The Front Door of the Church has Moved Part of our mission at OCC is to lead people to Jesus, but have you ever found yourself asking, "How do I do that?" That's what this series is all about - helping each of us pray, identify, and respond to the open doors in our lives.
An Open Door
Trusting the Process
Colossians 4:2-6
“God...wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:3, 4
Others First: We prioritize others, especially people far from God.
Evangelism is a PROCESS.
“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.” 1 Corinthians 3:5
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:6
1. It takes MULTIPLE Christians to lead someone to Christ.
2. We need to AVOID “shock and awe” confrontation and LOVINGLY work to remove one hurdle at a time.
“Devote yourselves to prayer being watchful and thankful. And pray for us too that God may open a door…” Colossians 4:2,3a
- Write down the names of 3 PEOPLE in your circle that do not know Christ yet.
- Pray for AN OPEN DOOR.
An Open Door
Message #1 - “Trusting the Process”
Colossians 4:2-6
OCC, 03/07/2021
John Mulpas
Happy March, everyone!
Spring is in the air; things are looking up, huh?
This season we’re about to enter is SO beautiful [Spring pics].
It demonstrates this RENEWING of the earth; this recreating.
And what’s cool is, RECREATING is at the very heart of God.
He longs to recreate every person.
In fact, there’s NOTHING that God wants more.
The Bible says: “God...wants all people [no one is excluded] to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3, 4)
And that includes YOU, first of all.
God desires to recreate you; to make you a new person!
If you’ve never accepted Christ and made a decision to follow him, God desires more than ANYTHING else that you would do that.
It doesn’t matter WHAT you’ve done or WHERE you’ve been, you can come to God through Jesus Christ.
If you are ALREADY a follower of Jesus, God wants to use YOU to help others come to him.
Now, there’s a word that we use to describe this.
It’s the E word - do you know what it is?
EVANGELISM.
For many of us, that word carries a lot of BAGGAGE.
It’s a SCARY word.
It’s a word that maybe causes you to feel guilt or shame.
There’s also a lot of FEAR involved in that word.
But this word comes from a Greek word that simply means “good news.” Evangelism is about sharing the good news of Jesus with those around us.
This is a BIG part of our mission here at OCC.
We want to help people take their next step toward Jesus, and at some point, to declare him as their Lord and Savior.
One of our Core Values is Others First: We prioritize others, especially people far from God.
You see, the church is in the PEOPLE business.
We want to love and care for ALL people, but the people that are especially close to God’s heart are those that do not know him yet.
He so much wants to have a relationship with them AND he has sent US to help them come to know Jesus.
And so, today, we are super excited to begin a NEW message series called, An Open Door [series image].
We want this series to ENCOURAGE and EQUIP us to share the good news of Christ with the people in our circle - and we want to do this in a way that’s effective.
I hope you’ll be here in-person or online the next 4 Sunday’s as we countdown to Easter on April 4th.
Easter is “An Open Door” to introduce people to Jesus.
And that’s exactly what we want to do.
Because here’s the reality - we don’t like to talk about this, but I want us to be reminded of it today: Without Jesus, our friends, family members, neighbors, and co-workers will spend eternity APART from God in a place called HELL.
Do you believe that?
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
That’s quite a statement, isn’t it?
Jesus is claiming to be the ONLY way to God.
And this is HUGE today because our culture wants us to believe that ALL ways are OKAY, right?
In fact, to say otherwise is bigoted and cruel.
But here at OCC, we believe unapologetically that “Salvation can be found in no one else” but Jesus. (Acts 4:12)
According to the wisdom of this world, Jesus is ONE way, but if Muhammed or Confucius or some OTHER way works for you, then go for it.
Sadly, our culture has chosen tolerance over truth.
Now, you can choose to believe what you want to believe, but all religions are NOT the same.
What sets Christianity apart is JESUS, right?
More specifically, his SACRIFICIAL death and BODILY resurrection.
There have been other great teachers and miracle workers, but ONLY Jesus is ALIVE today.
And that’s not just WISHFUL thinking; it’s based on credible EVIDENCE.
Evidence that points to its truth beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you’re wrestling with uncertainty, I’d encourage you to investigate the claims of Christianity.
A great little book is called More Than a Carpenter [book cover]; if you would like a copy, contact the church office and we’ll send you one.
But friends, THIS MATTERS!
If Jesus is who he said he was, then that means something.
It means without him, we have no HOPE!
This is WHY sharing Jesus [series image] with others is so important.
After I graduated from Bible college, I did a one-year internship at a fairly large church in Indianapolis.
This is where I met Beth who is now my wife.
But I remember a friendship I developed with a guy at the church.
We liked to debate theology; we were both single at the time so we had nothing better to do, I guess.
But one day as we were talking, we felt convicted to stop talking about our faith and to do something.
The idea we came up with was to go door-to-door in a sizable neighborhood on the westside of Indianapolis.
We would knock on doors and lead people to Christ.
That was our goal at least.
We had the pastor of the church write a letter for us; our plan was to attach that letter to a gospel tract.
If we weren’t able to talk with the folks, we could at least leave the information with them to read later.
So, we started walking and knocking on doors.
I don’t remember how many homes were in the neighborhood, but it took us MANY weeks to knock on every door.
We found that A LOT of people weren’t home, OR maybe they saw two guys through the window that looked like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so, they decided not to answer.
Anyway, the people that DID answer were mostly cordial; we had a couple people slam the door in our face, but NO ONE invited us into their house.
We were a little discouraged to be honest.
But that experience taught me a valuable lesson.
EXPLANATION
What I didn’t understand at the time and what I want to make sure everybody understands today is a clear biblical point.
I want you to jot this down; this summarizes what I want to talk about today.
It’s this: Evangelism is a PROCESS.
Helping friends and family members we know who are not Christians become Christians, it’s a process.
Now, we get this from the Bible.
Look at these verses from 1 Corinthians 3; the apostle Paul is talking about himself and his efforts at evangelism.
He says this: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? [Apollos was a co-worker of Paul’s and what are they?] Only servants, through whom you came to believe - as the Lord has assigned to each his task.” (v. 5)
Now, look at the next verse: “I [referring to Paul; I...] planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (v. 6)
In other words, it’s a PROCESS where a lot of people are involved and it’s taking people one step at a time towards Jesus.
And that’s what we’re all about here at OCC - helping people take their next step toward Jesus.
To illustrate this, I have some Track & Field hurdles up here.
Many thanks to Coach Mosely at Orrville High School for allowing us to borrow these today.
But these hurdles represent the spiritual journey of every person.
All of us start out as non-Christians far from God, right?
God is over here [stage left] and we are over here [stage right], okay?
Here’s the question: Why is it that people don’t instantly become Christians?
It’s because there are HURDLES between them and God.
And every person has a unique set of hurdles.
One of the BIGGEST hurdles for many people is the idea of “why would I want anything to do with God or the church when Christian people act so ugly and hateful?”
There’s this elitist, judgmental attitude that, unfortunately, many Christians carry around.
Someone has said:
“The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians - when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug...when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.”
If you’re not a Christ-follower yet, that may be one of your hurdles - you had a bad experience with a Christian or a church.
And because of that, there’s this RESISTANCE you feel toward God.
You might be seeking God today, but you’re like, “Well, what about this?” and “What about that?” or “How about this?”
All of those questions represent these hurdles.
But the apostle Paul says, “Listen, I want you to understand this. When it comes to this process of evangelism, your goal is to knock hurdles down.”
And on and on it goes.
We knock over these hurdles to faith one by one by one.
Now, if you’re a Christian, this same process held true for you as it did for me.
But I want you to notice two things.
First...
1. It takes MULTIPLE Christians to lead someone to Christ.
For me, my parents knocked down most of these hurdles.
There were also my Sunday school teachers and youth leaders.
And then, finally, on Easter Sunday 1989, I confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior and was baptized.
But here’s the mistake people make when it comes to evangelism.
You will see someone become a Christian here at OCC and it seems like, “Wow! That was out of the blue.”
But what we don’t realize is, there have been many days, even YEARS of people knocking over these hurdles, so that when the last one is knocked over, you’re thinking, “Oh, they just made that decision,” but actually it was a LONG process.
So, when we do evangelism, we need to keep this in mind.
And here’s a second thing...
2. We need to AVOID “shock and awe” confrontation and LOVINGLY work to remove one hurdle at a time.
Our goal as Christ-followers, when it comes to engaging people far from God, is NOT to try to lead them to Christ all in one shot.
“Hey, I know you don’t know me and I just interrupted your dinner by knocking on your door, but if you were to die right now, do you know FOR SURE you're going to heaven...like RIGHT NOW?”
How CRAZY and CREEPY is that?
Man, I was creepy back in Indianapolis!
And it’s creepy because, more than likely, they have all of these questions.
“I don’t even know if there’s a God and you're asking me if I’m ready to make a commitment to Christ RIGHT NOW?”
Evangelism is a process and the goal is to remove one hurdle at a time.
There are MANY people who are going to be involved in this process.
People will come to OCC and then a year or two later they’ll become a Christian and what you don’t see is Grandma, their neighbor, the person they worked with in Arkansas before they moved here, then, there’s the person at OCC, their spouse, and so on!
Lots of people.
And if Grandma over here [stage right] had used the “shock and awe” technique and tried to get them to come to Christ immediately, she may have turned them off to Jesus for a long time.
But fortunately, every person in that person’s life realized their goal was to nudge them one step closer, and then, one step closer.
What happens when we understand this is, it takes the pressure OFF.
You're not looking at your boss or your co-workers and going [deep breath], “I’m going to go in there on Monday and I’m going to DO this.”
You know, you’re going to PSYCH yourself up; you’re going to be miserable and hate life, but by golly you’re going to try AND you might even alienate everybody in your workplace!
That’s not the picture AT ALL.
Maybe their hurdle is they think most Christians are WEIRD.
And so, what you need to do for the next YEAR is say nothing and not be weird and take all those Christian bumper stickers off your car and throw away all the things you were going to leave on their desk “accidentally” - like mysteriously, right?
If you do that, this hurdle gets knocked over [push over hurdle] AND they’re one step closer to Jesus!
APPLICATION
Now, how do we summarize all of this?
It’s pretty simple.
The Bible teaches our goal is this: Focus on building FRIENDSHIPS and praying for AN OPEN DOOR.
Focus on building relationships - real, honest, genuine friendships with people and then pray for doors to open.
That God would open a door.
I love this Scripture in Colossians 4.
The apostle Paul is encouraging Christians in a town called Colossae.
He says: “Devote yourselves to prayer [because when you start praying for someone that’s far from God something special is going to happen; Jesse is going to talk more about that next Sunday] being watchful [of what God is doing] and [being] thankful. And pray for us too that God may [what?] open a door…” (vv. 2, 3a)
You see: Every door we kick down was never meant to be opened.
“I’m going to go in on Monday and whether I sense this is an open door or not, I’m just going to give ‘em Jesus!”
Is that REALLY what Jesus would have us do?
That’s a FORCED door; you know when God opens a door, right?
I visited the eye doctor recently; it was on a Friday.
I was talking with one of the workers and she mentioned how thankful she was that it was Friday.
Now, if you’re a preacher, Friday is crunch time, right?
And so I said to her, “Well, as a pastor, it’s Friday and Sunday’s coming!”
On a scale of 1 to 10 - 1 being terrible and 10 being Jesus - what do you think of my response?
Kind of cheesy, right?
It was probably a 5 at best!
But then she asked, “What church are you a pastor at?”
And after what I had said, I replied, “Orrville Baptist.”
No, no, no - just kidding!
I said, “THE Orrville Christian Church.”
And she began to open up about how she hadn’t been going to church - part of that was COVID, but another reason was a bad experience she had at a church where she felt judged.
I told her that I was sorry to hear that, and that sometimes the church can be judgmental; we’re far from perfect.
AND THEN, right there ON THE SPOT, I led her in a prayer where she recommitted her life to Christ!
No, unfortunately, that didn’t happen; BUT I’m hopeful that one of the hurdles for her to take her next step toward Jesus was KNOCKED DOWN!
Evangelism is a process.
You know, Jesus interacted with all the crowds, but he focused on 12, and then spent time with 3 guys; the crowds, the 12 disciples, and 3 guys.
I think that’s a good example for all of us.
We’re all not going to leave today and lead the masses to Christ like Billy Graham did, but you can impact 3 people, and if we ALL did that, it would have an EXPONENTIAL impact.
So, here’s what I want to challenge you to do this week.
First...
These might be family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers.
Write down their names.
We have a special card [pic] where you can do that today.
You should have found one on your seat when you came in.
It has 3 blanks on the back; write a name on each of those blanks.
For those of you online, go to the link on the screen - Orrville dot church, slash Open Door.
Give us your mailing address and we’ll mail you a card, OR you can drop by the church building this week if you’re in the area.
But keep this card in a place where you’re going to see it this week.
Put it on your refrigerator or in your Bible or on your bathroom mirror.
And then:
That God would cause your paths to cross.
That God would give you an opportunity to spend time with them.
Pray this prayer; it’s on the card:
“Father, I pray for An Open Door as I continue to build a friendship with ________ [Emily or Jacob]. Help me see the open door and walk through it in a way that will help them take their next step toward Jesus. Amen.”
As you pray that prayer, God is going to do what he does.
He is going to open doors and he’s going to use YOU to knock down that next hurdle [push over hurdle].
Let's pray. [blank slide]
Sermon Summary for Tuesday recap video:
Our mission at OCC is we want to help people, including YOU, take your next step toward Jesus.
One of our Core Values is Others First: We prioritize others, especially people far from God.
You see, the church is in the PEOPLE business.
We want to love and care for ALL people, but the people that are especially close to God’s heart are those that do not know him yet.
And if that’s you, please know that more than ANYTHING else, God wants to have a relationship YOU.
It doesn’t matter WHAT you’ve done or WHERE you’ve been.
As a church, we want to come alongside you as you take your next step on your spiritual journey.
The fact is, ALL of us at one point were far from God.
And there were people in our life that helped us come closer to Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 3, the apostle Paul talks about this.
He says: “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.” (vv. 5-6)
In other words, helping people come to know Christ is a PROCESS of planting and watering where many people are involved.
But why is it that people don’t INSTANTLY become Christians?
It’s because there are HURDLES between them and God.
And every person has a unique set of hurdles.
One of the BIGGEST hurdles for many people is the idea of “why would I want anything to do with God or the church when Christian people act so ugly and hateful?”
If you’re not a Christ-follower yet, that may be one of your hurdles - you had a bad experience with a Christian or a church - and because of that, there’s this RESISTANCE you feel toward God.
And so, the apostle Paul says, “Listen, if you are a Christ-follower, understand that your job is to come alongside people and LOVINGLY work to remove one hurdle at a time - whatever those hurdles are.”
And so, as we think about helping people take their next step toward Jesus, who are the people you could pray for this week.
Pray for An Open Door - that you could help someone with the hurdles that are keeping them from God.
We provided a card on Sunday for you to use.
You can find that card at Orrville dot Church, slash Open Door.
Write down 3 names - people in your circle that do not know Christ yet - and pray for An Open Door.
If you want to hear more from Sunday’s message, go to...