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"Prayer, Care, Share and Invite" Mark 12:28-34 Loving our Neighbors #5

by Clancy Nixon

November 25, 2007

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.HolySpiritAnglican.org

On Sunday after Thanksgiving, we're paying the price as a nation for our great

[hold belly] feast of turkey and dressing on Thursday, and our great [hold backside]

splurge of sale shopping on Friday. Retail sales were up 8.3% over last year's Black

Friday, but who knows how much more we added to our collective waistlines on

Thursday! Saturday after Thanksgiving is less typical or predictable; what did you do

yesterday? [pause] The Nixons blew and gathered and bagged bright red and yellow

leaves from our yard. I love the fall season. November brings back a fond fall memory of

my childhood: I was a little guy bundled up, running and jumping on piles of leaves

almost as tall as I was. How I loved to do that! I could do it as long as my father would

re-rake the piles for me. I also remember the sad fall day as a teenager when I realized

that the leaf piles were too flimsy and small to protect my now large frame from hitting

hard ground. Playing my own private Charlie Brown, I did not need a Lucy Van Pelt to

pull the football away for me to hit the ground with a painful thud.

Does your family have a Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table and

saying what you are each thankful for? We did it this year in Mobile, not as a tradition,

but because Ginger's mother asked Ginger to lead the prayers, and that is what Ginger

asked us to do! After the first awkward moments of silence, out poured a beautiful

seriatim recital of things each of us is thankful for. Those moments are precious because

they reveal the heart of each person who speaks without preparation. I've heard many

Christians say that what they are most thankful for is their own salvation. I think that a

wise estimation of the magnitude of the gift that is bestowed on those who call Jesus their

Lord and Savior. Let me ask you the question, and if you agree, please say "Amen." Is

our salvation, our inheritance into the Kingdom of God, the greatest gift of all? Amen!

Jesus tells us in Mark 12:30 and 31 that the two greatest commandments are that

you and I are to love God our King with all our heart, and we are to love our neighbors as

ourselves. Let me ask you another comparative question. Can you think of any better

way for us to obey these two commands than to love our neighbors into the Kingdom of

God? [pause] No? Good, that's why we're looking at ways we can do just that.

We're in our sermon series called "Loving our Neighbors," and I recently

introduced the idea of a person's spiritual address. Steve Sjogren uses this term in his

book Irresistible Evangelism to describe the degree of closeness a person has to God.

Even if you are an excellent messenger, you can't deliver a piece of mail unless you

know that person's physical address. In a similar way, we need to identify the spiritual

addresses of the people we want to reach. If our message, no matter how loving, is

always the same canned presentation to every address, people can receive that with the

same interest as they do mail that is addressed to "Resident" [hold up imaginary letter

and drop it] - they file it in the circular file. Your message of love gets tossed in the

trash. The solution is to personalize your message depending on their nearness to God our

King. Jesus took account of the nearness of people to him, and so should we. In Mark

12:32, after the teacher of the law agrees with Jesus' articulation of the greatest

commandments, Jesus tells him that he is "not far from the kingdom of God." The

teacher of the law was genuinely seeking God when he asked Jesus a spiritual question,

so Jesus could press in with his teaching about God. In Matthew 15:8, Jesus is in

Genessaret, and he says that some Pharisees' "hearts are far from me." They could not

bear to hear the message. Just before that in Matthew 14, Jesus had completed a healing

mission, which produced much fruit with most of the people there, because it met their

physical needs. The same message in the same place worked for some, but not for others.

Sjogren says that "messages that are brilliantly effective for those close to faith will quite

often alienate and repel those far from it.... one size does not fit all." (p. 66)

People respond only to messages that relate to their needs at that time. That is

why marketers get a 1% response rate with junk mail they hit some people randomly!

What follows next is a paraphrase from Sjogren's book, and while it may seem

elementary, it bears repeating. If you want to be effective at something, you must practice

the fundamentals again and again until you get them down. Much as it pains me to say it,

the New England Patriots are steamrolling opponents this season because they do the

fundamentals better: they block and tackle and throw and catch better than everyone else,

and they do it consistently. Let's take a page from Belichek's playbook and go back to

basics.

Here is some great stuff on why we need to love our neighbors differently

depending on their spiritual addresses. The deeper our particular need, the more

threatening it is to allow others access to it. The closer a particular need is to our hearts,

the more closely we tend to guard them. That's why it's much easier for most people to

talk about being hungry than to admit to being depressed or lonely. Because spiritual

needs are the deepest and most easily threatened area of all, most people will not trust

Bible tracts or TV programs to give them spiritual help. They are looking for someone

who is safe and patient enough to really talk to. The more threatened any of us feel, the

more likely we are to reject a message. That is why would-be evangelists who tell

strangers that they are going to hell if they don't believe in Jesus have a very low

response rate the threat is seen as too high. Trust is progressive and takes time to

establish. We'll be much more effective in evangelism when we respect the natural

rhythm of trust in relationships and earn the right to be heard before we barge in with our

salvation messages. To win trust with people, you must hang out with them for a while so

they see you care about them. If we begin by meeting people's physical needs, then we

can move to meet their relational needs. Only then are people open to discussing their

need for guidance and direction, and finally their spiritual needs. (p. 67, 68)

Jesus says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. This sounds simple, but it's

not easy. How do we do that? We need to start somewhere. If you want to love your

neighbors, you may wonder, with whom do you start? Friends, co-workers, fellow

students? Well, how about starting with your actual neighbors the unchurched people

who live on your street? We're to love everybody all the time, but many of us need a

place to start. Here at CHS, our strategy to reach our neighbors for Jesus is called Prayer,

Care, Share, and Invite. Repeat after me: prayer, care, share and invite. Step one, before

you do anything else, before you extend yourself to others, pray to God daily for a solid

month for God to soften your hearts for your neighbors, and for God to soften your

neighbor's hearts to the gospel. Ask God to show you two people God is calling you to

love. Just two people to pray for daily. Step two: Care for these two by showing love to

them in practical ways. Bring food over to them; invite them over to your place; hang out

with them; ask them about themselves; and most of all, listen to them. Care for them by

showing God's mercy. Step three: once you have won their trust, share an oral witness of

how Christ is helping you. Step four: invite them to your Small Group or Sunday

worship or other meeting where they can receive Christ. You never get beyond step two;

we We never stop caring for people, whether they receive Christ or not.

This process can take a long time. Many of you remember Glenn Schubert, who

came to Christ here at CHS, but now has moved to North Carolina. I knew Glenn's wife

Sharon before he met her she was my secretary at Freddie Mac. Though Sharon didn't

know Jesus, she was glad have me pray for God to send her a husband. She introduced

me to Glenn, and at our first lunch meeting in 1991, Glenn showed me his Palm Pilot.

Glenn was an early adopter of technology, and I asked him to explain how it worked to

me, which he loved doing. I eventually got a Palm. He became my go-to guy for tech

gadgets. Glenn and Sharon moved into Broadlands when it was very new, and they were

the first family who I knew in the neighborhood. We just hung out together for years

before they ever came to church we drank wine together; we went to concerts; he

showed me my first Smartphone - a huge Kyocera that was the first to marry a Palm to a

phone. Eventually, Glenn and Sharon came on Alpha. Glenn took three Alphas before he

was ready to commit to Christ, because he had a lot of questions. He felt like he belonged

here before he believed. No one pressured him. When Glenn committed his life to Christ,

he jumped in with both feet. Glenn became a home group leader and set up team leader.

Prayer, care, share and invite. You don't have to add a lot more hours into your

schedule; you can invite people along on things you are already doing. Got a soccer

game for your daughter? Invite a neighbor to come along. You usually eat dinner

anyway, right? How about inviting over that new couple on your street? Before you ask

people to a church event, ask them over to your house. Continue to love them, even if

they have no interest in your faith. Don't drop them if they say they don't want to go to

church with you. Love your neighbor as yourself.