By Amy Walters — It was a rude awakening. Here I am, a writer at a missions organization and I don’t care about lost people. My job is to create media that will motivate people to take the gospel to the unreached and yet I have no motivation myself. How did this happen?
Growing up I’d always been interested in missions. I remember times when I would fall asleep crying because there were people in the world who had never heard of Jesus. What happened to that earnest little girl?
When I moved to Michigan to get married, I was elated to be involved in missions from the office of SEND International. I still love working here but at some point, it became just a job.
Maybe it’s because I read stories of lost people all the time. I’m inundated daily with missionary newsletters and stats on the number of Christians in places like the Middle East and the Czech Republic. I write video scripts and web articles and edit stories about the urgency of reaching the lost. And maybe, through all that, I’ve become calloused.
Or maybe I’ve forgotten the value of my own salvation. I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I’m grateful that God saved me at an early age and that He has been faithful to grow me up in my faith. But since that’s almost all that I know, I can easily take it for granted. I forget that without Christ I would have no relief from my guilt. I forget that without Christ I would be a slave to sin, unable to escape dangerous cycles. I forget that without Christ I would have no real hope for anything better. I must stop forgetting.
Or maybe it’s because I’ve gotten too wrapped up in and distracted with the stuff of life. My husband, my daughter, my church, my job—all important things but need to be viewed with the right perspective. They are not nice things in addition to my salvation. They are relationships and environments to live out my salvation. I want my daughter to care about lost people and to tell her friends about Jesus. How will she care about them if her mother doesn’t?
Maybe I’ve let the TV and hours of surfing the internet lull me to sleep spiritually.
Regardless of how that passion got lost, I need to get it back. Jesus’ compassion for lost people drove Him to show mercy to sinners and give fiery speeches to hypocrites. He was committed to glorifying the Father which meant showing love to the people He had created.
That little girl crying for the unreached didn’t create that passion on her own—God gave it to her. And I need to keep bugging God about it until I get it back. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to pray every day for God to give me a heart for the lost and an urgency to reach them with the gospel. Every day until that is the driving passion in my life. I’m sure that in the process, He’s going to show me things in my life that I need to get rid of or rearrange. And I’ll do it. Because the only things worth caring about are what God cares about.
What about you?
