Who Will I Rescue?

Have you ever walked out of church on Sunday morning and felt like the sermon had hit you like a hammer right between the eyes? Well, that’s what happened to me last week. It was as if the Holy Spirit was saying, rather loudly, “Are you listening? Are you listening? I’ve been trying to tell you this for a while now…”

Our pastor spoke on the importance and I mean the life and death kind of praying for those in your family, circle of friends, acquaintances etc. who are not Christians. He spoke of the role we have of rescuing people who are lost. The aspect of the sermon that spoke to me the most was when he said that many of us have people in our immediate family who are not saved and yet we rarely petition God to save them. He said we should be so concerned for their salvation that we would get on our knees and beg God to save them. Wow…that hit a little close to home. Sure I’ve offered up prayers for the salvation of my unsaved loved ones but it’s more or less when I remember and it’s not every consistent and I wouldn’t classify it as “begging” either.

The eternal destiny of my loved ones and friends and really anyone I come in contact with should be of utmost importance to me yet how often is it just that lingering thought that comes up every so often when I hear a sermon about salvation.

You see the Holy Spirit has been talking to me about this for a while. He’s been asking me to not only pray a little more fervently but to maybe take some steps and these require ACTION to bring some people to Him. Hmmm…this sounds a little scary and hey, these people have heard it all before. Some of them even grew up in church…gasp! What could I possibly have to offer that’s different? Well, there’s this little thing called my testimony and there are some really great things happening in my life that have come directly from God. Maybe I could tell someone about it and it might just be the thing that brings them back to God.

And then there’s the matter of prayer…this one really jumped all over me because I have a tendency to do a lot of things in my so-called busy life but my prayer time can be relatively small in comparison to other things…say like watching TV, or reading, or answering emails. Not really bad things in and of themselves but just things that take up time.

So here I am and I’m going to really try to dedicate A LOT more time in 2010 to asking dare I say even begging God to save some people. How could I do any less?