Discern Next Steps

Good morning, gcc. It's great to see you guys today. I'm curious, have you ever left an ingredient out of a recipe? I mean, many of us have probably learned the hard way, right, that if you forget to add the yeast to your yeast rolls, you're going to wind up with something that resembles flatbread, right? Or if you leave the sugar out of your cookies, you're going to wind up with a batch of these small, tasteless Frisbees.

You forget to put the eggs in your cake, you're probably going to reach into the oven and pull out something that looks more like a dry sponge. Because in a recipe, every step matters. What I want us to think about as we think about trying to engage people in spiritual conversations, as we try to exert spiritual influence in the different places where life takes us, is that not everything follows a precise 1, 2, 3 formula. To kick off this series, just a few weeks ago, Craig walked us through the basics of the gospel, which we defined as the good news about who God is, who we are, what God has done, and the life he invites us to. We walked through this simple acronym using the word basics.

And I want to review those, those important points with you, those basics. Very, very quickly here. We said that the B in basics stands for big God. Would you say that with me, Big God? Because God is bigger than we can fathom and he loves us more than we can imagine.

The A stands for adversary. Say that with me, adversary. Because our enemy, the devil, wants to lure us into sin and he wants to obstruct the work of God in our lives. So the S stands for say this with me solution. Because God has an answer to the problem of our sin.

And that solution was that God put on flesh and he died in our place and he rose from the dead and he offers us victory when we put our trust in Him. So the I in this word basics stands for invitation, right? Jesus doesn't force our response to him. Instead, he invites us to trust him. He invites us to confess that we need Him.

He invites us to turn from the dead end way we used to live. He invites us to unite ourselves with him in baptism and to welcome His Holy Spirit into our lives to guide us. And that brings us to the C in basics, which stands for changed. Because Jesus loves us just as we are and yet he loves us too much to leave us that way. He invites us into a new and changed life that's better for us and more glorifying to him.

And as Craig pointed out as we went through this, at that point in time, we're out of fingers, which leaves us nothing but an empty hand. And the S stands for surrender. Jesus died to be our Savior and he rose from the dead to be our Lord. We experience the new life he offers only by surrendering control of our lives to now. All of these gospel ingredients are crucial, but they're not necessarily sequential.

I mean, each of these basics is actually an ongoing part of following Jesus. So if we try to reduce them to one at a time steps, we're going to wind up moving on past certain convictions. We're going to leave certain habits behind us, when in fact God intended for those things to be a part of our lives continually. In a similar fashion, growing up in church, I was taught repeatedly that our response to what Jesus has done for us is something we could use five fingers to remember. We need to believe.

We need to trust that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. We need to repent. We need to turn away from the sin in our lives in order to move in God's direction. We need to confess, we need to tell the truth about who we are, that we are sinners in need of saving, and tell the truth about who Jesus is, Lord and Savior. That we need to be baptized, we need to be immersed in water, which symbolizes the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus, and it declares our desire to surrender to him as Lord and Savior.

And then we need to live for Jesus. We need to continue to follow his commands and live by his teachings. Now, those are all solid biblical instructions, but again, this is not a recipe either. It's not like we believe for a while and then a time comes when we graduate from believing and we don't do that anymore and we move on to repentance and then on to confession and finally to baptism. See, in reality, belief in Jesus is always, it will always be the foundation of the Christian life.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter one that I am not ashamed of the Gospel, he said, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. First to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. A righteousness that is by faith, from first to last, from start to finish. The Gospel is always about faith.

We never outgrow believing in Jesus. Repentance is a very important biblical concept, but it is not a one and done thing either. As long as we follow Jesus, we're gonna continue to discover areas in our lives where our obedience to God is less than complete and we're gonna have to make the decision, do I let go of control or not? Confession is never intended to be just a one time thing. Acknowledging that we are sinners and that only Jesus can save us is an ongoing mindset.

Now baptism is a one time thing because ongoing baptism is called drowning, and we try not to do that to people. But what baptism declares and what it symbolizes, surrender to Jesus is very much an ongoing daily decision. Our ongoing belief, our ongoing repentance, our ongoing confession, our ongoing surrender are how we live for Jesus. For the last few weeks, we've been talking about what it means to be a church that reflects God's heart for the one, his love for each and every person who is living apart from Him. That basics message that Craig used to kick off this series reminded us of God's desire to save us and transform us.

The following week we looked at three stories that Jesus told in Luke chapter 15 about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. And all of those stories remind us of God's loving and compassionate desire to welcome lost people home. So last week, our friend Scott Shipman emphasized two strategic Ds. He talked about developing friendships and discovering stories. See, as we build relationships, as we get to know people, we find opportunities to share with them what God is doing in our lives and what God wants to do in theirs.

And because getting to know Jesus was never intended to be a step by step cookie cutter, one size fits all checklist, there is a third D that is equally important that we have to understand and that is to discern next steps. Our goal is not to memorize a sales pitch. Our goal is to have genuine, organic, two way spiritual dialogue. So in the time we have together this morning, what I'd like to do is I'd like to highlight five habits that I believe can help us to discern those next steps and have better, more helpful spiritual conversations beginning with this one. Number one, remember that leading people to Jesus is a team effort.

In his first letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul called the Corinthian church out for being excessively focused on human leaders. I just want to show you what Paul wrote here. He said here in chapter three, Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit, but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you're still not ready.

You are still worldly. And then he explains why he says that for since there is Jealousy and quarreling among you, Are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, I follow Paul and another says, I follow Apollos, are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos and what is Paul only servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord has assigned to each his task.

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose. And they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co workers in God's service.

You are God's field, God's building. See, Paul had people in the city of Corinth who had a lot of respect for him. Paul had a following there, and so did another Bible teacher by the name of Apollos. Now, Paul, Paul and Apollos were not rivals, but there were certain people in Corinth who chose to see them that way. Today, there are lots of Christian writers and preachers and thinkers and podcasters who can help us in our spiritual growth.

And I'm grateful for many, many different ministries that contribute to my spiritual understanding. But none of those people are God. See, Paul pointed out that in the context of farming, one person might plant the seed, someone else might water the seed. Someone else may actually be the one to harvest the crop at harvest time. But it's God from start to finish who produces growth.

And the same is true when it comes to spiritual matters. We may learn from. We may be encouraged by what we read in a daily devotional or something that Joel or another worship leader says from the stage or a discussion that we have with our life group or a podcast we listen to, or maybe something that was said in a message here or at another church we listen to online, maybe even a conversation with a friend over a cup of coffee. We can learn and be encouraged in a lot of different ways, but whatever growth we experience, that's God's work. Remembering that growth is always God's department helps us to avoid three potential pitfalls, the first of which is this, the idolatry of celebrity worship.

See, when we become overly enamored with certain people's gifts, when we look to certain leaders as though they have something to share that could not possibly come from anybody else, we're likely to miss the reality that God wants to teach us through a lot of different people. You know, God speaks powerfully. God does a lot of really significant spiritual work through lots of people who don't lead megachurches, who don't write best selling books, who don't have millions of social media followers. We don't want to worship celebrities. We want our focus to be on Jesus.

A second potential pitfall is what I'm going to call the lie that we have nothing to offer. When we're starstruck over somebody else's ministry and their giftedness, that may convince us that there's no way God could use us. But helping others find Jesus was never intended to be the territory of the uber talented. I mean, whether you pray for a friend who doesn't know Jesus, or you talk with them over coffee, or you invite them to church, or you sit with them when they get here, or you invite them to your life group, or you help them seek answers to their questions about faith, or you have the privilege of baptizing them, you are being used by God as a part of their spiritual journey. And oftentimes when we see someone make a declaration of faith in Jesus that is the result of months or even years of investment by many, many, many.

And we're going to hear more about that from some personal testimonies next Sunday. I'm really looking forward to that pitfall. Number three is the illusion that it's all up to us. You know, going from skepticism and lostness to a place of faith and renewal and connection with God. That's a journey.

And that journey often takes time. I mean, think back to when you were a kid. Can you remember the exact moment when you learned how to multiply?

Probably not, right? Because you worked those multiplications, tables, you did flashcards, you were quizzed over and over and over again. And it was through that process of practice and repetition that you gained a skill that is now memorized and instinctive. See, for a lot of people, embracing the gospel is going to happen kind of like that. It's going to happen layer by layer rather than all at once.

And again, we're going to hear more about that process in several people's lives next week. But sharing Jesus with people, while it's an urgent mission that we're given, we are not responsible for taking every conversation to a point of spiritual decision. We're not responsible for trying to see to it that we present the entirety of the gospel message every time we talk to someone. We need to be present and engaged where we are. We need to live life one conversation at a time.

We need to trust that God is at work stirring people's hearts and guiding our conversations and that he is working through other people too. And when we have the opportunity, we want to exercise that opportunity without trying to force it in a way that's unnatural. Well, second, habit I want to encourage us to think about is this. It's simply to be present and to listen. Well, in the book of Acts, we read early on about the ministry of the apostle Peter.

And the book later shifts pretty heavily in the direction of the ministry of the apostle Paul. But in between Peter and Paul, we find in Acts chapter eight, this really fascinating story about another leader by the name of Philip. Let me just walk us through this text real quickly. Acts 8:26 says, 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 the kandake, which means 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. So the Spirit told Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it. So in this text, there's a man from Ethiopia. He's obviously an important official.

We would gather that he is a convert to Judaism and he had traveled all the way to Jerusalem to worship. He's now on his way back home and as he rides along in his chariot, he is reading a scroll of the Old Testament book of Isaiah. And an angel tells Philip, go down to that stretch of road. And when he gets there, the Holy Spirit says, I want you to approach that particular chariot. So he did.

Verse 30 says, Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah, the prophet. This makes me laugh a little bit. I think about Philip running up to this guy who's riding along in a horse drawn chariot. You ever try to go for a distance, run with someone and have a conversation while you do it? Do you understand what you're reading?

Philip asked. Philip didn't assume that the man lacked intelligence at all. He just heard him reading scripture. And so he asked an obvious question if it made sense to him, which was actually a really perceptive question because the Ethiopian then said, well, how can I unless someone explains it to me? So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Philip asked a question that led to an invitation that led to a conversation. Now this is the passage of scripture the eunuch was reading. He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its 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 Ethiopian is reading from Isaiah chapter 53. But he did not fully understand what he was reading. So the eunuch asked Philip a question. Tell me please, who's the prophet talking about?

Himself or someone else? And then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. This is so important for us to notice. Philip did not launch into a canned speech. Philip just knew the Scriptures well enough that he could take Isaiah's predictions about the Messiah and connect the dots to their fulfillment in Jesus.

So he started where the Ethiopian was. Isaiah chapter 53 and then he walked him through God's plan of salvation. This is one of many reasons why it's so important that we spend regular time in our Bibles so that we know Scripture well enough to help explain it to others. Now, we don't know exactly what Philip said. Acts chapter eight doesn't give us a detailed transcript of this entire conversation.

But it's obvious that this conversation had impact because verse 36, as they traveled along the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized? And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.

Now again, we don't have the word for word recording of everything that was said in this conversation, but it would seem that this conversation covered a lot of ground, right? It went from the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus to all that Jesus did, dying on the cross for our sins and rising from the dead and offering new life to all who believe in him, all the way to emphasizing how we declare our faith and our surrender in baptism. So this Ethiopian man found new life, not because Philip had just read a book called how to Talk about Jesus with African Men in Chariots, but simply because he knew the Scriptures and he went where God sent him and he listened carefully and he asked good questions. And in that process, Philip demonstrated for us another really important habit number three. We simply need to be prepared for conversation.

God put Philip in the right place at the right time to have a life changing conversation. And God will sometimes orchestrate situations like that for us as well. The Apostle Peter wrote, I love this statement. He said, in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

In other words, this is What Peter is saying, determine at the core of your being that Jesus will be Lord of your life. Determine in the innermost part of you that he is in charge and that you will do what he asks, put your hope in him and live for Him. And since living with the hope of Jesus often looks very different from the way many other people live their lives, we should expect questions. When people say, you know, a lot of people seem so angry and bitter these days, but you're different. Why is that?

When people say, I know your life isn't easy. I see you struggling with some really tough things, but you don't seem demoralized or bitter about it. What's your secret? When someone says, you are just unusually kind to other people, where does that come from? You have a ready made opportunity to explain at least a portion of the difference that Jesus makes in your life.

So there are a couple of questions I wanna ask all of us in this regard. Number one, does your life demonstrate the hope of Jesus? Is your confidence anchored in Him? Do you know that this world is not your ultimate home? Can you experience unkindness from others?

Can you lose a job? Can you lose a loved one? Can you watch your favorite team lose a ball game? Can you see your preferred candidate lose an election without going into a tailspin? Without blaming God?

Without succumbing to despair? Without lashing out at other people? And a second question I would ask you is this one. If someone were to ask you about the hope you have, what would you say?

Would you chalk it up to simply just trying to be a positive person, or would you credit Jesus? Do you see Jesus making a difference in your life? Could you explain to someone else how he's changing you? Could you walk them through the basics of the Gospel if given the opportunity? See, we need to be ready for these conversations.

But rather than just sit and wait and hope they happen, we can also Number four, we can pray for opportunities to talk about Jesus. Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossian Church. He said, devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. We want to embody that as a church. We want to be a church that not only prays when we are gathered together and we do it in an orchestrated and programmed way.

We want to be a praying church because we are a church of people who are personally and individually devoted to prayer. See, Paul urged the Colossians to be committed, to be watchful, to be thankful in prayer. And I want that to be true of us too. Now we're thankful for the prayer requests that get shared each week with our staff, and we pray for them each week. Tomorrow morning, 9:00am first thing, our staff will gather and we're going to pray for all of the requests that have been shared with us over the last few days.

You can send your request to us anytime just by going to greenwoodchristian.com prayer the requests that we receive are about all sorts of different things, but more often than not, they are about physical health issues. And we're glad to pray for those. We're glad to pray for those health issues because we love you and because Scripture encourages us to pray for those who are sick. But it's important that we understand that healing for the sick is far from the only thing that Scripture urges us to pray about. I want you to notice what Paul wrote next.

In Colossians, chapter four, Paul said, and pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should. You can see from what Paul said there, he's in prison. As he wrote this letter, he was locked up for his refusal to stop preaching about Jesus. And he could have just prayed to get out of jail.

But Paul's greatest passion was for others to know Jesus. So he prayed instead that God would open a door to his message. Paul didn't just want to walk free. He wanted to be able to take the gospel to more people in more places. So he prayed that he and his team would proclaim the gospel.

Clearly, Paul wanted his life and his words to boldly and accurately point people to Jesus. So we have the opportunity in prayer to ask God to open doors to spiritual conversations and to ask God to give us the ability to clearly share his message as he creates those opportunities and he prompts us to do it. And as God tees up these conversational opportunities for us, we need to keep in mind one more thing. And that is that how we interact with people as we engage in these conversations really matters. It is important that we, number five, treat others in a way that keeps the door open.

See, after Paul encouraged the Colossians to pray for open doors to the gospel, he went on to say this. He said, be wise in the way you act toward outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Now, when Paul says outsiders, he's not being derogatory.

He's simply acknowledging that our lives are full of ones. These are people who are close to us but not to God. These are people who don't yet know Jesus, who are not yet a part of God's family. And when we talk with our ones, we we need to steward those moments wisely by covering those conversations with grace, which means consistent, unconditional kindness toward all people. Spiritual conversations are not always going to be about closing the deal.

Our goal is to represent Jesus well, to plant seeds, perhaps to water seeds that someone else has planted to to leave the door open to further dialogue and to constantly discern next steps in these conversations. When we consistently respect people and encourage them and bless people, they're going to be a whole lot more likely to want to continue to talk with us. Peter offered some really similar words of encouragement after he wrote the words that I shared earlier. Let me repeat those quickly when he said, in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

He then added this. He said, but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. See, when God provides us opportunities for spiritual conversations, we need to be gentle and kind. We don't want in those conversations to give anyone obvious reasons to speak negatively of the way we treated them. Our goal is not to win debates.

Our goal is not to prove people wrong. Our goal is not to show how smart we are. It is to develop friendships and discover stories and discern next steps in helping people to see Jesus more clearly. Because the Gospel is not a formula. It's a personal invitation to know and follow and be transformed by Jesus.

So our next steps will very often vary from one conversation to the next. If you're talking to a friend who doesn't even believe in Jesus, your next step is probably going to be to ask some good questions, to try to learn more about their stories, to look for avenues where you have common ground with them in your shared experiences with someone who is already spiritually curious but doesn't yet know very much about Jesus, your next step might be to invite them to read the Gospel of Mark with you and discuss what you see there with a person who's already at a place where they are convinced that their life needs to change. Your next step might be to share with them how Jesus died for our sins and wants to empower us to live differently through His Holy Spirit. And with someone who says that they believe in Jesus, next step might be to guide them toward a biblical response like confession, repentance, baptism. What I hope we'll remember is that the Gospel is not a formula.

It's a personal invitation to know and follow and be transformed by Jesus. So let me ask you this morning, what is your next step? I mean, it could be that your next step as a follower of Jesus is to pray for opportunities to talk with others about Jesus. If that is not a factor in your prayers right now, I would encourage you to grapple with that, to ask God to make these opportunities available. It could be that your next step is to move in the direction that Philip had moved by digging deeper into Scripture so that when spiritual questions arise, you'll be better equipped to try to steer people in the right direction.

And if you aren't sure where to start with Bible reading, you're not alone. We would love to help you. We'd love to suggest some places to start or put you in touch with some Bible reading plans that could be really, really encouraging to you. Might be that your next step is simply to invite someone to breakfast or lunch or coffee and get to know their story better. Next step for some of us probably ought to be that we work harder at listening to the things that others are saying, that we're paying attention to the questions that they're asking rather than just doing all the talking and assuming that we know best.

Or it could be that your next step is to surrender your own life to Jesus, because quite truthfully, we can't take anybody else to a place where we haven't been. So if we want to help others follow Jesus, it's crucial that we're following him ourselves. Whatever your next step, and there are probably as many different next steps as there are people in this room. We are here to walk together as we take those steps. We're here to help each other in this process.

Would you pray with me? And then we'll talk about some specific ways that we'd love to come alongside you. Father God, we are thankful this morning for the good news of the Gospel.

This invitation, Father, that you have extended each one of us to know you, to follow you, to be transformed by you. Father, I know that here in this room there are folks who have been here in this place for many years who have known you and followed you for quite some time, and we're grateful for that. Father, I know there are some others who are just beginning to ask spiritual questions, and there are tons of us at every point along the spectrum in between, and I thank you for that. Lord, I'm grateful that you don't just want to impart knowledge to us, that you don't just want to teach us Bible facts. Father, that you want to get hold of our hearts.

You want to reorient the way that we look at the world, the way that we deal with others, the way that we live our lives so that more and more and more people can have the opportunity in a tangible way to see what this life you call us to is about. Father, to know you in a personal and saving way and to be used by you to help others to experience hope and peace that our world just does not know how to deliver. God, I'm grateful that you call us into relationship and that in the context of friendships and conversations you give us the opportunity to plant into water seeds of truth. And I pray, Lord, that in the most gracious and humble and kind and gentle way that we know how that you would help us to engage in spiritual conversations and to listen intently. Father, for your prompting, to listen as people reveal parts of their stories to us.

And Father, help us always to try to bring people back to Jesus and give them the opportunity to know you. Lord, we love you and we're grateful that we have this time together. We ask you to use what we've talked about today to equip us and challenge us to be effective ambassadors for your kingdom in the world we live in. We pray it all in Jesus name. Amen.

We've talked in some really broad strokes, but to be very specific and very practical, we want you to know there is a series of three classes we call Next Steps that go on around here every single month. It's the first three Sundays of each month, which means that because today is a third Sunday, the third class, which is called Next Steps Engage, actually happens just a few minutes from now at 11am in room 502 right off the commons to your right. If you're not able to stay for that, we would encourage you to get in on the next cycle, which starts on March 1st at 11am we'll repeat the whole cycle there. We'd love for you to be a part of that. You can at any time just text the word next to 317-707-997.

We love to get those texts because that initiates a conversation and an opportunity for us to to come alongside and try to help provide some of the answers that you're looking for. If you'd like someone to talk with or pray with, there will always be some of us down in front of the stage right after the service. There's a QR code on the screen right now that you could text as well. But if we can be of help to you, we would love to meet you personally and spend some time with you right after the service. I'm grateful that you're with us today.

It's an incredible opportunity that we have to walk out these doors and be ambassadors for the King. So let's look for opportunities to do that. And most practical of notes, those empty communion cups that you're juggling right now. If you would grab those and drop them in the the trash containers on your way out, that would be a big help. Love you guys.