Loving Our City, 3

This is the last bit of those notes.

3. We communicate honestly (John 4:10-26)

Finally, as we begin to develop and pay attention to relationships with people outside of our church circle, we need to be open in our communication. This comes on a couple of levels:

1. Speak with simple openness about faith and life.

Honestly, this one is kind of tough at first. After we moved here from Virginia we started spending more time with friends and relatives and acquaintances who don’t know Jesus. And it was easy enough for me to hang out with them – but I felt awkward talking about church stuff and Jesus, because I didn’t want them to think I was trying to preach at them or that I was somehow flaky or something. But then I was challenged and taught while I was reading a book called “The Radical Reformission,” by Mark Driscoll. In the book, he’s describing the philosophy and approach of the people in his church to evangelism and says:

“Reformission Christians are not ashamed of the gospel, and they speak about Jesus and pray to him in front of their lost friends as they would around their Christians friends, and their lost friends appreciate their authenticity. Their lost friends are comfortable asking them questions about the Christian life, and these reformission Christians have earned the right to give answers as a result of their friendship and hospitality.”

This is so key. We don’t need to be preachy, and we shouldn’t expect lost people who don’t know Jesus yet to live like they do – but we must be open about our life and faith.

2. Be willing to bring the spiritual realm into natural realm conversations. (vv 10-14)

Jesus goes effortlessly from talking about physical water to talking about salvation – certainly, it takes the woman a while to catch up, but when she does, she is hooked.

3. Don’t ignore questions, but don’t get bogged down by them. (vv 21-24)

The Samaritan woman had questions about the differences between the way Jews worshipped and the way Samaritans worshipped. Jesus didn’t sidestep the question – he addressed it. And the answer he gave went beyond just the content of the question – where we worship – to the nature of worship – in spirit and in truth.

As people get to know you, they will be curious about your Christianity. Eventually, you will have the opportunity to talk about spiritual things, and they will have questions about all kinds of things. It may be question about anything from why Christians don’t support a woman’s right to choose, to how you can believe the Bible, to what you think about the death penalty, to why there are so many different kinds of churches. When these questions come up … don’t dodge them. Tell them what you think, and how that relates to your faith. If you don’t know or if you haven’t thought about it enough, then it’s probably best to honestly admit that you don’t know. But when the question involves a bigger issue – and most questions do, even though it’s unconsciously – we have to learn to see it and address it.

4. Speak from the perspective of the gospel into people’s circumstances. (vv 13-26)

1. Don’t ignore the problems in people’s lives. (vv 17-18)

Jesus didn’t pretend the woman’s problems didn’t exist – he actually pointed them out to her. Now we can’t normally look at someone and prophetically know their life story and all their issues – but we should be willing to listen to find out what they are, and to engage in conversation about them, which leads to the next point.

2. Be willing to talk about how the gospel can change people’s lives. (13-14, 26)

Jesus told this woman straight out that he could satisfy the thirst in her life for peace and fulfillment. He said he was the key to satisfaction, to contentment. When the opportunity arises, we need to be able and ready to communicate the truth about how Jesus can impact someone’s life.

So the big question on this front is, how do we know on what level we should be communicating at any given time? I think you can guess, if you’ve been paying attention. There’s a person who’s been involved with us at each step so far and who continues to be active in this one. That person is the Holy Spirit. Once again, we rely on God’s spirit to lead us and to help us say the wise and appropriate thing at any given time. If we take this stuff into our own hands, we just screw it up. But as we rely on God’s spirit, he makes us effective. And biggest means of being able to hear the Holy Spirit as he leads us is having a close personal relationship with God, where we’re spending time with him every day reading his word and praying and listening for his voice. We can’t be effective in reaching other people with the Gospel unless the power of the Gospel is being worked out and made clear in our own lives.

Conclusion:

In closing, I want to look at two things: First, the end of the story in John 4. We find that this woman is so affected by the truth of the gospel and Jesus as savior that she runs out and tells her whole town about it, so that many of them come out, meet Jesus, and are converted too. That’s the end result God can bring through our relationships with people who don’t know him. We end up making more disciples of Jesus. And as God’s people, that is our primary call in our community and in this world. We need to be making disciples.

Secondly, as food for thought for this week, I want us to look back at the story of Matthew once more. Mark 2:15 says “Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.)” Now, this is another thing that goes against our current norms and expectations. Uncommitted people, still in their sinful lifestyles, were following Jesus around and listening to all his teaching and hanging out with him. Now there was a later point when he called the people who were following him to a deeper level of discipleship, and those who didn’t want to commit left him then. But the fact is that these people – who had not yet trusted Christ as their savior – were so interested him and captivated by his life and teaching that they just wanted to be around him. As believers, we have Christ living in us. When was the last time that a person who did not know Jesus was so interested in your life and captivated by how you lived that they just wanted to be around you and come to church with you and do bible study? Honestly, I don’t know if that’s ever happened to me. But if we take Christ as our example, that should be happening. This was one of the most convicting parts of this message to me this week as I prepared to share, and this is the question we need to ask ourselves. Do I live a life that is so distinctively transformed that people who don’t know Jesus want to understand better why I am the way I am? Or have I simply set up my life in such a way that I never really even come into contact with people who don’t know him?

I pray for this community of believers that we will become a group of people through whom and through whose relationships God works to reach and transform our community as a whole. Let’s learn to follow him together.