Old salts like to tell the story of the young sailor learning to become a navigator. Aboard the ship at sea, the captain said to him, "Please tell us where we are.

So the sailor took a sextant and made the complicated set of calculations. After a while, he wrote down the coordinates of longitude and latitude and handed it to the captain.

The captain studied it for a while, checked his charts, and said to the young navigator, "Are you absolutely convinced that these are the right coordinates?

"Yes, sir, I'm absolutely convinced.

"You know exactly where we are?

"Yes, sir.

"There could be no conceivable mistake in your calculations?

"Absolutely not, sir. I've done my best.

Then the captain said, "Well, then I would suggest you put on a jacket.

"Why, sir?

"Because according to your calculations, we are planted squarely at the top of Mount Washington.

Lots of people are confident of where they stand until something goes wrong. Suddenly their calculations are off base. The world is filled with men and women who say they know exactly where they areonly to realize at the last moment they have miscalculated their position. They don't know where they are or where they are going. They don't know their destination.

That's what Christ is all about; he forces definition. And people get miserable when Christ forces a definition of their position. They either move closer to him, or they become increasingly resistant.

What is a seeker?

Let me suggest that in their spiritual journey with Christ, people start out as spectators whose agenda is to watch and listen. Spectators are generally a kind of faceless crowd of distant persons, staying where they can't get charted, typed, or categorized. They're always watching and listening. Some go away angry. They didn't get the message, or they don't like what they heard.

Every once in a while out of the crowd of spectators comes a person who moves into the second position: a seeker. The agenda of seekers is to ask tough, hard questions, and if the answers come through, they intend to make a commitment.

Seekers are special people. Seekers frequently have come to a crisis in their lives. They feel beaten up and overwhelmed by failure. Something has happened to remind them that life isn't under their control as much as they thought it was. Something about their system of life, their values, and their choices has let them down. Somewhere along the line, they must make some changes. They start by asking questions about Jesus.

Seekers are people who waken to new sensitivities. They begin to hear things from the lips of Jesus in a way they never heard them before, and they want to know more. They begin to search. They look for new insights as to what it might mean to be a follower of Christ. I guess you could say seekers are people who become increasingly dissatisfied with the old way.

The seeking process involves rebirth and renewal.

Paul talks about that experience theologically in his letter to the man whose name was Titus. In Titus 3:3, Paul looks backwards and says, "At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

My first reaction to this is to feel offended. Then it dawns on me that the man who wrote this includes himself in the description. When this man writes, he's looking upon a life that didn't look so bad on the surface. Paul probably had memorized almost all the Old Testament and lived a righteous way of life. But there came a moment when he looked under all the religiosity, all of the stuff, and saw the condition of his real humanityhe saw foolishness and disobedience and .

"You know, Titus, he says, "I saw passions and pleasures of which I was not proud. I saw hatred and envy. I really became aware that spiritually speaking I was a dead man.

That's the beginning of the seeking process. A person slowly comes to grips with the stupendous fact that our culture doesn't like to face. Because of evil, we are all dead until something in the spirit sparks to life. Paul talks about that in the next verse or two.

He says, "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done that's religion"but rather because of his mercy which is what we would call Christian salvation. Here's the key phrase: "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

The old King James version used the word "regeneration. The newer translators have preferred the words "rebirth and "renewal. They are describing something that precedes our committing ourselves in faith to Jesus Christ. Something of an awareness, an energy that leaps into our hearts and gives us a new understanding of the condition of our deadness and begins to raise up a hunger in our hearts to move closer to God's Son, Christ. The theologian calls regeneration the coming to life of something that was dead. That's what is happening theologically to the seeker.

Illustration: Maybe I can illustrate it this way. Yesterday morning I was on the phone with our daughter who lives with her husband in North Carolina. We were having a great conversation. I was using a wireless phone, and suddenly the phone went dead, and her voice was cut off. I heard only static. I looked at the phone. A little red light was on, and I realized the battery had run out. Suddenly there was no contact.

I thought to myself, I've either got to get a new battery in this thing or think about the sermon illustration possibilities. I decided to do both! That dead telephone is a picture of what Paul is writing about to Titus here.

God created us with the capacity to hear and send signals back and forth to heaven, but sin ruined that. It deadened the batteries of the soul. And Paul, in terminology, might say we're people with dead batteries. We have the ability to commune with God, but we can't because we're dead. Someone has to recharge the battery. Someone has to put a new battery in.

That's what happens theologically when a person becomes a seeker. Faith is excited; possibilities are there; choices can now be made. People begin asking tough questions with the thought that maybe this is what God wants us to do. They move closer to Christ.

Churches are filled with seekers. Men and women who sense something among this body of people, and being here seems right; something is calling out to the heart. So they move on a seeking venturethough, unfortunately, some people stay too long in the seeking mode and need to be moving along.

C. S. Lewis was a good example of a seeker.

Probably no one has written about seeking better than C. S. Lewis, now deceased. Years ago he wrote a book called Surprised by Joy. This great English literature professor of the talks about how he moved from atheism and paganism into Christian perspectives and finally gave his life to Christ. In the book, he talks about the difficult, painful process of moving from spectator to seeker to follower. Let me read to you just two or three paragraphs from his spiritual autobiography. He looks back at those days when he was a spectator caught in the bondage of atheism:

"There was no region, even in the inner most depth of one's soul, which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice No Admittance. And that was what I wanted in those days. I wanted some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, 'This is my business and mine only.' "

Christ is beginning to penetrate that area Lewis thought was his and his alone, and he's bothered by it.

In another place, Lewis says, "In reading Chesterton, as in reading McDonald, I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist can't be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere"Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, as Herbert says, fine nets and stratagems. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

I love this passage: "Early in 1926, the hardest boil of all atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence of the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. `All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.'"

Lewis says, "To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man. If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs were not "safe, where could I turn? Was there no escape?

A little further, Lewis says, "Really, a young atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him at every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do the will of the Father unless you are prepared to `know of the doctrine.' All my acts and desires and thoughts were brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose and I found what appalled me; a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.

What's happening to Lewis? A man is moving from spectator to seeker. He's coming alive and discovering that his previous system of faith and life is inadequate. And as he moves toward Christ, like the moth moves inexorably toward the candle, he finds himself being more and more caught up irresistibly in who Christ is and what he asks of him.

The Scriptures give us examples of kinds of seekers.

The Scriptures give us examples of kinds of seekers. It tells us a little bit about what drives them. And each one is unique, although they all have a common thread of experience.

A seeker named Nicodemus appears in John 3: "There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling counsel. He came to Jesus at night and said, 'Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.' "

Nicodemus is the generic seeker. This wonderful man, whose resume is filled with all sorts of good religious deeds, who sits on the highest councils of Judaism, who for all practical purposes is probably beyond critique in the way he lives. But he stands off to the side as a spectator, and he watches Jesus speak. He watches Jesus interact with people. He sees miracles done. He notices how people are being attracted toward Christ.

Because Nicodemus is a reasonably objective man, he cannot help himself. He must move toward Christ; he must ask questions. His open mind, his hungry heart, his sensitivity to eternal issues will not allow him to do anything less than that. So Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. He needs to settle this once and for all.

In John 4, you'll see a second seeker. This woman has no name other than "the woman at the well. She comes to the Samaritan well with a bucket to draw water. It's the middle of the day; few people are around. In that culture, men and women, if they are strangers to one another, don't talk to each other. But these two engage in a conversation.

The initial conversation is about water, and it drifts from there to what's more important: the water this man can give out of himself. She becomes more interested in his water, and at one point he essentially says to her, "Listen. We both know who you are. We both know the kind of life you've been living. We both know that you've been with one man after another. We both know that you're ashamed. We both know that you need a water to cleanse your life and to fill your heart in a way it has never been filled before. She capitulates almost instantly.

She leaves her water jar and goes back to her town. She summons all the people to rejoin her out there with Jesus. She says to them, "Come, see a man who has told me everything I've ever done.

If Nicodemus is the interrogator who asks questions, this woman is convicted of all the things so wrong in her life. Jesus looked deep inside and still accepted her as a person. He made promises of new possibilities if she would follow. And that intrigued her.

In Acts chapter 10, we read about a Roman soldier named Cornelius. I call him the yearning one. If you had to pick any of these for a neighbor, I think you'd pick Cornelius. He'd fit well in New England. He's a wonderful person.

"At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian regiment. He and all his family were devout and God fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, 'Cornelius!'

"Cornelius stared at him in fear. 'What is it, Lord?' he asked.

"The angel answered, 'Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now, send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter.' "

Simon comes, and before long, he's preaching the gospel to Cornelius, his household, and his military staff. The result is a revival.

I call Cornelius the yearning one, the man who has a hungry heart. Of the people I've mentioned, he's the most attractive to me. He's a good person. He's a good leader. He's highly respected in his position as a soldier. He runs a nice home, and yet he knows that there's something more to faith, and he yearns out of his heart to know more. God satisfies that yearning by sending a messenger who helps Cornelius move from seeking to following.

Some of us here this morning may be considered yearners who have a hungry heart to know God deeper and better. And we have yet to cross the line, but we're moving in that direction. We're like Cornelius. The moment comes, and like him, we cross the line and suddenly we're followers.

One more example, this one from Acts 16, is the famous story of the Philippian jailer. Paul and Silas, great Christian missionaries, have been put in jail and beaten to a pulp. And what do they do? They spend the evening having a worship service. They're in jail, and they're singing at the top of their lungs.

"About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners are listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. All at once, the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, "Don't harm yourself. We're all here. The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'

What happened here? I can only assume that during the afternoon the Philippian jailer had watched Paul and Silas carefully. He listened to things they said to each other, to other prisoners, to other people. Maybe he heard Paul preach. Who knows? He somehow had a sense that this man had a connection with God. But he kept resisting it and putting it off until that moment when the earthquake happened. He knew if any prisoners escaped, his life was over. So he got ready to take his own life before others could do it for him.

His life becomes unhinged. He's with death. In that moment when Paul speaks to him, his instant response is to ask what he can do to be saved. That's a seeker who in the moment of crisis asks the powerful question. God gives him the possibility of an answer, and he crosses the line and becomes a follower.

There are just some of seekers in the Scriptures: the interrogator who asks questions, the convicted who's at the bottom of life, the yearning one who has a hungry heart to know more, and the unhinged who faces a crisis that's so powerful he's driven to questions of faith.

Do some of you fit one of those categories? It may be time for some of us to wrestle with deep questions, to recognize that Jesus is forcing us to move from spectator to seeker to follower.

C.S. Lewis went on in his journey and made a choice. He writes how at one point his life became unhinged. "All over the board of my life, my chess pieces were in disadvantageous positions. Soon I could no longer cherish even the illusion that the initiative lay with me. My adversary, namely God, began to make his final moves.

In the last pages of Surprised by Joy, he writes: "You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even from a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at least come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929, I gave in and I admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?

"The words 'compelle intrare' or 'compel them to come in' have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood they plum the depths of the Divine mercy.

Then Lewis concludes, "The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

The inadequate navigator finds himself so confident that he knows where he isonly to be told by the expert that his calculations are far enough off that he's not in the middle of the ocean but on the top of Mount Washington.

How sure are you of your calculations? Do you really know where you are and where you have to go? If you are a spectator, what would it take to convince you it's time to become a seeker, who asks hard questions? And if you are a seeker, what would it take to help you to become a follower?

Christ will not allow us to stand still for long before, as with Simon Peter, he asks, "Who do you say that I am?

Next Sunday morning, I want to conclude my talk with an invitation. I want to invite people to make a decision. You have a week to think about it, and then to come here. If you need to make one of those steps forward, that's what Jesus wants us to do.

Gordon MacDonald is pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. His many books include Ordering Your Private World and Restoring Your Spiritual Passion.

Gordon MacDonald

Preaching Today Tape #142

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Gordon MacDonald is chancellor of Denver Seminary and editor-at-large for Leadership Journal. He is author of numerous books, including Going Deep: Becoming A Person of Influence.