998. Learning to Ask Questions and Listen

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons and experience in pastoral ministry and he now travels the world training believers in evangelism and discipleship. We are honored to have speaking in chapel Dr. Jeff Musgrave. I've known Jeff for many, many years.

I preached in his church that he started in Highlands Baptist Church in Colorado on many occasions. And for many years, Jeff has been traveling in a special itinerant ministry where he goes into local churches and he actually helps people in the matter of learning how to be relational in evangelism and discipleship and outreach. And going in a number of ways, I think this is a really important week. First of all, because of the nature of COVID, it's been really difficult to just get out and talk to people and share the gospel with people on one hand.

And secondly, we're coming into the summer and as we move forward, as the masking protocols and the health protocols will begin to have some significant changes. We also want to make sure that we are working hard at what the Lord has called us to do and that is to share the gospel wherever we go. I was preaching yesterday at Houston, Texas and Saturday night I went out with the pastor and I was very, if I could say this way, impressed and challenged at the way he just so naturally shared the gospel with the waiter that we had at the restaurant where we were eating. And I was thinking that is exactly the way we ought to be all the time, spreading the good news everywhere we go. So our goal this week really is to focus our attention and our heart on the preaching of the gospel. And I'm so glad that he is here. So let's give Dr. Musgrave a warm welcome as he comes this morning.

Thank you, Dr. Pettit. You've already heard that my wife and I travel around teaching people what we love to call relational evangelism. We believe that discipleship is actually a human to human relationship that builds a human to God relationship. So if God calls us to make disciples, then I believe that relationship becomes everything. And so over the next three days, we're going to do our best to share a little bit about what God has taught us through the years about how we can use relationships to be able not only to make friends, but literally eternal friends, friends that will be our friends forever.

I have a granddaughter who took our class and she was talking to her neighbor. And she told her neighbor, you know, if you don't know Jesus, you can't go to heaven. But if you trust Jesus, we can be friends in heaven forever.

And in some respects, I really believe that that's kind of the childlike friendship that we ought to extend to everyone, recognizing that we have something that they desperately need. And that if we are the kind of friend that we ought to be to them, we'll be able to get to the gospel and give it to them. So these chapel messages may be a little unconventional in comparison to what you may be expecting.

The first two specifically are going to be very different. Today, I want to talk about how to get into gospel conversations. And I'm really going to talk primarily about how to be a compelling conversationalist, how we can be the kind of people that other people want to talk to. I think some of the things we're going to talk about today will help you in every aspect of your life, but specifically in helping you to be able to reach people for Christ. Tomorrow, I want to talk about the content of our gospel conversations. And we're actually going to focus on looking at an app that we've developed. You might want to look at it between now and then and go to your app store or the Google Play Store and find it.

It's called the Exchange Message app. And we'll be looking at that tomorrow and then actually walking through a gospel content so that we would know exactly what we're going to help our friends with. And then on Wednesday, I want to motivate us to actually pursue gospel conversations by helping us to believe that God has given us the power to influence our friends for Christ.

And so hopefully it will be three days that you will enjoy and that will be helpful to us. Since discipleship is all about relationships, then you would assume, by the way, that the title of this morning's message is learning to ask questions and listen. It's interesting that we don't really think of that aspect in terms of being a good conversationalist. We tend to think in terms of how can I get someone to listen to me?

How can I talk? But I believe that we'll see that Jesus was actually the master of asking questions. We were just talking about this this morning.

He knows everything. And yet you look in Scripture and see how many times he asked specific questions of people and how important asking questions is in his conversations that he has with people. We're going to look just a second, if you don't mind, to Acts chapter 11. Acts chapter 11, and it's the first church plant that we see in heathen territory. You would assume if discipleship is so central in disciple making, then we would see, excuse me, relationships central. You would see relationships in these church plants early in the book of Acts. This is the first church plant where Jesus had not actually preached, and so this is the first time anybody had traveled far enough from Jerusalem to be able to be in a place Jesus hadn't preached. And the Bible tells us that there was a dispersion among the Christians in Jerusalem, and some traveled as far as Antioch, and some of the Grecian Christians began to have conversations with other Grecian Christians, or excuse me, other Greeks. They weren't Christians yet. And through the means of conversation, they were able to give them the gospel.

And I believe that we see here a relational bridge that can be very, very helpful to us. What happens is, let me just ask this. This is Monday. If you could imagine from last Sunday to today, how many of you have had an opportunity to preach in the last week? Let me see your hands. Okay, so several.

Good. Let me ask you this. How many of you had a chance to have a conversation with someone during those same period of days? And I only want to show us that in life we have a lot more conversation opportunities than we do preaching opportunities. And if you and I are going around looking for places we can give the gospel, I'm just telling you you're not going to find very many right off the bat preaching opportunities. But if you and I are going around looking for conversations, you're going to find them everywhere. And I believe that in this passage you will see that when they spoke to them and had conversations with them, found things that they had in common, and then directed those conversations to the gospel, there was a bridge that helped them.

There's a second bridge in that passage I would invite you to go study through, but we'll not have time to look at that this morning. I'm going to encourage you to start looking for conversation opportunities, literally to just start walking through life a little slower, looking around you and noticing the people that God puts in your path. And strive to engage in conversations as often as you possibly can. And then to strive to take those conversations deeper so that you're actually talking about heart issues, soul issues. And I believe you will find that those conversations are quite easy to direct specifically to the gospel.

There's a life resolve that I've made that I'd love to share with you and love to encourage you to consider making this your life's resolve. I resolve to direct every conversation I possibly can to the theme of themes, learn of that soul's need, and if possible, meet it. We believe that in this world we live in, when people come to the table with less information about God and about the Bible, that it usually takes more time with more truth versus brief encounters with a brief gospel. So I believe that if we will learn the importance of compelling conversations, and by the word compelling, what I mean is that the other person wants to talk to you. So you're having a conversation with this person in which they are enjoying it and they want to talk to you. I actually believe that we can learn to be curious about people and just ask God to give me the ability to show the people He brings into my life genuine interest and concern. So I'm going to kind of jump into a middle of a session that I typically teach in our seminars.

And so if you feel like we're getting jerked just a little bit, you're kind of getting dropped right down into it. But this is kind of the heart of the session, and I wanted to use our time wisely. So I believe that one of the most important parts of a conversation is just learning how to ask questions that can help us get to know the person we're talking about. Be careful though, because you need to avoid questions that can be answered with yes or no answers.

You're going to have a lot of awkward pauses if you're asking questions like, are you new to the area? Yes. Do you like it here?

No. And all of a sudden this conversation has gone both negative and very quiet. So what you need to do is to be able to ask positive questions that will help you get genuine information about the person.

So where are you from? Then they have to actually talk back to me and tell me something. So you can ask questions that lead to a positive answer like, what do you like about the area so far? And there's two things about that question that is powerful. Number one, I'm kind of leading it to something positive, but number two, they're actually going to tell me what they like, and I'm beginning to learn what they are like. Most conversations, if they stay on the surface, it's not going to be very warm and very compelling for very long. And so we have to be careful not to go too serious too quickly, because that becomes a little strange, maybe a little awkward, weird. But as we ask questions, we can begin that spiral to think in these words, go deeper. So I like to think of it as going from surface to soul conversations.

And you can do that by simply asking some questions now. So why did you and your family move here? What brings you to town? So you see what we're doing. We're going from where do you work?

What do you like about the area? Those are just surface questions now to what's making your life tick? What's going on inside of your life?

And eventually we could ask the question, how do you feel about your move? Because now we're talking about what's going on inside of their heart. I have found that if we're talking about the weather, I have a really hard time going from, boy, it's beautiful out here today. If you were to die today, are you 100% sure you're on your way to heaven? It's a little strange to go straight from a surface topic to the gospel. But if you and I can learn to direct conversations to soul topics, from there it is not difficult. When a person tells me that they're afraid because their child is struggling with drugs and alcohol, I can easily say to them, you know, when I struggle with things like that, it's my relationship with God that really helps me.

Let me ask you a question. How would you describe your relationship with God? And that's not a strange conversation because we've already been talking about things on a heart issue. I'd like to encourage you to recognize five soul needs that every human has. And these five soul needs, if you can learn to direct conversations toward them or at least to recognize them when you're getting close, loneliness, emptiness, fear, love or lack of love. Every human soul needs to love and to be loved. And guilt.

You see, God made me to have a perfect relationship with Him and my sin separates me from Him and leaves an empty spot inside of me. And as we begin to talk in a normal conversation and these topics come up, we can see the Lord allowing us to be able to turn that conversation. May I encourage you to learn to be a good listener? Let me give you a couple of values of listening. Number one, listening shows respect. Respect is simply placing value on a person. When you listen to your friend, you're actually showing him that he's valuable to you. I believe that trust is an important component in a relationship for us to be able to share with someone something so intimate as to how Jesus can meet the needs of their heart. Brother Pettit told you that we've known each other for several years and I remember one of the earliest meetings that he was having in our church, we were talking about this subject. And he said to me, Jeff, I can't imagine leading someone to the Lord, or excuse me, someone being led to the Lord by someone they don't like.

And I actually believe that having a relationship with someone in which they can enjoy us and like us is important, so showing respect. Listening builds relationships. Del Carnegie has said, you can make more friends in two weeks by becoming a good listener than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you. Listening builds loyalty. I believe when you listen to your friend, what you're going to find is that the two of you are going to draw closer to one another.

Everybody needs a good friend who will listen to him. John Maxwell has said, most people consider listening to be pretty easy and consider themselves pretty good listeners. However, few are capable of really listening.

That concerns me. He says, it is never too late to become a good listener. It can change your life and the lives of the people in your life. Listening shows people that you care about them.

We all know this statement. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. So what are some traits of a good listener? Number one, don't just wait for your chance to talk. That's not listening.

That's just waiting. Listening is focusing on the other person and what they're saying. Great listeners don't talk about themselves.

When you're in a conversation and you hear the word I coming up repeatedly, it's time for you to start asking questions of the other person. Show your friend that you're listening to them. Let me show you how you can kill a conversation real quick. Hang on just a minute.

I just need to do something real quick. You see, when we stop what we're doing and start focusing on something else, we've actually told our friend what's happening here on my phone is more important to me than you right now. And so you and I can help our friend know we're listening by actually looking at them, focusing on them. You can respond to your friend verbally to help him know you're listening. You can refer to something that he said. Probably one of the greatest ways to be able to take a conversation deeper is just to simply ask a follow up question to what the person just said. Because literally what you're saying is, go ahead, go a little deeper there in that subject. And of course, that's our goal in trying to get down to soul conversations.

Track with your friend. Listening takes time, but it's worth it. So the bottom line to being a good conversationalist is to create a desire for the gospel.

I actually believe that relational evangelism is really just taking Christ in you up close and personal to another person so that they can see Christ in you. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the water of life. He will meet their needs. But we all know you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

But you can put salt in his oats and then he'll want to drink. And that's really what good conversation can do is let us, who God calls the soul to the earth, make people thirsty for Jesus by our own lives. In conversations, be sensitive to needs.

When you find a need, show interest in it, show concern about it, explore it. Everybody has a need, and if you can find that need and begin to meet those needs, you'd be surprised how far you can get into a person's life. Learning to share your own story of faith with an open heart is one of the great ways for people to open their hearts to the gospel.

And so I think learning to be transparent in our own lives. I think it's interesting, the book of John, the Bible tells us that John wrote to help unbelievers become believers. The Bible says that Jesus did many other things in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ and believing you might have life in his name. So I think it would be good for us, just in closing here, and I know I still have just a few minutes, but I have a few things to do yet, to look at the book of John and look at just a few of Jesus' conversations. We'll just run through them and kind of pluck out from them some of the conversation tools that he uses. So I'm going to start with John chapter 1. When you're reading the book of John, if you're reading from a red letter edition of the Bible, I would suggest that you notice how the red letters and the black letters go back and forth, because you're not seeing as many discourses as you are conversations. I think that's very, very interesting. COVID was good for me, not that I was able to accomplish a whole lot on the road.

We only had six seminars and we usually have well over almost 30. But I did get a book written and the book's title is Conversations with Jesus, just simply a walk through the book of John and learning about Jesus. I wrote it specifically to help unbelievers become believers, for a believing friend to take his friend through it. The very first words that Jesus says in the book of John is, what are you seeking? He's talking to two of John's disciples. And I actually believe that it's really instructive for us to know, number one, the very first thing he did was ask a question. That's the first words we see from Jesus in the book. But literally helping us to recognize what we really want to find with our friend in conversation is, what are you looking for in life? And then the ultimate question just comes right after it when Jesus says, follow me.

And I just want you to know that is the ultimate question. So wherever we go starting conversations, the ultimate question is, are you willing to follow Jesus and put your trust in him right now? So that's where we're headed. That's where we want to take our conversations. When the disciples of John asked Jesus, where are you staying? His response was, come and see. Now it's interesting, he could have said, well, you go down to the butcher shop and turn left and you go to the carpenter shop and turn right and go to the end of that street.

That's where I'm staying. But he didn't. Do you see how relational that is? It's not just informational. By the way, the gospel is informational, but it's relational by nature. Come with me.

I'll show you. And I believe that that's the lifestyle that we need to develop in our lives. It's interesting that just a few verses later, Philip, one of the first disciples, meets Nathaniel. And of course, when he tells him Jesus is the Messiah, Nathaniel says, I don't think so. My Messiah doesn't come from Nazareth.

And, you know, Philip could have pulled out his apologetic books and said, oh, no, no, he was really born in Bethlehem and he fulfilled 15 Old Testament prophecies. But that's not what he did. Listen to this question. He said, come and see.

Now, two things about that. Number one, where did he learn that? And I believe it's just from Jesus, a few verses earlier. But number two, what was he actually saying?

Here's what I believe he was saying. Look, come and meet Jesus for yourself, because if you know Jesus like I know Jesus, you're going to love him as much as I do. And frankly, friends, that's what evangelism is, is just inviting people to come and meet Jesus for themselves. In one of the first conversations you see with Jesus in Nicodemus, I think it's interesting that Nicodemus is a theologian, and Jesus talks to him on the level of a theologian.

That's interesting because we're seeing something totally different in the next chapter. It's also interesting to notice that Jesus started where he was on the surface and then moved the conversation to a deeper level. Jesus didn't hold back essential truth, even if it shocked Nicodemus, when he said to him, you must be born again. It's also interesting that Jesus did not expect Nicodemus to make a decision that very first time he talked to him. John allows us to see Nicodemus two more times in this passage when he finally trusts Christ as Savior. It's interesting, the next chapter with the woman at the well, Jesus is talking to her on a very practical basis. It's not a theological level, and I think it's very instructive for us. I do think it's helpful for us to recognize as well that Jesus went there looking for her.

It says I must needs go through Jerusalem. And Jesus graciously spoke to her and asked her to help him. This is a very interesting revelation about Jesus. I mean this is the master of the universe who literally can speak and things exist and he's asking this woman for help.

When the Bible says that the Jews have no dealings with the Gentiles, literally what it meant was they don't touch their stuff. So when Jesus took her vessel and took a drink from her vessel, this was quite a communication tool in terms of letting him know how he felt about her. He offered her a better source of water after he asked her for water. And I think that's very interesting, taking those conversations from surface to soul.

She then says, how do you have water? And he says, if you come to me, the water that I will give you will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life. So he's delving into those eternal matters. I think it's interesting, you study it, there's lots of conversational tools, but ultimately, what Jesus did in that conversation was reveal himself to the woman at the well. And ultimately, our goal for every relationship is to introduce our friend to who Jesus is and how he can relate to them. The invalid at the well in verse chapter 5, Jesus simply asked the question, do you want to be healed? And I think it's interesting, all of us are broken in one way or another, every one of us. And I think one of the things that we can help people with is recognize we have a solution to their brokenness because Jesus makes a difference in people's lives. And just simply asking the question, do you want to get over this?

Is this problem something you want to solve? And I think it's also interesting that Jesus healed him, but then found him again. And we'll see that as a recurrent theme in the passage.

I'm going to skip chapter 8 and go straight to chapter 9. There's a man there that was born blind that the disciples asked Jesus. So, Jesus, he was born blind. Who sinned that he would get blindness? Was it his parents?

Was it him? And I think it's interesting, this is instructive to me, the disciples were focusing on the past. Why did this happen? And Jesus was focusing on the future. God's power is going to be put on display, that's why this happened, because of what the possibility of God being put on display. It's interesting that Jesus found him a second time. This is a reoccurring theme that we find with Jesus, in that Jesus touches a life and then goes back and touches it a second time. And in this particular time, he asked him, do you believe in the Son of Man?

The man did not know what to say. And so he said, who is the Son of Man? Jesus revealed himself to him.

And the man said, Lord, I believe, and he worshipped him. And ultimately, friends, that's what we are asking our friends, that's what our goal is with our friends. We want them to believe, to confess with their mouth, and to worship him as Lord in their lives. So let me summarize with just four concepts here. Number one, ask questions. Number two, go deeper. Number three, show compassion.

And number four, reveal Jesus. Lord, I want to thank you for allowing us to spend this time together. And I pray that as we spend this time together each day this week, that we will learn to go deeper in our conversations, have Gospel conversations. And Lord, I would ask that as a result of the time we spend together here this week, that we would see friends in heaven, because we have begun to give the Gospel a chance. Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing, what you're going to do. In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Jeff Musgrave, which is part of the series on evangelism, preached at Bob Jones University. Listen again tomorrow as we continue this series on The Daily Platform.