from our love goes on…
Brothers & sisters, now is the time to be radically honest with
ourselves and with God about any prejudices and barriers to loving
others that we might have. Invite the Holy Spirit to reveal and
convict and then grant the gift of repentance and freedom so that we
might be free and empowered to love those still trapped in darkness,
hell-bound, captive to all manner of addictive sin.
Let us not be afraid or callous any longer about walking across rooms,
yards, office places, exercise rooms, school hallways, neighborhood
streets to connect with people who we might not normally never chose to
hang out with in order to be used of God to invite them to new life in
Christ!
So, we allow the Holy Spirit to embolden us to walk across the
room. We do so in the hope that perhaps this simple first hello
might begin to develop into a friendship. This will not happen
with every hello. But when it happens, and it will happen because
Christ will direct you to people He is calling into the kingdom, if you
just make yourself available, the question becomes, “what do you
do next to develop this friendship?”
You “discover stories,” our second “D”.
Point 2: Discover Stories
Walk-across-the-room people, remember, are people who live life in
“3D”, constantly watching for ways to:
• Develop friendships … in order to
• Discover stories
What does this mean? It means to be curious about the
other. This seems so simple and something that should be a given,
yet the tragic truth is it is a rare thing to find someone who is truly
curious to hear your story. How many times have you been in a
conversation with someone, and they really wanted to hear more about
your life story?
Hybels puts it this way:
“The intertwining of these
“D’s” is so critical for us to grasp. Your goal
and mine should be to engage in the lives of the folks around us,
developing friendships wherever we can, so that we have a baseline for
asking good questions about their journey. Then, once we truly
understand their unique needs, we can try to help meet them, which
we’ll look at more in our third “D.”
Friends, it’s uncanny how once you take time to uncover another
person’s story … once you are viewed as a trusted
confidant … the other person just opens wide up about their
heartfelt needs. This is the stuff God blesses, really and
truly.”
Let me illustrate with a story of a lunch appointment I had recently.
If you’re not already, I challenge you in Christ, to become the
kind of person that is transcendently curious about others. When
our Lord grants you the opportunity to connect with another in
redemptive relationships with unbelievers or the disconnected from
faith, begin by just asking them questions about their life. Not
in an intrusive way, or like you’re a reporter or an
interrogator! But as seems appropriate in the situation, just be
curious.
“Strike up a relationship
with a lost person and start hanging out with them, start praying and
trying to have a spiritual conversation
… just to reconnect with their real world …
… just to take an interest in someone who may be waiting for you
to come along and care …… just to see what God might do.
…to discover the stories of people far from God who may be one
prayer away from knowing the God you know. Be the one person in
their world who takes a genuine interest in their story so that you
will know how best to serve them … which leads us to our third
“D.” (Bill Hybels)
Point 3: Discern Next Steps
This is our third point. Walk-across-the-room people are people
who live life in “3D”; they constantly look for ways to:
• Develop friendships
• Discover stories
• Discern appropriate next steps
“Once you’ve risked walking
across a room to stick out a hand of friendship and unearth what
another person’s journey has been like so far, the very best
thing you can do is lean way into the whisperings and nudgings of the
Holy Spirit.
During every single second of your conversation with the other
person, simultaneously as you plead with the Holy Spirit for direction.
For guidance. For insight. For wisdom. For creative
ideas. For appropriate next steps to take.” (Bill Hybels)
“I want to show you a short clip that I think illustrates well
this idea of taking appropriate next steps in situations that may be
turning spiritual. You’ll meet Dave, a sailing buddy of
Bill’s, who felt firsthand what it was like to have someone take
appropriate next steps in his life” (Bill Hybels)
This is a very short clip, so be sure and fully tune in right away and
listen to every word.
CLIP: Message Video Excerpt, Week Two
In the video clip, you probably noted several “next steps”
that Bill took in the life of his friend Dave—steps that added up
over time and led to some pretty remarkable things in Dave’s
life. By the way, if you want the rest of that story,
you’ll have to go to your small group meeting this week!
So, what next steps did you pick up on?
- Hybels saw past Dave’s hardness to the gospel and
whatever sinful stuff was in his life, and clung to a vision of who
Dave could be once Christ got a hold of him. This is always a key
first step!
- Hybels kept the right posture of dependence on the Holy Spirit
by saying, “I wanted to be sure I was riding in second
place”
- Hybels was simply curious about Dave’s
life…how his week went, how his wife was doing…this made
Dave feel honored and cared for…he didn’t feel threatened,
manipulated, or intimated
- Next, Hybels discerned, as this relationship developed, that
Dave would be open to reading a book that intellectually explained the
claims of Christ.
Such a bold, direct move will not always come up in you
walk-across-the-room, redemptive relationships. Sometimes we get
to plant a small seed, sometimes many seeds, sometimes we get to be
both seed planter and harvester.
Every seed is important and the process of someone coming to faith is
all about God’s work from start to finish. We are called,
invited, and empowered to partner with the Holy Spirit, not because God
needs us, but because God wants us to join in on the fun, to join the
party God is continually throwing for the prodigals who finally come
home!
Perhaps the next step in your redemptive relationship will be:
- Keep the conversation short so as not to “overstay your
welcome”
- Look for future opportunities to connect with that person
- Back off completely until that person moves toward you
- Offer to be praying about the person’s need
- Offer to give a book
The possibilities are endless. The goal is the same. Seek
to discern through the Holy Spirit, what, if any, should be the next
step as to fostering this relationship according to God’s timing
and purposes.
Closing
Why do we take walks across rooms? Our Bible passage reveals
why. A woman loses a coin that represents one tenth of all she
owns. She searches frantically, desperately, to find the lost
coin. When she does find the coin, she throws a party!
A shepherd loses one sheep. A good shepherd grew to love each
sheep like a child. He frantically, desperately searches for the
lost sheep. When he finds it, he throws a big party!
There is another parable that immediately follows these two that we
didn’t read this morning. It’s the familiar story of
the lost son.
The prodigal son finally comes to his senses and returns home. The
father has been standing at the door looking for his return every day
for month after sorrowful month. He runs to meet the
lost-but-now-found son on the road. And what does the father
do? He throws a party!
What is the point of these three stores that Christ tells? Lost
people matter to God! Lost people matter to God more than
anything else right now!
You want to know where to find God? He’s out taking
scandalous walks connecting with sinners to invite them to new life in
Christ! And our missionary, triune God is inviting us to join Him
in these walks!
Christ in our passage reveals an amazing picture of what is happening
in heaven right now…
“Count on it—there's more
joy in heaven over one sinner's rescued life than over ninety-nine good
people in no need of rescue.”
“Count on it—that's the kind of party God's angels throw
every time one lost soul turns to God."
Christ is inviting us to join the party! Let’s stop acting
like the eldest son in the prodigal son parable, standing in the
shadows of grace…resentful because every time we look for Father
God we find Him across the room throwing parties for prodigals instead
us us!
The Father is inviting us to join the party by taking bold walks across
rooms, empowered by the Holy Spirit to develop redemptive friendships,
to discover their stories, and then to discern next steps…to
invite other prodigals to the party that is the kingdom of God!