Knock, knock, knock. Someone was at the door.  Probably a salesman.  No one else would ever find their way to our house.   I was in my first year of ministry.  Kerra and I lived in the church parsonage, which was on a lonely road seven miles from the nearest gas station.  The church I served didn’t have an office, so I established my workplace in one of the bedrooms.

Knock, knock, knock.  I’m coming, I’m coming.  I opened the door and was greeted by a smiling young man.  I wondered what he was selling.  In our brief time at that house, I had already been visited by insurance peddlers and vacuum
cleaner salesmen.  Amazingly, even though I was fairly certain I lived in a place where no one could ever find us even if they tried to, salesmen never seemed to have any trouble.

I stood there at the door, looking at this smiling young man, waiting for the sales pitch. I was not prepared for what I was about to hear.  “Can you tell me how to be saved?”  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I invited the man in.  “Wow,” I thought.  “This is fantastic!  Someone is actually coming to me who wants me to explain the gospel to him.”  Then came the punch line.   The guy had been Kerra’s youth minister at her church in Indianapolis.  He heard that she had married a minister and was living in the northern part of the state.  It just so happened that he would be passing through our neck of the woods on his way to wherever he was going, so he looked us up, got directions to our house, and came for a visit. We were both disappointed.  Kerra was in class at Purdue, so he didn’t get to see her.  And I
didn’t get the opportunity to share the gospel with someone who was eager to hear it.

This week we’ll be in Session 7 of the series, Gospel Shaped Outreach. The question this week is What do we say?  What do we say when we have the opportunity to share the gospel with someone who really is interested in hearing it?  In Acts 10, we find a somewhat similar story, only with a much happier ending.  A Roman centurion by the name of
Cornelius had been praying to God. Then, someone came to him unexpectedly.  An angel came to Cornelius and told him that his prayers had been heard, and that he should send for Peter.  So, Cornelius sends two servants and one
soldier to the house where Peter is staying.

Knock, knock, knock.  Three strange men were standing at the door.  And one of them is a Roman soldier!  They wanted Peter to come with them.  Fortunately for Peter, the Lord had prepared him beforehand for this visit, telling him that he should go with these men without hesitation.  Opportunity was knocking.  Someone wanted to hear the gospel.  What would Peter say?  The centurion was a Gentile, meaning he would have to convert to Judaism first, then to Christianity.  At least that’s what Peter and every other Jew thought.  You have to go through some other process first before you can come to Christ.

Two thousand years later, a lot of us believe the same sort of thing.  Before you can come to Christ, you have to clean up your act first.  Or, to come to Christ, you have to repeat this prayer, or walk down this aisle, or even be baptized.  But when you read the story of Peter and Cornelius, you see that what Peter told Cornelius was not something he needed to do.  Instead, he talked about what Jesus had already done.  The result was monumental.  Lives were changed.  Cornelius and all who were in his house were converted.  But something even more massive changed.  The world changed.  The gospel would not be for Jews only, but for everyone. 

You might never hear a knock at your door and find someone standing there, eager to hear the gospel.  But
opportunity knocks in other ways.  Never underestimate what God has in mind.