The Unexpected Adventure- Introduction and “The Tiler”

I just started a book called, The Unexpected Adventure.  It’s cowritten by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittleberg, both well known pastors, teachers, and authors.  Both are men with a passion for personal evangelism.

This book is a little different though.  Rather than teach theory with Scriptural support and the occasional story, this book seeks to be more devotional in principle.  It’s grounded in their experiences in mission.  Why?  Because the whole idea is that evangelism is an adventure.  It’s fun.  It’s unpredictable.  Sure, it’s scary too!  But all the twists and turns are part of God’s plan and if you jump on for the ride, you’ll never regret it.

So to encourage you in that effort, they share stories from their lives.  Then with each story they share a principle and an action step that can help you apply what you’ve seen acted out by our God in their lives.  Finally, a word of inspiration from the Bible.

I’d like to take a walk through some of their stories and maybe relate it to some of ours as we’re able. So here’s a great one.

Lee Strobel was an editor at a Chicago newspaper.  One day he was feeling this prompting from God over and over to go talk to his friend, a non-believer, about God.  It was almost Easter so he decided this would be his entry point.  He went to his office and invited his friend to come to church with them for the special services.  Not interested.  So he asked if he had any questions about spiritual matters.  No.  Curious about God?  No.  So he talked about the power of the resurrecton.  Nothing.  The guy didn’t seem moved at all.

To this day, Lee says he knows of no change in the man.  For years he assumed that maybe he was just one in a chain of people who will witness to this man, hopefully one will get through.  Maybe so.

But fast forward several years and Lee is a pastor at Willow Creek.  A man comes up to him and thanks him for being such a profound spiritual influence in his life, but Lee doesn’t even recognize him.  The man explains- years ago he’d lost his job and was doing little things to make ends meet.  He called a friend at a newspaper and found out they needed some tiling done so he went in to help.  He was on his hands and knees tiling while Lee witnessed to his friend at the newspaper.  Lee had never seen him, but as he was talking the man tiling was moved by the Holy Spirit.  The tiler went to church that Sunday, brought his family, and they all became Christians.

Wow- talk about a twist.  Talk about unexpected adventures.  I’d like a little of that in my life too.

The lesson, we may talk to one person about faith and even if they’re not moved, someone else might hear what we’re saying.  Or the person we’re talking to might mention it to someone else.  You don’t know where your words, God’s words, will take root.