What Is Your Willoughby?

When I was growing up one of my favorite programs was The Twilight Zone. I have been accused of, from time to time, still living in the Twilight Zone! That’s okay.

One of my favorite episodes is “A Stop at Willoughby”. The story is about a guy named Gart Williams. Now in my best Rod Sterling imitation: “Gart Williams, 38 years old, a man in trouble. Gart Williams, ad exec, is about to enter The Twilight Zone.”

He is a guy is who not happy with his life. He is not happy with his job. His wife is a person who has high expectations for him and he’s not on the same page she’s on. The boss is very demanding and he’s not on the same page with him either.

So every evening he rides home on the train, which is about an hour’s ride, and falls asleep. And every time he falls asleep he goes to a little town called Willoughby.

For Mr. Williams Willoughby is his escape. It’s a town situated back in the 1890s. The pace is slower and when the train stops the townspeople greet him. “Mr. Williams how are you?” “Mr. Williams, glad to have you back.” “Mr. Williams, have you tried some of these tomatoes?” Everybody in Willoughby knows Mr. Williams.

Now when Mr. Williams wakes up he has to go back to the life he absolutely hates. At one point in the story he tells his wife “I want something different for my life.” So he gets backs on the train and you hear the conductor’s voice “Next stop Willoughby. Mr. Williams, are you ready to get off at Willoughby and to stay?”

The next scene is Mr. Williams getting off the train at Willoughby. As he gets off the train his clothes change, which had never happened before, and every one comes up to him offering to shake his hand.

And you see down the road that Mr. Williams had jumped off of the train and he’s dead. But he wanted his Willoughby so badly that he traded this life for Willoughby. He traded what was going on in this life for what he did not have and that he coveted.

And that’s why the title this morning is “What is your Willoughby”?

When you look at the outline,

• Willoughby was a place where “a man can slow down to a walk and live his life in full measure.”

• Willoughby was a place of refuge.

• Willoughby was a place that was absent of strife and conflict

Turn to Psalm 69. The things that Gart Williams was feeling, that made him long for Willoughby, for a place in his dreams, David could identify with that.

(1) Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.

(2) I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.

(3) I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.

Does that not describe how the character was feeling? He was feeling overwhelmed. His problems had gotten to the point that they were more than he could handle and he wanted out.

We have choices we have to make every single day and that choice is this: are we going to focus on those things that want to force us to leave or do we want to focus on those things that will allow us to stay or encourage us to stay?

And when I talk about leaving or staying, I’m talking leaving and rejecting what God’s Word says or staying and believing what God’s Word says.

The devil dominates a person with a nature like his and that’s a person who has not been born again. A person who is not born again is going to be like Mr. Williams in Willoughby.

Look in Ephesians 2. Mr. Williams felt like he had nowhere to turn. He felt like he was on a road leading to nowhere. And this is what we see here in Ephesians.

(1) And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

When you’re dead in something, you don’t get out of it. Are you with me? When you’re dead you don’t get out of it!

(2) Wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience

Now notice that all of this is in past tense. But for teaching purposes, let’s talk about this for a moment. The word “walked” means “it’s the place where you live”. So you were dead in trespasses and sins. That was the place where you lived. That’s the place where you live when you don’t have God.