Walk across the room
Learning the walk, changes your life, but learning to walk across the room, can change eternity!
The average person takes about ten thousand steps a day. In a lifetime, that’s four trips around the earth. However the question for tonight is: Will he use his steps wisely? Have you ever thought about it? Think of how mind blowing four trips around the earth is, think of how impressive ten thousand steps a day is. Pretty amazing isn’t it? Well as great as that may be the greatest of it all could be 10 steps across the room that changes eternity…
I want us to all take 10 steps tonight! a chair represents one step just so no one cheats…What you are going to do is take ten steps and meet a new person. You may not meet someone you already know and go: Hello ek is JJ hahaha and im john – but mean while you know each other from since adam died in the flood and you where the two guys who snuck unseen into the ark that’s how much history you have together…you meet someone new! find out 5 likes and dislikes about him
Please take a seat next to the new person you met this evening! Find out from him if he is in a cell group and whether he would like to join one? Now think to yourself would this person rather want to be in an older persons cell group or would he be fine just coming to yours? What is the logical thing to do next? Either invite him or introduce him to an older person in church…
No if you met that person outside a religious setting and you don’t know whether he’s saved or not, you are going to ask some different questions before just inviting him to your cell group aren’t you? Yes! Now that’s where you need the Holy Spirit to help you know what to ask!
Here’s another thought…
What is your life’s vision? You know from our dream series that God has a vision for your life a purpose for which he created you and that it is our journey to discover it more and more as we continue to engage it and live it every day of our lives…
How big is your vision?
If it doesn’t involve other people it’s not big enough. If it doesn’t involve other people’s spiritual growth (i’m talking about discipleship) and eternal destinations (i’m talking about sharing the Good news of Jesus) it isn’t big enough. Then you are still self focussed and busy with your own little ambition!
When Jesus’ vision was revealed we saw that it was for the whole world to be filled with his kingdom.
II Corinthians 5:18: God has done all this. He has restored our relationship with him through Christ, and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships.
II Corinthians 5:19: In other words, God was using Christ to restore his relationship with humanity. He didn’t hold people’s faults against them, and he has given us this message of restored relationships to tell others.
II Corinthians 5:20: Therefore, we are Christ’s representatives, and through us God is calling you. We beg you on behalf of Christ to become reunited with God.
God’s vision for your life will always include the lives of others! You and I are called to walk with other people. Some above us, some next to us and some under us! God’s priority is people and so should yours and mine be! No matter if you are a lab rat, a maths genius or a lawyer, there will always be other people lab ratting and mathing and lawyering( lying ) with you…HAHAHA
Those people should be our priority…
A walk across the room can change eternity…
Jesus said it this way…
Matthew 28:19: So wherever you go, make disciples of all nations: Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 28:20: Teach them to do everything I have commanded you. “And remember that I am always with you until the end of time.”
But we have got to practice it, so we are able to do it out there where eternity is decided.
So let’s take another walk across the room and meet yet another person and let’s see if you can remember the name of the previous person after you met the second one! Find out 5 failures and successes of that person. Find out if he’s part of a cell group. If not find out if the previous person invited him to one. Take a seat next to that person…
So what is the ultimate purpose of walking across a room! Cause there could be many plans or motives in a man’s heart but only God’s purposes prevail. And if we want to see prevailing works we have got to be in sync with God’s purpose for doing stuff!
Love…not works, not duty, not pity, not fear, not shame, not anger, not vengeance, not to show off or to prove you’re right about anything, nothing else but LOVE that’s l.o.v.e.
People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!
That’s why church is a family matter because I can’t specifically care for everybody. I do really care for all of you, but it is humanly impossible for me to carry everybody’s burdens like the bible tells us to do – carry one another’s burdens. In the same way it doesn’t help you bringing a person to the pastor the whole time, cause they don’t have the capacity to walk with everybody, but together we have the ever increasing capacity to walk with everybody and all those whom God will add to our number. That’s why we all have got to grow to the point of loving someone and walking with them a spiritual journey!
Let me illustrate how much we need everybody to carry some of the load!
Here’s how our way of doing Christianity works
Engage the lost
Establish the saved
Equip the believers
Expand leaders
Let me just cover the first action – What does Engaging the lost mean –
Develop a friendship – don’t try and fake it. This is where you have to open up your circle of friends and invite someone new into your life with the purpose of long term acquaintance. Without this mindset, the person becomes a project! No person will commit to being a project of someone…
Discover stories…this implies a couple of things like spending time together, becoming a listener instead of a teacher…
Process of reaching out to a different culture…just as well when talking to a new friend…it just goes much faster
learner
participator
story teller
teacher
By discovering stories you get to know a person, understand the decisions he made in life. discover the obstacles to him surrendering to Jesus! Eventually you know what to say to them instead of just offending them because you didn’t know…
Share Jesus’ story with them. No matter how you do it, just make sure they understand
1.God loves them and let them experience it through you,
2.Jesus suffered on behalf of them and
3.they have to make a decision to believe in him or to reject Him…and remember, you are not responsible for their decision…
This is where love comes in…What if they do reject faith in God? That’s not the question, the question is do you love the person? ‘cause that’ll give you your answer immediately! Testimony of DAD! Leon!
This is also why everybody’s input and effort is needed! The pastor cant do this by himself, not even to all the people in his church!
Also we need to realize that we are never alone in this work! Jesus promised that he would send us the helper the Holy Spirit and that he would never leave us as orphans. The bible calls him the Spirit of Adoption by which we cry out ABBA! We have confirmation through the Holy Spirit that we are sons of God. That’s why we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit to empower us to engage the lost! Make us effective as we engage the lost – get last week’s preach on that or speak to us afterwards…
2 Millennia ago Jesus walked over the cosmos to engage us in our culture and changed eternity for all of us! Will you now keep walking across the park, the room the office, the grocery isle, the waiting room at the doctor, the field at your kids school, to see eternity change for others as well.
Let’s pray together
Lord God please fill us with your spirit till we overflow with you and we cannot help but walk across to other people you lead us to through the small nudges and soft whispers and to share you with them!
Let me encourage you to go back to the person you invited to your cell and connect with them over coffee at the back or to connect them to someone with a cell.
JJ Uys 
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