Extending the Dream

Over the last several months I have noticed a real change in myself. I say it carefully, because I do not want it to sound like pride, but the simple habit of asking one question, what would Jesus do if He were me, has genuinely been reshaping me. I noticed it clearly the week I drove out to visit someone in a beautiful neighborhood. Lovely homes, manicured lawns, fountains and pools, the kind of place I once prayed and fasted to live in. And to my own surprise, I felt almost nothing for it. I tried to talk myself into wanting it again, but the appetite was simply gone.

It took me a while to understand what had happened. I had seen something greater. Something bigger to give my life to. Something more powerful. A beautiful house tucked in the woods had become almost nothing to me, not because such things are wrong, but because a dream had gotten hold of me. And once a dream gets hold of you, everything else finds its proper size.

The Dream, and Then the Extending of It

The dream begins with a picture God has given us of a church family that is genuinely different. My prayer is that before I leave this earth, the only way I ever interact with people is exactly the way Jesus would have. So I have made up my mind to stay with Jesus until I become like Jesus, so that I can live like Jesus lived. There are three things this requires of every one of us: to live constantly in communion with God, constantly in community with God's people, and constantly under the commission of God. That is how the dream becomes real in us.

But God does not want the dream to stop with us. He wants us to extend it to others. Jesus put it this way: I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). Then He added something easy to miss. He said there are other sheep, not yet in the fold, who have not yet come to Him (John 10:16). There are people all around us who are not enjoying the life God has for them, and He is asking whether we will carry the dream to them.

This runs on a kingdom principle that turns our instincts upside down: you can never keep God's blessings until you have learned how to give them away. Whoever wants to gain must be willing to lose (Matthew 16:25). It is what you give away that you eventually get to keep. That is simply the nature of God, who is always giving Himself away. The more of His life you pour into others, the more of it you will find in your own hands.

They Are Not Evil. They Are Lost.

The world outside these walls is not first of all a problem to be managed. It is a crowd to be loved. When Jesus looked out at the people, He saw that they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36-38). That is the word He used. Not rebels, not enemies. Sheep. Lost ones.

Right now some of them look like addicts, and yet they are sheep. Right now some are sleeping around, chasing after anything that promises to fill them, and still they are sheep, just lost. Jesus does not tell us to condemn them, criticize them, or look down on them. He tells us to pray for them, and to pray out of love. He came, He said, to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). Let us go, He urged, to every town and every home (Mark 1:38).

So if you are trying to answer that question, what would Jesus do if He were me, ask it honestly. Would Jesus spend the whole of His life simply making money, buying cars, and settling into a comfortable house with nothing left over for anyone else? Maybe you can carry a dream like that lightly. But it is a very different thing when the dream has you.

Four Things Jesus Would Do

In Luke 15, Jesus tells three stories that show us His heart for one lost person. What if, like the woman who lost a single coin, you turned your whole house upside down to find one that belongs to God? What if, like the shepherd, you braved rough weather and hard ground and real danger just to bring home one sheep? What if, unlike the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, you refused to sit at home nursing your complaints, and instead went out looking for your lost brother, simply because you knew your Father was grieving over him night and day?

And what if you decided that anyone who walks into this church, to any event or program, becomes someone you will actually connect with? You get their number. You learn where they live. You go and visit. You make them your friend, not because they can give you something or add to your standing, but simply because they are a lost coin, a lost sheep, a lost child of your Father. They are valuable people, valuable but lost. Not depraved, not beyond hope, just wandering in the dark that sin creates.

We have no right to talk to people about God until we have first talked to God about people.

This is the number one mistake we make. We imagine it is our clever words that save people. It is not. It is the Holy Spirit. You are not the solution; you are the one carrying the solution to someone who needs it. So go into every relationship with God first. Learn to ask God about people before you ever try to speak to people about God. When we gather to pray, come with a few names, real people you want to bring before the Lord, and ask that God would reign over their lives.

Loved Until You Can Be Trusted

Scripture says it is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance (Romans 2:4). Not our pressure. Not our disapproval. His kindness. So what if you loved people, especially the ones who do not seem to deserve it, and especially at the moments they least deserve it? We have to love and accept people long enough that they can begin to trust us, long enough that they feel safe handing us their worst.

Because until I can trust you with my worst, you will never get my best. If you want someone to give you their best, become someone they can trust with their worst. That is the soil in which a lost person slowly turns toward home. And as they begin to show interest, we welcome them fully into the community of God, help them be baptized into Christ and into His people, and walk them through the simple work of discipleship, which is really nothing more than helping a person become like Jesus by being with Jesus.

One Disciple a Year

Here is the beauty of it. We are not asking anyone to do something impossible. Just one disciple for Jesus each year. One. Imagine what happens when a handful of people each help one person a year truly follow Jesus, and that person helps another, and so on. It is said that within a few decades of the resurrection, starting with only twelve, the movement had spread until a large share of Jerusalem were followers of Jesus. Ordinary people, loving and praying and walking with one person at a time.

That is the prize. And it is why a comfortable house lost its grip on me. Someday I will leave every house behind, no matter how big. Someday I will leave every car behind. Someday I will leave behind every dollar I ever earned. But there is a saying I keep coming back to: no one is a fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he can never lose. I have tasted something so much bigger that the comparison is not even close.

So gladly I will give up the house. Gladly I will give up the car. Gladly I will give up the dollar, and even the comforts and pleasures of this life, for the sake of one disciple for Jesus each year. My question today is simply this: who will join me? Who will pray for people the way Jesus prayed, love them the way Jesus loved, and help them follow Him the way Jesus did? If that dream gets hold of you, you will never want your old, smaller dreams back again. Come and give your life to something that will outlast everything else you own.