I don’t know about you, but during the past week, with all these ideas in my head of “walking across rooms” and “entering zones of the unknown,” I found myself strangely preoccupied with people! I’ve also heard from some of you as you’ve thought about ways to walk across the room to someone who doesn’t know Jesus. I got an email from an member of our church telling me about their friend who not long ago didn’t care if God existed or not. Through a caring relationship living out the love of Christ this friend is now interested in reading the Bible. Another member talked to me about finding creative ways to get people thinking about their eternal destinies.  

Fantastic! God is stirring us up and giving us opportunities. Remember, an evangelist is simply someone who announces good news. Who can’t do that? 

Last week we left off with the exhortation to “just walk.” We said that if we wanted to get all over the task of giving folks around us the single greatest gift we can give them—an introduction to the God who created them and loves them—then we will: 

1.     Be willing to enter the Zone of the Unknown … by voluntarily extricating ourselves from our Circles of Comfort and     being open to engaging with someone who might need a touch from God; 

2.     Listen for the Spirit’s promptings … by choosing to rely on his guidance instead of our own; 

3.     Just walk … remembering that Jesus took a long, cosmic walk for us, right? 

Today I want to spend our brief moments together talking about what happens right after you decide to “just walk.” In other words, what should you be thinking about, praying about, and talking about in that Zone of the Unknown once you step foot into it? Because if you’re anything like me, agreeing to “walk” is one thing. But knowing what to do once you’ve reached the destination-the person standing across the room from you-is quite another. 

This week, we’re exploring what’s called “Living in 3D.” 3D Living is a framework for operating successfully in the Zone of the Unknown. 

Develop Friendships
Walk-across-the-room people are those who live life in “3D”; first, they constantly look for ways to: Develop friendships.

If we’re going to reflect the Father’s heart, as individuals and as a church, then we must be in continuous search mode. We’ve got to make a habit of searching for new friendships on the horizon. That is the heart of a true Christ-follower. The question is: Will you lean into the faith and courage that God has given you for this precise moment—the moment when you’re operating in the Zone of the Unknown? Will you extend a hand of friendship? Will you open wide your arms of acceptance? 

Now, this is the way it should be, mind you. This is the way things ought to operate day in, day out, in the lives of Christ-followers all across the globe … friendships getting formed left and right that eventually might lead to something spiritual unfolding. But there is a dynamic at work that slows this process down. Generally it seems that the longer a person is a Christian, the more they become disconnected from people who don’t know Christ. 

When someone comes to faith in Jesus, they are often so excited that they want to tell everyone they know. They also begin to get more involved in church, ministry, Bible studies, Christian conferences and other activities to build their faith and their connection to other Christians. Don’t get me wrong, these are all good and necessary things.  

As we spend less time with people friendships tend to drift apart. Eventually we can look around and find that all of our friends are now Christians and that we don’t have any close friends who don’t know the Lord. Something else can happen too. We can begin to look at those far away from Christ critically and even judgmentally. We don’t like their values, lifestyles, priorities, or language…forgetting they are exactly where many of us were at one time. We insulate ourselves in our Circles of Comfort while people around us desperately need to hear the Good News. 

If you think about it, this whole dynamic is what makes the Circle of Comfort so comfortable. Almost all of us find it quite easy to love some people—maybe a spouse or our parents or our kids … our friends at work, our friends at church. We see them, and our initial reaction is love. We want to bless them. We crave time with them. We’re filled with joy when these people come to mind. 

Ask me to love some people outside of my “circle,” and seemingly out of nowhere, a whole host of qualifiers and filters rise up out of me. “All right now, if you’re asking me to love some people outside of this circle, they better be nice, they better not hurt me, they better be safe, they better be stable, they better be deserving!” 

In Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. The setting for these stories is when Jesus is seen in a marketplace setting having conversations with people who are irreligious—people who are really far from his Father and who had made lots of mistakes, painted outside the lines, used terrible language, drank too much, slept in the wrong bed, cheated other folks out of their money … the list goes on and on. 

He is interacting with them … talking, listening, just enjoying the fellowship. And as the scene plays out, we notice that the religious leaders—the scribes and the Pharisees—become a little troubled in their spirits. Actually, they think the whole deal is utterly scandalous because the people Jesus is interacting with are the exact people who are on their list!—these are the precise people the scribes and Pharisees hate! And Jesus of all people is hanging out with them! 

Soon enough, Jesus hears them grumbling about this. He sees their hearts and springs into action. He tells three of the most famous stories in Scripture, one right after the other. The first: a lost sheep. The second: a lost coin. The third: a wayward boy. 

You probably know the stories. There are a hundred sheep, and one dumb sheep just wanders away. He’s going to create all this hassle. The sheep just wanders off and gets itself lost. Then there are ten coins. One of them is misplaced. And then, there is a boy who asks for his inheritance from his father early, which in that society was like saying to his father, “You’re as good as dead, so I want my inheritance right now!” And what does he do once he has money in hand? He takes it out to a foreign land and blows it on wine, women, and song. 

The point of the stories is that whatever it was that was missing really mattered to somebody! The lost sheep really mattered to the shepherd. The lost coin was one of ten. The lady only had ten coins. She’d lost a tenth of her entire estate. The lost coin really mattered to the woman! And the wayward son, undoubtedly, really mattered to the father.

Jesus was saying that the Father’s heart is indiscriminately loving. Those irreligious, immoral, profane individuals that he was talking to … Jesus says that they actually mattered to the Father—that they were on his love list. Every man, woman, and child is the object of his great affection.  

Developing friendships. This is where living in 3D must begin. There is a saying that “more people have been loved into the Kingdom of God than argued into it.” Once you are willing to view every interaction as the first step in developing a new, God-honoring friendship, you will find that some pretty interesting doors swing wide open. Developing friendships means acting on an attitude—a heart posture—that says, “I’m open to you. Whoever you are, whatever you have done, whatever you believe life is all about … I’m open to accepting you, knowing you, journeying with you, caring about you.” 

No question, lots of us Christians are growing in knowledge, in worship, in character, in serving, in giving. All the research shows that. But are we also growing in our ability to radically accept whoever is standing on the other side of the room … no matter what? 

Discover Stories
Walk-across-the-room people are people who live life in “3D”, constantly watching for ways to:

• Develop friendships … in order to
            • Discover stories 

After developing an initial friendship with people far from God, Christ-followers must be patient in discovering the other person’s story. If they bombard someone with their spiritual solutions before they fully understand the person’s situation, they could inadvertently do more harm than good. 

The intertwining of these “D’s” is so critical for us to grasp. Your goal and mine should be to engage in the lives of the folks around us, developing friendships where we can so that we have a baseline for asking good questions about their journey. Then, once we truly understand their unique needs, we can try to help meet them, which we’ll look at more in our third “D.” It’s uncanny how once you take time to uncover another person’s story … once you are viewed as a trusted confidant … the other person just opens wide up about their heartfelt needs. This is the stuff God blesses, really and truly. 

I just wonder … have you ever had a situation like this unfold in your interactions with people? Have you ever taken the risk to probe someone’s story and then been absolutely floored by the doors that opened? I find that when I let the Holy Spirit lead … when I just stay focused on building trust (no matter how long it takes!), fantastic doors of opportunity swing wide open. 

Discovering stories. Of people far from God. With people who may be one prayer away from knowing the God you know. Be the one person in their world who takes a genuine interest in their story so that you will know how best to serve them … which leads us to our third “D.” 

Discern Next Steps
There are such things as “divine forks in the road”—intersections where you can either listen to a person’s story and then pray for all you’re worth that God would show you what to do next … or where you abdicate any responsibility to source a need or extend a hand … and just walk away. These are our opportunities to coach people toward God. 

I hope that as God presents these divine forks in the road this week, you will take the path that leads to engaging. The path that leads to investing. That path that leads to sticking your neck out to provide someone a resource that will meet a pressing need they have. There’s no telling what joy awaits those of you who boldly choose to take the next step with people this week! 

This is our third point. Walk-across-the-room people are people who live life in “3D”; they constantly look for ways to:

• Develop friendships
            • Discover stories
            • Discern appropriate next steps 

Once you’ve risked walking across a room to stick out a hand of friendship and unearth what another person’s journey has been like so far, the very best thing you can do is lean way into the whisperings and nudgings of the Holy Spirit. During every single second of your conversation with the other person, simultaneously beg the Holy Spirit for direction. For guidance. For insight. For wisdom. For creative ideas. Appropriate next steps might include: 

Listen to the Holy Spirit and use your creativity! 

Last week, I asked you to send a postcard to the one person who took a walk for you—the person who was the most instrumental in pointing you to faith in God. I hope you did that. I actually got in touch by email through a family member of the friend who had invited me to the youth retreat where I met Jesus. I had not seen her since high school and she had no idea that her simple invitation had made such an impact on my life. 

As you think about the people who “coached” you toward God, think of the small, “incremental things” that helped you warm to the idea of submitting our lives to Christ. Spend a few minutes this week thinking about some of the “next steps” that people took—steps that helped us come to understand God’s grace-filled love for us. Steps that helped us grow in our desire to have God lead our lives. In other words, the “next steps” that really mattered to us! Perhaps someone gave you a book or committed to praying for you. Maybe the next steps that God will bring to mind for someone you know are far different than those but these will give you good ideas. 

A new week is about to unfold in your life and in mine. And like all new weeks, we can choose to invest it in things that glorify and satisfy us … or we can choose to invest it in things that glorify and satisfy God. Here’s my challenge to you … my challenge to me.

 This week, let’s commit to “living in 3D”:

• Developing friendships … with all sorts of people, withered in all sorts of ways
            • Discovering stories … remembering to keep the focus on the other person
            • Discerning next steps … letting the Spirit guide our every action 

This week, let’s be spiritually alert to the Spirit’s promptings, asking him to lead us toward the people with whom we’re supposed to build bridges of friendship.