This is my heart. This is my deepest desire and most desperate of prayers, and it is really neat how God has continually placed people in my life to remind me of this burden He has given me for the lost since I first started praying this back before my summer even truly began. I am praying that this blog post would begin an overflow of this burden into the lives of other fellow believers. We need more people on their knees praying for the lost of this world. We need more people to go. Please, pray with me. I truly mean this. I am pleading with you to please pray with me. Pray now before you even continue reading.
For the longest time, I was so naive when it came to those who were lost and unsaved. Something about my perception of hell was off, and I wrongly thought that hell was a place for those who deliberately chose to reject Christ. Yes, this is partly true. And wow, is it heartbreaking. However, at the end of the day, I always placed the responsibility on each particular individual. I believe that if we are all honest with ourselves, everyone has felt this way about someone we know who is lost....."Oh, well I know they know the Truth. So it's up to them whether or not they choose to give God their lives."
^ How heartless and unloving we are when we think like this.
Anyway... It wasn't until about eight months ago that God opened my eyes and my heart to the whole truth about hell. Hell is, in fact, a place that those who have rejected Him will go. However, hell is also a place that those who have never heard of Him will go. (Insert the flowing of tears and utter heartbreak here).
That is MY RESPONSIBILITY. That is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
John 14:6 clearly states the following, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Later in the New Testament it is also said, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on Him unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them?" Romans 10:13-14.
Guys, please don't take this lightly. Please hear my heart cry over this matter. Don't you see that people are without the beautiful love, grace, and forgiveness of our Father simply because we have not told them....
"We" is just as much you and I as it is anybody else. This responsibility is not entirely laid on those who have given their lives over to full-time ministry/missions. This is a responsibility of anyone who identifies themselves as a child of the King.
Where is our sense of urgency to share the Gospel that is spoken of all throughout Scripture? (Romans 13:11, Mark 1:15, 2 Corinthians 6:2, Revelation 1:3, etc)
Where is our urgency to love our neighbor? A command that is of equal importance to first loving God Himself (Mark 12:28-31).
Let me leave you with these words that are not my own but that have completely changed my entire walk with Christ and my heart for sharing His name.
"The tom-toms thumped straight on all night and the darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, as it seemed, this:
That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.
Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step . . . it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!
Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks, as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.
Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could only call; though I strained and tried, only whisper would come.
Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.
Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees with their backs turned toward the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. “Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven’t finished your daisy chain yet. It would be really selfish,” they said, “to leave us to finish the work alone.”
There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge.
Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relations called and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.
Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called-but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn.
Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was-the Cry of the Blood.
Then thundered a voice, the voice of the Lord. “And He said, ‘What hast thou done, The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”
The tom-toms still beat heavily, the darkness still shuddered and shivered about me; I heard the yells of the devil-dancers and weird, wild shriek of the devil-possessed just outside the gate.
What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it?
God forgive us! God arouse us! Shame us out of our callousness! Shame us out of our sin!"
- Amy Carmichael
Would you put down your daisy chain? Will you share the Gospel today?
