Heart for the Lost

I’m reminded of how apathetic I was to sharing my faith and to the lost in general before this summer, O Lord. Sure, there was my family and a couple of close friends whom I really wanted to come to know You, but that was probably the extent of it. For some reason I always neglected how You transformed my life and how amazing that is in spurring me on to tell others about You. I think for so long, I have been afraid to share my faith because of the fear of pushing others away, like what happened with my parents. I think I also subconsciously took on my parents’ philosophy for a long time: what one believes is best for them, regardless of what it is.

Over the 6 years I’ve been a Christian, I had a lot of spiritual conversations with non-believers. I loved to encourage them that You love them and have a plan for their life, and I also loved to share about what You were doing in mine. Yet I think the only time I have really shared the gospel prior to project was in bits and pieces to my parents. Now looking back, that ASTOUNDS me.

From the first day we went sharing on the Promenade, I asked You to give me a heart for Your people. O Lord, how You responded! You allowed me to see people through Your eyes and to hear their hearts, and to realize how truly lost people are. Oh that the universal need, regardless of nation or tongue, is that we need You, our Dear Savior!

It’s so difficult for me to put this into words…and I know that’s why I haven’t written on it thus far. Lord, how my heart has broken for Your people…and how I pray I will never forget what You have done this summer with that. After hundreds of conversations with people from every place and state imaginable, I have been changed…

Lord, to see the people who are too prideful to accept they need a savior…the people who were too apathetic to care…the people who relied on their own intelligence to think they were good enough…the people who mixed their own religion like a drink in a blender and that was enough for them…the people who were completely against any spiritual belief…the people who were angry with the fact that there is a God out there who loves them…the people who have bought into lies of other religions and philosophies…the people scarred by years of hurt by the church and have since left…the people who have never heard of Christ…the people who are stuck in the ways of family traditions and beliefs…the people who worship idols…the people consumed by the temporal world…the people old, the people young, the people male, the people female, the people from every tongue and every nation….

These are the people I saw this summer. And these are Your people, O Lord. And these are also the people who don’t know You. That breaks my heart…

For how can we not look in the eyes of those who are lost and see the brokenness inside? How can we not see the longing that only You can fulfill? How can we not see the scars upon them by years of hurt, abuse, or despair? How can we not hear the pain laced in their voices when they speak of their past? How can we not realize the comfort so many people place themselves in that keeps them from believing in You? How can we not see the universal need of You?

So often this summer, O Lord, You allowed me to see who these people I was talking to truly were. Regardless of who they were, I think in every person I saw the child within them…the one that possessed true joy, naivety, and a desire to trust someone greater than themselves. I saw the ones that wanted to run into daddy’s arms, knowing they would be safe and sound and loved. I saw the ones who would believe in anything they were told, because they had that childlike faith that everything was right in the world...

And somewhere over the years, this child has left…either hurt, moved on, grown up, or something else. And somewhere over the years they have either left the idea of knowing You personally, have never been confronted with it, or have found some other way…and years down the road, they still don’t know You.

Over and over it boggled my mind that they didn’t know You…that for some, it was the first time hearing the Gospel, for some the millionth. Some chose to listen, others shrugged it off.

Yet after this summer I can’t not believe that all of these people desire to be in Daddy’s arms…desire to be innocent, forgiven, and naïve, able to place all their cares and wants in someone greater than themselves…the thing that can only be found through You…

And how could I have been silent this long…!?! Oh how I have grieved You in not sharing before this summer! How can I hold back, for some people, the only opportunity to hear the gospel? How can I be apathetic to Your people when all around me, I am surrounded by their breaking hearts that only You can mend?

How can I not tell them?

I can’t.

I saw the joy in leading one to You this summer. I saw the change in her eyes and heart visibly before me in a way so beautiful that can only be orchestrated by Your Holy Spirit. I saw my mother, who has been completely redeemed, who asked me, “how can people not live for something bigger than themselves?”

That is You, O Lord, changer of lives and changer of hearts.

And that is the power of the Gospel, the universal story of love, hope, and redemption.

Oh how I pray that I will never ever water down the Gospel and never once again, pass by an opportunity to share it!

And O Lord, I pray that my heart remain broken for Your people, until every single one of them has had the chance to hear the gospel!

The need is too great for me to ignore it any longer…

These are Your people O Lord…

And these are the people who so desperately need You.