Week Twenty-Three - One

Dr. Ken Liles lent me David Platt's book Something Needs to Change. In it, Platt challenges our complacent Christianity by sharing his trip to the Himalayas. He addresses what it means to follow Jesus in a world filled with urgent and heartbreaking physical and spiritual needs. 

When I read, I often copy good quotes or things that speak to my heart. One such quote was a phrase: "turning tears into tactics." Platt was challenged not simply to feel sad about the situations he saw but to turn those tears into ways or tactics to meet the needs of the people who so touched his heart.

The situations he experienced were heart-rendering. Children tied in barns because they were disabled, young girls sold into sexual slavery, people martyred for coming to Christ, inadequate medical care, and poverty beyond description. All of these are so far outside our Western everyday reality that we can barely imagine the darkness in which these people live.

But the one thing I took from the books was a discussion on Luke 15, the importance of one. As you read Luke 15, you find three stories: The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost or wayward son. In the case of the first two stories, someone went looking. The shepherd left the ninety-and-nine to search for and find the one lost sheep. In the case of the lost coin, the woman diligently searches and cleans her house until the coin is found.

In the final story, we read about the prodigal son, who left his father to lead a life full of sin. And while we don't see the father going out to retrieve him, we see the father waiting with great anticipation for the day his son would return. This one son meant the world to him.

David Platt wrote, "God is passionate about finding the one." And how beautiful is that thought? God will search for us and wait for us with passionate anticipation.

But then, Platt wrote, "There's really only one thing worse than being lost. What's worse is being lost when no one is trying to find you."

Oh, dear friend, do you understand that statement? What if you were the one living high in the Himalayan mountains, with no access to the Gospel, never having heard of the man Jesus, and dying without ever knowing God loved you? And no one. No one was coming to tell you. No one even thought about you being there. They were not trying to bring you the Gospel.

Millions of people worldwide are in this same situation. They may not all be living in such dire situations, but they are all lost, and few—very few—are out searching for them. And that, David Platt says, needs to change. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. Surely, our lives would be best spent doing the same.

Do you know someone who needs to hear the Gospel and experience God's love? Will you be the one to tell them?

What if God called you to leave your comfortable Western life to take the story of God's love to those who have never heard? Would you go?

What if you were the one no one was looking for? Does that not motivate you to share your faith? It does me!