6. Stepping Out - Decision Time
So let us be a people who, knowing the love of God, choose to recognise our circle of comfort, choose to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and choose to obey and STEP OUT and away and across the room and reach out a hand, “Hullo, my name is David.” Let’s be friendly, let’s be good at making friends. Because God loves every person, they are as valuable as you and me, and because they would be infinitely better off if they too knew the Jesus who loved and died for them. When the opportunity arises, share your story and be ready to pray for them.
This week I would love you to hear Hazel’s story.
Hazel’s Story
After 20 years of tempestuous marriage, I told my husband Ken I wanted a divorce. I didn’t believe in God but Ken must’ve done because he prayed that God would save our marriage. Within a few days God sent a Christian to our house and he had something special. Not knowing what it was I called it “the shine”. We started going to church and both realised that we were very self-centred. We started to practice forgiving and cherishing each other. Gradually our marriage was restored and over the next 24 years we became very dear to each other until Ken died 7 years ago.
Time and again what your stories tell us is that there comes a point of change. A time when you make a decision. For some it is like a journey along which there are many smaller decisions about the direction. For most of us, there comes a fork in the road when we have to make a life-changing decision.
Decision Time
Our culture, here in the Vineyard, is very much an “opt out” one. It is a post-modern, western, educated cultural position in which we place decisions in your hands and equip you to make the choice. That can range from whether you choose to give your money or join a housegroup through to what you believe and which way you vote.
It is unusual for us to highlight a political issue as we have done about the Human Embryology & Fertilisation Bill Partly because it is very obviously a moral issue too) – see the web site.
I want to slightly redress the “opt out” balance by suggesting that when it comes to following Jesus, people are often faced with a decision with which they need some help and we need to be aware and available.
Erik is going to show us how this happened in the bible.
Erik Peeters
In the records we have of Jesus’ life, a moment occurs again and again where Jesus asks someone to follow him, and they respond to that invitation. All of his closest followers, the group of men known as the disciples, encounter Jesus as he walks past. Jesus invites them to leave whatever it is they are doing and to follow him, and they all respond to that invitation by quite literally dropping their work and walking after him.
Now, for the disciples this moment of choice was clear – there was a physical man in front of them who said “Follow me”, and they could either drop everything and walk with him wherever it was he was going, or they could stay where they were. For us, and for the people around us, that is obviously no longer the case. Does that mean that the moment of choice does not apply to us in the same way? Or do we also come to a point where we choose for or against Jesus?
Sometimes, not only do we not have the physical body of the Son of God standing in front of us, neither do we always get faced by a specific challenge for decision at a specific point in time. Especially for those who have grown up in a Christian culture. But for most people, there comes a point of time (sometimes repeated) when they are face to face with Jesus in some form or other.
Let me make clear right at the start what I mean by this question. When I talk about a choice about our relationship to Jesus, then I mean by that our choice about how we respond to Him. Jesus has already chosen us.
He chooses us without any pre-conditions or demands. He offers us a way to change our lives completely and for the better. He offers us the possibility of letting him stand in our place, so that he suffers the pain of the hurtful and mean things we do and that are done to us. On top of that, He promises us the possibility of leading meaningful and truly good lives if we live out our lives in the way he does, and in the way he teaches us.
His offer is unconditional. He has chosen to make it, nothing we can do can make us more or less worthy of it. Nothing. Jesus makes the same offer to absolutely everyone we meet.
Every person we encounter is loved equally by Jesus.
What we have to decide is what we do with that offer. Do we accept that Jesus suffers in our place, and do we choose to follow him and to lives inspired by his example, or not?
Now, how do we help other people when they are ready to make that choice?
Let me take you to a story in the Bible, in the book called “The acts of the Apostles”, which records the history of what the disciples did after Jesus had died and had risen again from the dead, and finally had risen, quite literally in front of their eyes, into heaven. These men shared what they had seen and heard with the world, they told people of Jesus’ offer. Their stories were so powerful that they required a response from the people who heard them.
We find a very good example of this in the encounter between Philip and a man from Ethiopia. Philip was one of the close followers of Jesus, and one of the best messengers of his offer. This is what happened:
Acts 8: 26 – 38 abbreviated
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it."
Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked.
"How can I," he said, "unless someone explains it to me?" So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
The eunuch was reading this passage of Scripture:
"He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before the shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth."
The eunuch asked Philip, "Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?" Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?" And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.
I think this story is a good example of what happens when someone reaches the point of choosing for or against Jesus. The Ethiopian official has come to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, he is reading a bit of the Jewish prophet Isaiah. He is obviously searching for something, for an answer. And he seems to have a suspicion that his answer lies with God. But he doesn’t quite understand everything yet. He can’t quite work out what he should do.
So along comes Philip. What is important to notice is that Philip doesn’t set out off his own bat to convert someone. He listens to God first. God tells him to go to this road, and to go join the carriage in which the official is sitting. Philip has his ears open to God’s prompting, and he obeys when God tells him to go. Taking a STEP across the room, leaving his circle of comfort and entering into unknown territory.
Philip then waits for the official’s invitation to join him before he explains the passage the official is reading. It is only in response to the official’s interest that Philip shares with him the good news of what Jesus has done for him.
Finally, Philip doesn’t conclude his message by saying, “And now, old man, you must sink to your knees and pray this ten-point prayer.” In response to Philip’s story, the official makes a choice. He chooses to accept what Jesus has done for him, and to follow Jesus’ commands for his life. The outward sign of that choice is the fact that he asks to be baptised.
As we carry Jesus’ offer out to the people around us, they too will reach this point. They will encounter Jesus through us. Through what we do and who we are and what we say, they will become aware of the offer Jesus makes them. It is up to them to make a choice about how they will respond.
The best we can do is listen carefully to God. We can’t force people to choose when they are not yet ready to choose. We can’t force people to choose for God. But, we can be ready that when the time is right for someone to make a choice, we can assist them in whatever way they need.
David Flowers
We hope and pray for that point to come, that occasion when the wonderful message of God’s love leads someone to choose to follow Jesus. For them it is spectacular moment of freedom and new life, for us it is a moment to rejoice that our friend’s soul is secure forever, in heaven there is a celebration party.
Of course, following Jesus doesn’t start and stop at the point of that decision. Afterwards we go on to work out how to live our lives inspired by his leadership through good times and hard times. Much our time here is spent learning how to do that.
Over the last few weeks in fact we have been learning about helping people in their journey up until they may reach a fork in the road.
But that point does create a landmark life event. Something that you can look back on and remember, “Yes, made a decision.” Through hard times it is an important fixing point in our lives.
Two examples:
At our old church in London one Sunday morning there had been a dedication and there were some family and friends there as guests. At the end, like we do here, people were invited to the front for prayer. There was also a rather garbled invitation to come forward and give your life to Jesus. This side for healing, that side for those making this decision. As you do, I went up to help and started praying for a stranger stood on the end. After a while I asked whether anything was going on as he looked a little detached. He said, “Well I have come forward to give my life to Jesus”. I got completely caught out. I was neither aware nor really available – with anything helpful!
He has become a good friend since and tells a very funny story about my incompetence. Nevertheless, I made a swift recovery and managed a fumbling explanation of what to pray and led him into a forever with Jesus. What a privilege. Later I discovered that friends had been sharing their faith with him and discussing questions of life for many years. He had come as part of their dedication party and decided to respond that day. I happened to be the one who clumsily found myself praying with him. In the years afterwards we were involved (I think) in his baptism and certainly in his discipleship, they came to our housegroup.
Or more recently, here, Alison and I were visiting one of the housegroups and afterwards, again, I was praying for a young man with someone else about some personal challenges to do with work and his studies. I knew him a bit, he had been coming along and been involved on and off for several months/years. As I was praying it suddenly dawned on me that I should ask him if he had ever made a decision to follow Jesus. He looked at me puzzled and thoughtful and said, “No, I don’t think so.” So we talked through what that meant and I asked him if he wanted to do this. He said he did and we prayed together and he committed his life to Jesus.
He was baptised sometime later and I had nothing to do with that or much of his subsequent journey.
In neither case did I have a great deal to do with their journey up to the point of decision. In both cases, the Holy Spirit had moved in their heart to prepare them. In the first example I only just scraped through in the part I was to play. In the second I was more aware and very much available. The first guy is a senior leader in the church in London and the second young man is actively part of a local church in Leeds.
A bit like the Citizen’s Charter. If you decide to take up citizenship here in the UK you go through some thinking and preparation. Then there is a public ceremony. Then you set about living as a British Citizen under our laws and customs.
More like marriage. About relationships. People who get married have usually spent a long time thinking about it, planning it, preparing for it, making the decision. There is then a day of ceremony and party. Then comes many years of working it out – for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
It is not a formula: do this one week, pray that the next week and hey presto, another week later someone decides to change their life and follow Jesus. It doesn’t work like that. Because it involves people making their own choices and it involves the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit of God.
Our part is a bit like the matchmaker, “I want to introduce you to my friend. I know he loves you and I think you would really like him. We have a small part to play but we can never control the outcome.
· We can faithfully be a good friend to someone and never see them make the same choices as us. We are still their friend and we still extend the love of God to them, whatever.
· We can do our bit and then find that they may decide to follow Jesus but with the help of another person and end up in another community of faith.
· We can be a good friend and then over time lose touch with someone and never, ever, know what happened next.
· Or we may be the one who helps someone with a decision where we have had little to do with their journey so far.
· And of course, we can sometimes have the privilege of walking through the whole journey with someone.
· And any other number of variants.
As Erik said, we need to be ready to assist people. We can do this in TWO ways:
1. Being aware of the opportunityThis is the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit of God (Bill Hybels). All our plans and programmes; formulas and intentions can be busted by the Holy Spirit. He is mysteriously at work in the lives of people and draws them to Jesus in His own miraculous and unfathomable way. It’s a love story not a scientific experiment.
We keep praying for our friends and family and we keep asking the Holy Spirit, “Lord, what are you doing here?”
I have been involved in Sales for the first 20 years of my business life. We were trained to look out for “buy signals”. These are signals the customer gives you which say, “I want to buy this product”. As a salesman, whatever clever spiel you have lined up, whatever you have not yet demonstrated about the product, whether they are following the normal process or not; when a buy signal appears, you should drop plan A and move to the sale. As a customer at the display in Comet looking at DVD players and the salesman is carefully working down the row describing the features of each one and I say, “I do like that one”. He should stop and focus on that one, tell me all about it and ask if I would like to buy it. “I do like that one” is a buy signal.
We need to be aware to the “buy signal” when a person has come to the point of decision. What are the buy signals?
I want to change, I want to get rid, how can I follow Jesus, what is your story, what is different about you, I need God, help…
2. Being available to help (to introduce)When the time comes and we have been prompted by God, we must be available. Ready, equipped, primed.
The product on the shelf, ready to sell.
Able to offer our story, to guide someone’s thinking, to pray with them, to lead them to Jesus. Like Philip.
Hybels: It is a high privilege to be part of God’s activity in the life of His children.
How can we help people get to this point?
a. You should also have some ready cooked ways of explaining things to people. Hybells provides three traditional ones which are worth having up your sleeve ready for the Holy Spirit’s prompting.
1. The Bridge
2. The Morality Ladder
3. Do/Done
b. One of the purposes of the Community of Faith is to provide an environment in which people can watch people of faith work out their lives. So invite your friends into this community: onto Reach Out projects, into your housegroup, to social events, to weekly worship.
c. Provide information – that is why we produce flyers of many descriptions. Something to put in people’s hands for them read and refer to. The website.
d. Give them a book or a bible. Ask for recommendations at the resources table – you can pick up a free bible there. A great book for example is “What’s So Amazing About Grace” by Philip Yancey.
e. Give them a worship CD.
When some has made a decision to follow Jesus – what do you say next?
Housegroup
Read the bible
Get baptised
Join in the life of the Community of Faith
Join the Alpha course in the Autumn
People can reach this point in so many different ways and our involvement can take many forms.
STEPPING OUT - Be aware, be available
We finish this series having encouraging you to walk across the room, make friends, tell your story, pray and then be aware and available for the decision time.
Welcoming Jesus
Praying the prayer
The response to Jesus in prayer is not complicated.
You can read a suitable one in the back of Journey into Life or Why Jesus.
- I am sorry
- Thank you for forgiving me
- Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit
- I choose to follow you and give you my life
David Flowers and Erik Peeters, 11/05/2008