Don't Waste Your Life // Matthew 9:35-10:15

the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And that's exactly the passage we're going to be looking at this morning. So if you got your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. Flip to Matthew, chapter 9. That's where we're going to be. We're going to be looking at a handful of very important questions. One of the questions we're going to be looking at is this. How should Christians feel about non-Christians? It's a very important question. You see, my fear is that a lot of Christians naturally view non-Christians as problems instead of potential. Think about it. When you're on Facebook and you see someone living a lifestyle that you completely disagree with, what is your natural reaction? Is it to think problem or potential? And so we'll talk about that. We're also going to talk about another important question, which is what is our role in pursuing the lost? And the answer to that one is actually very simple. Our role as Christians is to take one gospel risk at a time. And so here's the big idea of this message. It's very simple. It is that to not take risks, not taking gospel risks is a huge risk. Or what are you risking? Well, if you consistently do not take gospel risks, you are at risk of wasting your life. And so we're going to talk about that. You are at risk of missing out on meaningful opportunities to see and be a part of life change. So let's start by looking at Matthew chapter 9, starting in verse 35. It says this. And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and

proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. So this verse is a summary of the previous five verses. Matthew 5 through Matthew 9, what we see Jesus doing is he has a teaching, preaching, and healing ministry. And up until this point in the book of Matthew, Jesus has been the only person who's been doing those things. Let's keep going. Verse 36. When he, Jesus, saw the crowds, he had, look at this, compassion for them. Because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. You see, if we want to know how we need to feel about lost people, we just need to look and see how Jesus feels about lost people. Because we're told that Jesus looks out of the crowd, he sees the lost people, and it says Jesus feels just one emotion, only one, which is compassion. In the New Testament, something that's really interesting, is we see that Jesus feels a lot of different emotions. We're told that he feels righteous anger. We are told that he feels joyful and sorrowful. The emotion that Jesus is told to have had, more than any other emotion, is compassion. It mentions that he has compassion, more than any other emotion that he feels. And so we need to talk about what is compassion. Well, compassion is synonymous in the Bible with sympathy. So compassion is a Latin word, sympathy is Greek word. And to feel compassion means that you deeply feel the suffering and pain of someone. And you desire to help. And so the classic illustration of compassion is that you're standing on a beach somewhere and you look out in the ocean and someone's drowning. So as you're standing there, you feel their suffering. You feel their pain and you want to do something about it. And so you walk into the shore about knee-deep and you throw a life preserver, pull them back

in, that would be a good, compassionate response. That is the bullseye for compassion. The problem is that compassion, compassion, is easily corrupted. We often feel a lot of things other than compassion. So what I want to do is I just want to give you two ditches that we normally fall into or that we can be tempted to fall into on either side of compassion. Instead of feeling compassion towards the lost, we sometimes can feel anger. That's the first one. Unrighteous anger toward the lost is not healthy and it is not helpful. Unrighteous anger is fueled by sin and it is focused on self. The person who feels anger toward the lost is the person who says this. I know that they're having a hard time, but if they had just made better choices, they probably would not be where they are. Or if they had just chosen better friends or listened to my recommendations and my advice and come with me to church, they would not be exactly where they are. That's what the angry person says. The angry person is also the same person who is very, very frustrated when a non-Christian is not acting like a Christian, which should be zero percent surprising to us when non-Christians are not acting like Christians. We want them to act like Christians, of course. But we should not be surprised when our non-Christian friends are not acting like Christian because they don't hold to the same worldview that we have. So one side of compassion is anger. The other side of compassion is apathy. What apathy is, is apathy is a deficiency of compassion. You just don't care. And what I fear is that most of us naturally fall into this category. Now, I don't think that we fall into this category when it comes to what we believe.

I think that we fall into apathy, not in theory, but in practice. And what I mean with that is if I were to come up to any of you after the service and you claim to be a Christian, and if I were to ask you, hey, do you care about lost people? I don't think any of you would be like, no, actually, I don't. Like, of course, you wouldn't say that. You would say that you care. But if we were to sit down and review your life and how you spend your time and how you spend your money, then it may be challenging to find any evidence that you do care about lost people. I thought about this and apathy toward the lost is what I naturally feel a tug towards. And I've been thinking about why that is, like, or the last week or two, why do I tend to sometimes feel apathetic toward the lost? And the answer is I feel like I just have so much going on all the time. We're all busy, aren't we? If I were to ask you and you and you and you say, yeah, are you busy? Oh, yeah, I'm busy. Between work and marriage and kids, it's hard to feel like we have any capacity to care for the lost.

My wife and I, we just had identical twin girls a few months ago. And so right now we have four under four. And so this morning, I'm not joking, this morning at 4.50 AM, I was putting a passe in the mouth of a crying baby. And so I feel tired all the time. All the time, I just feel tired. I sometimes struggle, truly. Sometimes I struggle to feel like I have the energy to read my three-year-old, a two-minute Bible story at night. We feel tired, we feel busy. And because of that, the unfortunate result is that lost people end up getting put on the back burner. Trying to reach the loss becomes an afterthought. This is one of the reasons why we encourage everyone to go on a short-term mission trip, because it does a lot of different things when you go on a mission trip. But one of the things that it does is it re-orients your heart rightly toward lost people. Us being busy is also why we encourage people with their ones to try to think about intersections and not additions. Because most of us don't have the capacity to add things to our life. And so we need to think about what are some things that I'm already doing that can be intersections

that I can minister to this person. And so instead of anger or apathy, what we're supposed to feel is what I would call controlled compassion. Controlled compassion appropriately feels the suffering and pain of someone and it desires to help. So if compassion is what we should feel, what should we do about lostness? Well, we're gonna see, let's start in verse 37, it says this. Then he, Jesus, said to his disciples, well known passage here. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers or the workers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. When Jesus says the harvest is plentiful, what he is saying is he's saying there are plenty of people who are spiritually ready to hear the gospel. There are so many people locally and globally who are spiritually ready to hear the gospel and respond. We'll talk about both of these. Let's talk about global lostness first. There was a study that came out last year by the Joshua project and what they found was that right now in the world, there are 3.4 billion people in unreached people groups.

That means they have little to no access to the gospel. Of those 3.4 billion people, over one billion of them are in India alone. And I had chat GBT do the math on this and it told me that if you were to line up those 3.4 billion people in a single foul line, two feet apart, they would wrap around the globe 52 times. The number of people who have never heard the name of Jesus is overwhelming. That same study found that out of all the Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus in the world, 87% of them have never and will never meet a Christian in their entire life. And so global lostness is overwhelming. But there's also so much harvest right here where we are. There's probably a lot of lostness in your office. I asked my community group a couple weeks ago, I said, guys, what percentage of your coworkers would you say are Christians? And one of the ladies said, 60 to 70%. I said, you work at Chick-fil-A, that doesn't count. (audience laughs) Of course that doesn't count. What about the rest of you? And the rest of them said, probably somewhere around 10 to 20% of their coworkers, they felt like are Christians. And so what that means is that the harvest is plentiful in your workplace, in the hospital you work at. at Caroline University.

It's plentiful at your gym, at your barbershop, at your kid's school. So Jesus tells us the harvest is plentiful. And I'm reminded of a principle that I was told about the harvest years ago, by my mentor at the time. His name was Mike Extenkamper at UNC Chapel Hill. He told me, he said, when you think about lost people, you need to be reminded of this truth, or else you'll be easily discouraged, which we'll talk about in a minute. He says, you need to be reminded of this. The crowd is not the harvest, but the harvest is in the crowd. And what he meant by that is that you might initiate lots of conversations with lots of lost people. You might invite a lot of them to church, you might ask a lot of them to read the Bible with you, you might take lots and lots of gospel risks all the time, and it's very unlikely that all of them are gonna come to faith and have their lives changed, but some of them will, because the crowd is not the harvest, but the harvest is in the crowd. So Jesus says, the harvest is plentiful. The second thing he says, the workers or the laborers are few. Here's what Jesus means by this. This is very important. Jesus is not concerned that lost people are not gonna come to faith. Jesus seems to be concerned that Christians are not gonna go to lost people. I know that I'm giving a lot of examples right now,

but there are right now around 3,500 international mission board missionaries. And I understand there's a lot of different missions, organizations that do great work, but for this illustration, there's 3,500 IMB missionaries. That is one missionary for every one million unreached people. It's overwhelming how few workers there are in comparison to the harvest. And in the same way, at your office, I imagine that there are not very many people who you work with who are trying to take personal risks to bring Christ to the relationships that you have in the office. So we know, like Jesus said, that the workers are few. And then what does Jesus tell us to do? The third thing he says here is he says, in view of the fact that the harvest is plentiful, the workers are few, he says, pray earnestly for more workers. To do something earnestly means that you are doing something with sincere and intense conviction. When is the last time that you have prayed for something with sincere and intense conviction? Charles Spurgeon, many of you know Charles Spurgeon, as he was a pastor in the 19th century, he said that this passage in the Bible, more than any other passage, haunted him. And he said that the reason this passage haunted him was not because he couldn't see the need. He said it haunted him because even though he could see the need, he didn't feel this kind of compassion.

The kind of compassion that caused him to pray for something earnestly. So if Jesus tells us to pray earnestly for more workers, what I want to do for just a minute is, I want to take a second to talk to parents and grandparents. Parents and grandparents, what would it look like for you in the years to come to be open handed about your children being called into some kind of full-time ministry? What prayer are we often praying? All of us are normally praying something like this, Lord, I pray that my child would come to faith at a young age and not date until they're in there 20s and then once they get to their 20s though, maybe they can come to faith quickly and sorry, maybe they can get married quickly, have some babies, move into my neighborhood and reach my neighborhood with the gospel. Isn't that what we often want to pray? Well, unfortunately what ends up happening is I see this every year on the college campus. And when I say every year, I mean it. Every year I see this. I'll have a college student who wants to take a step of faith, go on a mission trip and they are met with resistance from their parents. Their parents give them so much pushback and oftentimes what's confusing about this is sometimes these parents claim to be genuine Christians and so this happens and I'm just like, what's going on?

It's like, why is this happening exactly? Well, I've been doing this long enough to know exactly what's going on. What's happening is that we have a young man or young woman who's wanting to take a step of faith. They're wanting to go somewhere with the good news of the gospel and their parents will either shame them or scare them. The parents will say something like this. I've paid for your college and you're considering doing something else with your career. Or they'll say this, you've been gone all semester away from your family. You're gonna do something mission with your summer. I'm so grateful my parents do this. Sometimes the parents will try to scare them. They'll say, you sure you want to go to India? It's dangerous there. You know how dangerous it is in India? Or they'll say this, they'll say, well, are you sure you want to do that with your summer? 'Cause if you don't spend every summer doing research, you might not get into medical school. They try to shame them, they try to scare them. What I am saying is that parents ought to be open-handed with their children. Something I've said to parents for years at this point is that from the time you start trying to grow your family, until forever, you are going to have to be open-handed with your kids. There is no other option. From the time you start trying to get pregnant, you are open-handed. And then once you get pregnant, you are open-handed until you see a heartbeat.

And then you are open-handed until the anatomy scan. And then you are open-handed until delivery. And who knows what is going to happen to delivery. And then you are still open-handed until they are two or three. And you find out whether or not they have developmental delays. You are open-handed all the way until the point where your child is in college. And they are considering giving their time to the mission of God. And so my encouragement to you is what would it look like for you? What would it look like for our church to be full of parents and grandparents who are open-handed with their children? Who genuinely just say, "What I am trusting you with my children. My child is an arrow. It is not a piece of artwork." Jesus says, "The harvest is plentiful. The workers are for you." So pray earnestly. Let's keep going. Pick up in chapter 10, verse 1. And he, Jesus, called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles, notice they are called apostles here, are these. First, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother. Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew, the tax collector, James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus, Simon, the zealot, and Judas, Iscariot. There are a few things here that are actually fun to be really interesting. The first thing is notice in verse 1 that the twelve are referred to as disciples. But then in verse 2, the twelve are referred to as apostles. An apostle is someone who is sent out. The principle here is actually very simple. God saves you to send you. What happens all the time is that we come to faith in Christ, we become a disciple. We are learning from Jesus, and the learning from Jesus is going to be a lifelong adventure. But then what he will often do is he will send us out. Something else that's really interesting is that when Jesus sends out the twelve, if you look in Luke chapter 10, maybe you can look there with your community group, what you'll see is that after Jesus sends out the twelve apostles, he sends out 72 other people. And we're not told their names.

We know they're doing an important work, but most people think that Jesus sends out the twelve professionals, and then what he does is he sends out 72 volunteers. And I just want to take a moment to say that we as a church are so grateful for the many of you who give your time so generously to this church. You volunteer in kids ministry, or with the weekender, or with students, and we are just so grateful. It is a meaningful work, and our church could not function. We're not for our faithful volunteers. Let's keep going now. Verse five, it says this. "These twelve, Jesus sent out, instructing them, go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." And proclaim, as you go, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." What's really interesting here is this is one of the only times in the New Testament where we are told Jesus feels compassion, but he doesn't do something about it personally. And so Jesus sends out the apostles, and he tells them first, he says, "First you guys need to go and you need to temporarily go only to the Jewish people." And then, of course, later on in the Book of Matthew, he's going to tell the disciples to go to all nations. What Jesus is saying here is he says, "There's so many people, there's so much need, so I will send you." He says, "You are sent." The Christian understanding of things is that we are not just thrown into the world to do our best. The Christian understanding of things is that we are sent into the world. Things are not aimless and accidental. This is why, at the end of our services, we say, "You are sent." It's why it says in our kids' ministry back there, "You are sent, because lost people will not normally come to us, and so we have to go to them." Now, go to them to do what exactly? Well, Jesus says in verse 7, "Jesus says to go and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand." What Jesus is saying is he's saying, "You guys need to go out, and as you go out, you need to open your mouths." Have you ever heard of the saying, "Preach the gospel, and if you must, use words?" Now, I understand what people say when they say that. Basically, what they're saying is you should live... You should live in such a way that people are able to see the grace of God in your life. But I can remember being back in college, and my pastor used to talk about this quote all the time, and he used to say this,

preach the gospel, and if you must, use words, is basically like telling someone, tell me your phone number, and if you must, use digits. And he used to go on and say that the message of the gospel is not that you are a good person. The message of the gospel is not that you're someone who lives a good life and behaves, and your friends should see what you do and act right. That's not the message of the gospel. The gospel is that you are unable to save yourself, and it is only through repentance and faith in the person and work of Jesus that you can be reconciled to God, and that is a message that requires words. No one can learn that just by watching you live a good life, and so Jesus says to go out and proclaim, and what he says is you need to go and proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Here's what he's basically saying. He says, guys, go out and take gospel risks. Go take some gospel risks. When you think about the last 90 days of your life, would you say that you've been taking gospel risks? A couple weeks ago, I got lunch with a guy in our church who, who has a successful career, and he told me that he has been trying to go more public with his faith at work. And so what he did is he sent out an email to his coworkers who were guys a couple weeks ago, and he said, guys, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna start to pray at this date and this time in the office every week, and I would love for you guys to join me. Guess how many people showed up the first week? Zero, you guessed it. But listen to this, he told me that over the last couple of weeks, there's been one guy that has shown up, and he says that it has been so meaningful, the two of them praying together for their office in their office. And as he was telling me this, I thought to myself, this is exactly how the gospel goes forward. This is exactly how it goes forward. You see, I think sometimes we think that the gospel is gonna go forward in big, loud, bold steps of faith in gospel risk. And sometimes the Lord may ask you to do that. But more often than not, the gospel risks you are going to take are going to feel very simple and ordinary. For example, just having your coworkers over to your house or your lost neighbors over to your house and trying to take the conversation from casual to meaningful to spiritual, that is a gospel risk. Giving generously to the kingdom of God is a gospel risk. It's first and foremost a matter of obedience since God tells us to give our first and our best back to him, but you could consider generosity a risk. Going on your first short-term mission trip could be a risk. One of our elders right now at this very moment is on his first international mission trip in over 20 years.

He's about to turn 70. And I promise he feels like it is a risk. He's excited to be there. There is no time like the present to take a gospel risk. What gospel risk is the Lord asking you to take? Let's keep going to verse eight. What I want to do is I want to show you the motivation behind all of the gospel risks that we take. Why should we take them? Well, we're going to see in verse eight. It says this, "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers cast out demons." So here we see Jesus cares about spiritual needs and physical needs. Then he says this, look at this. "You received without pain, give without pain. Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts. No bag for your journey or to tunics or sandals or a staff for the laborer deserves his food." I love what Jesus does here. Before he sends out the disciples and before they go out and get to work, he reminds them of the grace they have already received. He reminds them, he says, "Guys, you did not earn the authority and power that you have. You did not earn your salvation." He says, and this is a word for some of you. Some of you need to hear this morning. You have received without pain. Salvation, forgiveness that is made available in Christ,

is given freely. There's nothing that you can do to earn it. It is to be received freely as a gift. Something that I, sometimes I find myself talking with folks who have a hard time receiving God's forgiveness. It's usually a genuine Christian who for whatever reason is struggling to look past their past sins or their current failures. And what I will say to that person, it sounds sort of intense when I say it, but I believe it's true, is I will tell them, I want you to imagine the sinless Son of God. I want you to imagine Jesus hanging having absorbed the wrath of God instead of you. I want you to imagine him in that condition. Now think about this, how insulting is it to Jesus? To look to him in that condition and say, that's not enough. That's not enough for me to be forgiven. What I need to do is I need to beat myself up and just feel shame and guilt, even though Jesus has paid it all, to which I would say you cannot earn what you've been freely given. Jesus says you have received without paying. Now let's keep going. Verse 11, the last few verses here, let's do this. In whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, find a person a piece, and stay there until you depart.

As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. He says, truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. What Jesus is saying is he says, as you go out and proclaim and take gospel risks, you are gonna get opposition, and you are gonna get open doors. I believe that every Christian, if he is doing his best to live faithfully, should expect both open doors and opposition. If you're being warm and winsome and kind and thoughtful, you should expect some open doors when you're taking gospel risks. But at the same time, if you are being bold and truthful and holding to your convictions, you're probably gonna experience at least some level of opposition. And what Jesus seems to be saying here in this passage is he says, we have to figure out how to live in the tension between being patient with people and never giving up and dusting off our feet and moving on. And this is a very difficult thing to do. We need to pray and ask the Lord for wisdom with how to do this because on one side of things,

we need to never, ever give up on people. We need to never stop praying for people. We need to be so patient with the non-Christians around us. But what Jesus says seems to suggest that there comes a point where when you are met with a significant amount of rejection and opposition, it may just be best for you to dust off your feet and move forward. My wife Olivia, she came to Christ in college at UNC Chapel Hill. But her best friend from childhood, so she also went to college with, to this day, is still not a Christian. Once Olivia and I got married, we started to try to get creative with how to reach her friend. And so Olivia would write her letters and we would try to bring up spiritual conversations when we were talking with her. And after doing this with her friend for a year or two, she eventually just came to Olivia and just said, stop it. Would you please stop it? Which was very difficult to hear. And at that point, we had to basically just say, you know what, we've done our best. We've prayed for her. We've tried our best to reach her. Maybe we will circle back with her when she's in the new season of life.

We're not gonna stop praying for her, but we have to move forward. Jesus says, I love this. Jesus has dust off your feet. Rejection does not always mean that you have failed. Rejection means that you have tried. And when you are experiencing opposition, when you feel like you're rejected, Jesus' word to you is to dust off your feet, to move forward. The reason why this is so important is that we must, as the people of God, we must have big hearts and thick skin. We must not be derailed by discouragement easily. We need to be very resilient. We need to have thick skin about five years ago. I was trying to get our college ministry off the ground at Wake Forest University. At the time, there was like a handful of students, maybe. And what I was doing is I was planning events that hopefully students would wanna come to. And one of the events I planned was called puppies and popsicles. I was looking forward to it. Very excited about it. What I had done is I had arranged for a handful of different people in our church to bring puppies to campus. And I was picking up some popsicles. We had some things to hand out to students. We invited a lot of students, and it was gonna be great.

We'll woke up that morning of the event, and I saw that it was gonna be raining all day long. And so we canceled the popsicle. Sorry, we canceled the puppies. No puppies. So puppies and popsicles turned into just popsicles. I wish that the story had a happy ending, but it doesn't. And so what we did is a handful of us stood in the common area of a building with our popsicles that no one was eating, that no one came to our event. And let me tell you, I felt so discouraged. I felt so silly, it makes me feel awkward even telling the story right now. But what I needed to hear in that moment was just because you failed, or just because you feel rejected, does it mean you failed? It means you tried. We have to be quick to dust off our feet and move forward. I've heard it said before that when you are discouraged, you can visit Pity City, but you cannot live there. And so yes, none of us here are superhuman. All of us are gonna have times and moments where we are sad, where we're moping around, we need to eat some ice cream, whatever. All of us every once in a while can visit Pity City, but you cannot live there. You can't do it. Do not take out the things from your suitcase and unpack it in Pity City,

because there is too much at stake. There is too much lostness around you. There is too much opportunity around you for you to be easily derailed by discouragement and opposition. And so the word that some of you may need to hear this morning is you need to dust off your feet. You need to dust off your feet and by the grace of God, you need to move forward in faith. See, I believe that in the years to come, what we are going to see in our churches, we are gonna see more and more opposition. But by the grace of God, to City Church is and will continue to be a place where people take gospel risks. I think about Jacob Scott, who just came on the stage earlier, he is taking gospel risk by leaving his career, moving to Panama. I think about Pastor Jordan Taylor. He left his career, a successful career as an engineer and to step into a care, a pastor of care position here in our church. And now he oversees the discipleship and care of this whole church. I think of Kathy Dixon, who left her job as a nurse. And now she is a resident in our student ministry and she is walking alongside dozens and dozens of middle school girls. I think about each of you, who the Lord is probably not gonna call you

to leave your job, but he is gonna call you to take some risks. I think about a good friend of mine, who's about to transition from the marketplace to ministry. And when you think about this friend, don't think 23-year-old who lives with his parents. I want you to imagine a man in his 30s, with a wife and kids, leaving a six-figure income for a five-figure income. Is that friend taking gospel risks? Absolutely. He's gonna have to move some things around. He's gonna have to figure out what this means for his future. But what are the chances that he's wasting his life? Zero. Zero percent. He understands that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. And so he is going out into the harvest. And so my question for you is what gospel risk is the Lord asking you to take? What, who is your one? I'm not asking you to leave your career, but what I am asking you is to start with one. One conversation, one relationship, one gospel risk at a time. Who is your one? If you got your one cars, you can go ahead and grab those. And just a second, I'm gonna give you a chance to write down your one's name.

And I'm gonna give you a chance to write down a bold prayer for your one. And what we're gonna do is we're not gonna take these up. We're gonna actually send you home with these. And what I want you to do is two things. When you see this card, I want you to put it somewhere, you can see it, maybe put it in your car, maybe put it in your Bible, maybe put it on your bedside table. And when you see this one card, the first thing I want you to do is, I want you to pray earnestly for your one. In the same way that Jesus has to pray earnestly for more workers, I want you to pray for the salvation of your one, with the hopes that your one is gonna come to faith and that they too will be a laborer. At the end of that video, we watched earlier, there were two guys, one of the guys' name was Burke. Did you notice that he said, "I came to faith in Christ about a year ago." Guess where Burke is right now? Burke is in Southeast Asia, serving alongside some of our missionaries, sharing the gospel this summer. He has gone from lost to labor. And so pray for your one. The second thing I want to ask you to do is, that I can take this week to try to reach my one? Go ahead and take a moment and then I'll close this in prayer.

Father, I want to pray right now in faith that you will answer many of these bold prayers. Think about all the names that are written down on all these cards and there's lots of heartbreak associated with these names. There's lots of disappointment. There's lots of fatigue. Father, I'm praying right now for breakthrough with these ones. Give us the people of God, the energy and the courage to take steps of faith, to take gospel risks with our one Lord, Lord, I pray that there'll be many of them in the months and years to come. We will see many of these ones come to faith in you and be baptized here in this church and then sent out as laborers, Lord, I pray, that you would help each of us here to feel compassion toward the lost. Help us not feel angry, help us to not feel apathetic, but would we see people like you see them, Lord, I pray that you would open our eyes, open our hands. In Jesus' name, amen. (gentle music) (gentle music) You [BLANK_AUDIO]