Go And Tell, Romans 10:13-17

1. Read Colossians 4:2-6 and Romans 10:13-17 together.
2. Start your group time by sharing successes and setbacks you’ve had so far in moving towards unbelievers. Who have you had conversations with this week? Who are you moving towards?
3. What are some new ways or contexts where you are beginning to move towards outsiders that maybe you haven’t in the past? Any new hobbies you’ve taken up? New groups you’ve joined?
4. What are you most fearful of in spiritual conversations? What are some questions you would least like to be asked because you’re not sure if you would have a good answer?
5. What are some questions you could ask in response to those questions to turn it around and bring to light that person’s underlying faith and where they put their hope

Practice: Move towards people again this week. We’ve been praying for opportunities, raising our awareness, and feeling God’s burden for the lost. Now, we need to move through the open doors that God is inviting us to walk through. Continue praying for and seeking opportunities, and make a goal to have one or two conversations this week with people you don’t know outside the church. These conversations may or may not get to the gospel, but start to get comfortable moving toward people. Take a genuine interest in their lives and ask good questions, praying for open doors and looking for segues into spiritual conversations.

We’re in a series shedding our apathy of any kind. It’s usually not so isolated. It has tentacles that reach to other parts of our lives. We’re talking especially about our apathy towards the world. We’re getting over our anger towards society. Not being intimated, but coming equipped to articulate and share the great news of what Jesus has done for all of us.

When you consider what he has done for us, this should be our natural bent to talk about him in appropriate ways.

We believe with all our heart that Jesus is the way, but we don’t ever tell anyone. And the truth is that we don’t have any real plans to do it. I think it’s worth processing the implications of that spiritually.

We’ve been talking about this idea, and Colossians 4 tells us we need to be in prayer that God opens doors and we need to move towards outsiders.

If you’re not moving towards people, it just becomes us vs them. You become exclusive and condemning. You don’t see faces or interact with individuals. And you forget that you were once and outsider.

Religion turns people into insiders and outsiders. That’s not what Jesus does.

One of the easiest ways to determine whether your faith has deteriorated into a religion rather than a relationship is to ask if you’ve forgotten that God loves individuals.

On the other hand, if you are intentional about connecting with people outside the faith, it does a lot for your spiritual life.

Paul has this idea in the text that you need to be able to answer each person. You have these outsiders, but you don’t reduce them. Each one matters.

G. K. Chesterton said that you and I matter to God, but that’s one of the hardest things to understand in theology.

C. S. Lewis said it doesn’t make any sense for us to have that posture against outsiders. We all need to read The Weight of Glory. It’s an 8-page PDF. The word “glory” in Hebrew and Greek has this idea of being heavy or dense. Lewis ponders what this glory is that has been offered for us. At the end, in a couple of paragraphs, he says this:

“That being so, it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

Full PDF

When you look at the process, this is what it looks like:

We should be praying every day for someone we know and love to invite to Easter. Ask God to help me have a series of conversations to invite someone to Easter.

How beautiful are the feet that move towards outsiders and the mouth that opens up to speak.

There should be lots of listening and asking questions. It may be with somebody in the car for 20 minutes, on the plane for 3 hours, or in your life for a lifetime.

As we’re gaining insight and gathering interest. I might ask you to go to church depending on the situation. Or I might ask, what’s your spiritual background? Try to get a person to articulate what their spiritual background is. Have you ever read the Bible? How much do you know about Jesus?

Usually the most natural thing is to tell your story. You apply your story. You have to be able to tell your story in 15 seconds, 2 minutes, or 30 minutes.

Usually it’s very simple and I’m going to figure out how to include the gospel in 15 seconds or 2 minutes.

It’s essentially this: I realize I had a few problems that Jesus could solve and no one else could. Sin and death. I know I don’t match up morally even to my own standards. Where am I going to get forgiveness? And the other problem is that I’m going to die. When I realized Jesus could solve it, I put my life in his hands.

You don’t tell your story if you don’t include the gospel in some way. Then you ask the question, would you consider giving your life to Christ? What would be keeping you from giving your life to Christ?

I had lunch with a trainer. He told a woman he was training that he was having lunch with a pastor. He’s going through some tough things, much of which is his own fault. He realizes that. He needs to get his act together. He’s not quite sure how to do that. He says he’s relying on a higher power. Obviously I have questions. What is that higher power? I’m not saying it in a way that is mad, upset, or anything. He says it’s an energy. I ask, how do you relate to it? He says he gets thoughts in his head. Do you have any way of testing those thoughts? How does it guide you? Do you believe that power made you or just helps you get through life? I’m trying to figure out how he’s thinking to help me tell my story.

I told him my story. My world was a mess too. Family life messed up, my life had no direction. And I learned that there was a God out there that loved me enough to send his Son to die for me. He’s a person, and I can relate to him. He’s spoken to me. I get specific guidance from him. He gives me hope beyond this life, because he rose from the dead.

At the end of the day, he wanted nothing to do with that. It was a great lunch and I got to show him something different. It was all within great conversation so it didn’t feel funny at all.

There’s a “can’t” understand it and a “won’t” understand it. This guy is the kind of person who doesn’t want to be out of control out his life. As long as you have a distant, higher power, you get to be in control. A personal God is higher than you.

When we were finished, he called me later and we’re having lunch again. God is hunting him. I’m trying to haunt his dreams. Continue asking questions like a fiend.

The gospel is absurd. It’s offensive. Meaning when you describe it, you hear it in your own head and think the other person thinks you’re insane. That’s what Paul is saying. Everyone hears it their own way and God has to open your eyes, no matter how well you say it.

When you believe, your eyes open to things you’ve never seen before. Then your heart gets crushed, because you’re not the central figure anymore.

I don’t care how angry, mad, confident you are, as soon as God opens your eyes, it’s happening.

When I was in 8th grade, my dad had to go into rehab. About the time he went into this 18-month rehab, my mom moved us to New York, because she married another guy. Round Lake in Saratoga County. It’s a little village. I went to 9th grade there after being in Florida my whole life. There was this family we connected with. They didn’t have much at all. They weren’t very popular, but they were well thought of. There was a little church in town. We would go to church with them on Sunday mornings. None of us were church people. We just went and sat with them.

In this picture, I had John 3:16 above me and two Bibles in front of me. I don’t ever remember even hearing the gospel clearly. Talk about foreshadowing, I’m standing behind a pulpit. But it wasn’t my time. Then I move in with my dad who had become a believer and my eyes were opened and my heart was crushed.

My friends could take me to church, but they could not open my eyes or crush my heart.

Instead of answering people’s questions and trying to be brilliant, just question people’s answers.

How does their answer square with their deepest longings?

Last week I brought up the idea of how God can allow evil and suffering. If someone asked me that, I would ask them, Why does it feel so wrong to you that evil exists in the world? And if there is no God, why are you angry about it? Have you ever seen good come from evil? How do you think that happens? Do you long for things to be made right? I might say that evil is a problem for believers and nonbelievers. I think it’s a greater problem for nonbelievers. There are answers to that question from where we sit as believers and they satisfy me more than the other answers. Almost none of those answers satisfy me emotionally. As soon as I see something, I’m still devastated. I’m asking God, really? I settle back into the reality that I would hate life if there wasn’t any God.

Don’t imagine that the answers satisfy me emotionally. C. S. Lewis was originally an atheist. But he said the existence of evil provides a better argument for God than against him. Evil ought to make you think hard.

I understand why people deny God’s existence because of evil, but there are some profound things underneath that. How do you even know or define evil? What makes evil not good? Where did you get that idea from? Science isn’t giving you that.

If you can define evil, some supernatural or extra-natural source had to give you the standard. That raises tons of questions. How do I obligate anyone to that definition? Evolution depends on death. If you believe that’s what happened, why do you feel so bad about death and evil? Natural selection is destructive. Where does your outrage come from?

I have a God who suffered in Jesus Christ and I know that ultimate justice will come. That’s what I can live with even when I look at suffering. If you don’t have God, you can be mad, but you don’t have any explanation for your anger.

Os Guinness said you can suffer with God or you can suffer without him.

Without God there is no meaning, no hope, no justification for why evil even exists. But a God who can bring good out of suffering brings hope. And I choose to hope in that.

I have someone who loves me and has suffered for me. I know God knows what I am talking about. And I’m waiting for the day he makes that right. It needs to be made right.