Today.
Today in the world approximately 7 billion people call earth their
home.
Out
of those 7 billion people, there are 250,000 thousand child soldiers.
Out
of those 7 billion, about 3 million women, girls, and even a small
number of boys are currently enslaved in the sex trade.
Every
year 1.5 million people die of hunger. That's one child every five
seconds.
Every
year 3.4 million people die of a water related disease. That is
almost the entire population of Los Angeles.
Statistics,
as sad as they are, have a way of numbing us to the pain and reality
of the situation. Let's break it down.
These
people aren't statistics. These people have faces with names who have
dreams and hopes. In reality,
they're probably not much unlike you. These people are
someone's daughter, son, wife, grandparents, husband, baby. These are
real people, not just a
number written down on a piece of paper. These people are not just
statistics.
We
could talk for hours of the different injustices in the world. The
list goes on and on and we've only mentioned a few. If I were to ask
you what the biggest injustice is, what would you say? Is it
abortion? Is it the alarmingly rate of orphans whose parents have
died of aids? Is it the lack of clean water and food?
While
all of these are important issues, there is a bigger issue at hand.
It is an issue that all the other issues stem from. The biggest
injustice in the world is that there are people out there in the
world today who have never heard of the name of Jesus. That is where
all of the under issues fall under. I remember on my mission trip to
Nepal we met a lady who have never heard of Jesus and God and so,
beginning with creation, we shared the Gospel with her. How do you
explain the Gospel to someone who has never heard of Jesus? Living in
a Western culture, it's difficult for us to wrap our minds around the
fact that there are people who haven't heard of Jesus. But the fact
of the matter is, people are dying everyday without ever hearing
about Jesus.
And
what are we doing about it? Please know I'm not trying to guilt trip
you into going on a mission trip (even though I'd highly recommend
it!) or anything like that. But we must learn to capture God's heart
for the nations. We must begin to realize how desperately he loves
these people, these people who have never heard about His Son and
live their lives in captivity and fear and hopelessness. Because, you
see, Jesus died for these people just as much as He died for you and
me and all of us living in the Western world. We are blessed to grow
up in a country where we have all heard the Gospel multiple times but
we can't be selfish with what God has blessed us with. Pray that God
will give you His heart. Pray that your heartbeat will become one
with His.
You
don't have to go overseas to tell people about Jesus. I promise you
that, if you really look, you will realize that you are surrounded by
people who desperately need Jesus. Maybe they've heard of Jesus
before but their perception of the Gospel is warped. There are people
who are broken, homeless, hurting, lonely, feeling unwanted and
unloved and desperately need to hear about a personal God who loves
them so much that He gave up His most precious Son to die the worst
possible death so that we wouldn't have to be separated from Him for
eternity. I challenge you to go out and radically love others!
1 comment:
This is SO true! It's something that God's really been challenging me about a lot lately. Just think about how amazing it would be if we were to actually LIVE like this! And like Anna said, you don't have to go to another country to share Jesus! One thing I've learned...... someone who's willing to sit still and listen is worth more than a million "right words".
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