Living in the Light of Eternity

We do not read that the older son went out to look for his brother when he was gone, and who had told him his brother was living with prostitutes and doing wicked things? Not his brother. Still, the older son told his father there in Luke 15 30, This son of yours has squandered your property with prostitutes. There was no love in his heart. He expected the worst from his brother. Jonah had no love in his heart either. He preached a fiery sermon, warning the Ninevites that they would soon be destroyed for their wickedness. But when the city repented, and God decided not to destroy them, Jonah was angry with God. It's in Jonah chapter 4 verse 2, O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. What a strange rationalization. Jonah knew his theology, but it was only head knowledge. He anticipated God's compassion, but did not understand or share it. He was not motivated by love. Then there was Ruth. In the first chapter of that fantastic drama, Naomi tells her daughter's in-law, Ruth and Orpah, Look, my children, this is it. There's nothing I can do for you. Your husbands are both dead, and I have no more sons for you to marry. Go home and find new husbands. Ruth chapter 1 says, Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye, but Ruth clung to her. Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God. Going with Naomi meant that Ruth would be leaving behind all that was familiar, her family, her culture, even the gods she worshipped. How could Ruth make such a decision? Because she loved Naomi. Love made it possible for her to leave everything. When you lack love for your brothers and sisters around you, becoming short-tempered and impatient and expecting the worst from others, it indicates you are not motivated by the love of the father. The sixth sign of erosion in genuine motivation is desiring simply to quit. The older son refused to go inside and join the celebration. He was saying to his father, I've done all these things for you, and what have you done for me? I'm the one who has to give and give and give. Seems like a one-way street to me. I'm getting the short end of the stick here. Everyone at some point faces the temptation to quit. Some are tempted to give up their Christian life entirely. In 2 Timothy 4, verse 10, Paul told Timothy that Demas had packed up his bags and left him. If anyone ever had a reason to quit, Paul did, but he was motivated by something beyond what he could see. I can do everything through him who gives me strength, he said in Philippians 4, verse 13. Inconveniences, trials, difficulties, and living with less cause many people to lose their motivation. This is the seventh indicator of a lack of authentic vertical motivation, refusal to accept suffering as part of love. The older son lacked something his father had. A tender heart toward his brother. Any feelings of love he might ever have had were buried deep beneath his resentment, bitterness, and anger. But his father was not afraid to love his youngest son, even if it meant suffering terrible hurt over the poor choices his son had made. No love is genuine unless it includes suffering. C.S. Lewis wrote about the risks of true love in his book, The Four Loves. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. Jesus' motivation was pure love for his father. In obedience, he came as a man and shared his father's heart for the lost world. And the love that was in his heart included suffering. If it had not, we would not have a Redeemer. Although it is not specifically mentioned in the story, I seriously doubt that the older son had any real heart-to-heart communication with his father. And this is the eighth sign that genuine vertical motivation is lacking. A lack of prayer. Any church or organization not motivated by love for God will rely on agencies, plans, programs, schedules, and all sorts of gimmicks to get the job done. If we are not motivated to do what we do by the love of God, we will surely dry up in our prayer lives too. What keeps us going in feast and famine is the kind of relationship with the Lord that only prayer can bring. The father told his elder son, there in Luke chapter 15, verse 31, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. He was saying, all that you see around you, look, it's yours. It's always been yours, whether now or later. I love you and I care about your younger brother too. It's all the same. But the son could not understand what his father was telling him. And this is the final sign, unwillingness to live by faith. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy, verse 4, verses 6 and 8, the time has come for my departure. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day. Paul looked forward to that day in faith. We read in Hebrews 11 of a group of people who lived, suffered and died in faith. Even though they did not experience the promises of the Lord in their generation, they looked toward the day when those promises would be fulfilled. When you do not look at him as your source, your circumstances can look pretty grim. And when your faith in the Lord runs short, you know you're not being motivated by love for him. Have you lost the vital vertical motivation of love for God? Have you caught glimpses of yourself in the pages you've just heard? Horizontally motivated persons can be involved vigorously in the work of the Lord. They can also be demanding and judgmental. They may express intense concern about the moral condition of society or become zealous for world evangelism. But when the internal relationship is gone, only a shadow of that reality remains. Paul talked about a group of people who were sold out to preaching the gospel, but for the wrong motivation. They intended to cause more persecution for Paul, who was in prison at the time for preaching the gospel. It's there in the first chapter of Philippians. In 2 Samuel 12, when Nathan approached David after his sin with Bathsheba, Nathan told him a story about two men. One was rich. He was a rich, greedy man who owned many sheep. The other was a poor man who owned only one little lamb. When he told David that the rich man had taken the only lamb of his poor neighbor and slaughtered it to feed a visitor, David was enraged. Who is the rat? He thundered to Nathan. He deserves to die. Then Nathan told David, You are the man. David had been so zealous for his people and so out of touch with God that he failed to see that he was the real culprit. It is easy to get out of touch with God and try to live the Christian life on our own. We all fall into it. But when we realize what has gone wrong, how do we go about mending it? In Revelation, we read Jesus' message to the church in Ephesus. An incredible passage that can turn your stomach inside out. If you remember the story of the Ephesians from Acts 19, you know that when Paul preached the gospel to them, a great number believed. They brought their sorcery books worth 50,000 pieces of silver and burned them publicly. They took a stand against darkness and committed themselves to Christ, separating themselves from their former ways of living. Paul wrote that the Ephesians were blessed with every spiritual blessing and prayed for them for the spirit of wisdom and revelation. But now Jesus told them in Revelation 2, verses 2-5, I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you can tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. There is a fascinating paradox in this passage. First, Jesus is positive. You are doing many good things. Then he says, repent and do the same things. Perhaps the Lord would say something similar to a believer today. You are giving $10,000 every month to my work, but I am going to snuff out your light unless you repent. Lord, says the believer, what do you want me to do? Repent, then give $10,000 a month to my work. At first it sounds confusing, doesn't it? But Jesus was saying something was missing in the Ephesians' lives. They were laboring the same as always, but their inner motivation had changed. It was no longer labor prompted by love, they had forsaken their first love. When you find yourself in a situation like this, the Lord wants you to come to him and say something like this. Lord, I'm still doing all these things, but now it's only mechanical. The spring is wound and things keep going, but my heart for you is no longer involved. I don't have the same love for the lost. I do these things because I have to do them. It's been a long time, Lord, since I cried over the lost world. My concerns have turned to myself and my own problems. Please, Lord, give me that genuine heart motivation once again. This is true repentance, not patching up old wineskins, but becoming new wineskins altogether. I encourage you to take this first step of repentance. I thank God for the day more than 20 years ago when a group of operation mobilization workers, including me, gathered in an old school building in North India. George Verwer spoke to us from Hebrews 4 with this message. There remains a rest for God's people. Enter into it. I will never forget that day. It was the day I surrendered myself completely to the Lord. I was one of the ones who went forward and said, I'm fighting, struggling and striving. I'm always hurting and in pain. I'm always complaining that something is wrong. I want rest. That day, I began to realize the incredible reality of entering God's rest. Once you surrender your life completely to the Lord, no matter what happens from then on, you have something to fall back on. It is all in God's hands. There is no more important factor in living a victorious life, one filled with motivation and strength that come from beyond ourselves than being filled with the Holy Spirit. But many are confused about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I will not dictate to you about how to be filled with the Spirit of God. It does not matter to me how it happens. Just make sure that you are. The Word of God tells us we are walking into dangerous times in history when many will fall away. We must not be persuaded by the trends of this world. Remember, God wiped out a whole generation and saved only Noah and his family. The majority of this generation will not make it. But a minority are living holy lives, led by the Spirit of God, willing to walk in Jesus' footsteps and trying to reach others for Him. What is the key to living with right motivation? Do everything as to the Lord and not unto men. Even though we hear this statement often, the real meaning comes when we interpret it practically. It is said that if we do anything for 21 days, we will have established a habit. Let me suggest, then, that for the next 21 days, no matter what you are asked to do, you say to yourself, I am doing it for the Lord. I am doing it for the Lord. Watch how this becomes part of your thinking and part of your life. Why should we think about heaven? Because it is the paycheck Paul said he was looking for when he wrote in 2 Timothy 4, verse 8, There is in store for me the crown of righteousness. Heaven is not our motivation, as the older brother was motivated by the thought of his reward and not by love for his father. But we will find joy in thinking about heaven as we serve our heavenly Father in love. Isaiah prophesied in chapter 40, verse 10, See, the sovereign Lord comes with power. See, His reward is with Him. Daniel was pulled out of his homeland, put into prison, given a job, then misunderstood. He had no wife or children. His life was one of giving and serving, giving and serving. He was thrown into the lion's den but kept on serving. Kings came and went, and the kingdom of Babylon changed hands. Daniel had to prove himself again and again. At the very end of the book, when Daniel had become an old man, an angel appeared to him and told him, It's in chapter 12, verse 13, Go your way till the end you will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance. Why in the last part of this faithful old man's life did God send His angel to tell him these words? I do not know, but I suspect that Daniel, in all the ups and downs of his life, and after all his troubling visions of the end times, had something on his mind. Someday he may have thought to himself, This is all going to be over. This is not final. This is just a short time that I have to walk through. So when the angel spoke to him, it affirmed his convictions. And Paul, in the final stages of his life, told Timothy he knew there was a crown reserved for him. That knowledge kept him going so that he could say confidently there in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 17, Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Think about heaven and everything you have to deal with each day. Think, this is not the end. There is much more. This is only a short time that I am walking through. The Lord has promised us through his word that the end will be better than the beginning. Do not lose heart. Take him at his word. Chapter 7 Bringing Our Hearts Back Into Focus I plopped down in an empty chair in the terminal at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and heaved a big sigh. I had sixteen days of non-stop traveling and speaking behind me and now had two hours between plane connections to catch my breath. Usually I do not mind waiting a while in the terminal. I enjoy watching people, but on this day I was tired of it. Why am I doing this? I asked myself. What's it all about, anyway? I was exhausted from sleeping in strange hotel beds with pillows that seemed to grow harder every night. Even the hot chili powder I brought with me to spice up my food had run out. After pouring my heart out to groups all over the country, I was drained and angry with the world. I was even angry with my office staff for booking all these speaking engagements. I had approved the meetings, of course, but it felt better to shift the blame away from myself. I walked over to a payphone and dialed the Gospel for Asia office in Dallas. I do not even recall who answered the phone. This is K.P., I said tersely. I just want to say one thing. Do not book any meetings ever again unless you check with me directly first. When I hung up I felt worse than ever. Don't these people understand I'm not a machine, I said to myself aloud. I'm only a human being. As I wallowed in my self-pity, I knew I had to get up and go on no matter how I felt, and there was a plane to catch. But how was I to find the strength to continue? None of us remains the same in our enthusiasm and commitment. If we do not feed continually on the things of the Lord, His word and His presence, we cannot hope to finish the race. You may have begun your walk with the Lord with wholehearted enthusiasm. Ready to die for the cause of the lost world. As followers of Jesus, after all, our purpose in life is not to build an organization, attain financial security, be loved or respected, or remembered for noble deeds. What really matters is what Jesus said in the Great Commission, focusing our hearts on reaching this generation with the Gospel. But as time went by, certain things began to eat at that purpose. The distractions and cares of the world. Your own personal problems, discouragement, fears, the enticements of your friends. Suddenly you find yourself looking for a way to get out of the battle. Maybe your Christian life is just not challenging enough. Maybe it no longer seems worth investing your life in. Maybe when you first made your commitment, the leaders in your church or Bible study were on fire for the Lord and really helped you grow. But now that you have known them longer, you see areas of compromise. Shifting the blame, just as I did at the airport, is an easy way out. I've seen this happen in many organizations and many lives. What is actually happening here? Over a period of time, we can lose our focus. God told the children of Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 2, Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these 40 years to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. God allows adverse circumstances for a reason. Whether they be weaknesses, people we work with who rub us the wrong way, decisions we must make that go against our emotions, unfulfilled expectations, misunderstandings, ingratitude, loss of our rights, shattered hopes. Suddenly in the midst of our labors for his kingdom, God takes us and says, You are in the wilderness. I want to see what will keep you going. When your emotions run dry, when your feelings are gone, and there is nothing left to hold on to but bare facts, will you stay with me? As I wallowed in the muck of my self-pity at O'Hare airport that day, I had one of those rare encounters with the Lord right there at the gate. It was as if time stopped for a few moments. I heard a voice in my heart asking me, Who asked you to do all these things? Didn't I tell you that my yoke is easy and my burden is light? Who made it so hard? Spiritually, I realized I was dry inside. I had been so busy in my service for the Lord that I had lost sight of the Lord whom I was serving. I no longer had the continual outpouring of Christ's strength that Paul talked about. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Lord, I said, I know what you are telling me is true. I am so depressed and tired and weak, but Lord, I want you to help me. At this point, the ticket counter had opened for passengers to check in and get their boarding passes. I could see the gate behind. It was just beginning to open. Soon I would walk through that doorway and board the plane. Suddenly, as I looked at it, the Lord painted a wonderful picture before my mind's eye. A few weeks earlier, I had finished reading The Last Battle, the final book in C.S. Lewis's classic allegorical series, The Chronicles of Narnia. In them, Lewis tells the story of the adventures of eight English children in the land of Narnia with Aslan, the great lion who portrays a type of Christ. The Last Battle recounts the end of the age for Narnia. As the children watch through a doorway, the old world is destroyed before their eyes, and another land opens up before them. It seems to them almost exactly like the old, yet different somehow. Didgeridoo, one of the older children, explains it to the rest. The Narnia you were thinking of was not the real Narnia. They had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here. You need not mourn over Narnia. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the door, and of course it is as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream. Lewis concludes the book and the series this way. He writes, And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story, all their life in this world, and all their adventures in Narnia, had only been the cover and title page. Now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before. As I recalled these final scenes from the book, it was time for me to board my plane. Then the fog of my self-pity vanished. I could see clearly once again. I realized that all my aches and pains, my schedule, the bland food, the hard pillows, the strange beds, all these were just a shadow of what was yet to come. My everyday life here on earth was not the real thing. It was temporary and would soon pass. I looked through the gate and thought about the door the children had gone through to leave the Shadow Lands, as Lewis called them, and enter the real Narnia. It was time for me to live again, not for the illusion but for the reality. That gate to my flight was a door to that reality. If I would choose to accept what was set before me, I'd jump to my feet. I knew I had the strength of the Lord to face the tasks before me. Nothing could stop me now. I marched straight for that boarding gate, through the threshold, and on to my next connection. The attitude of my heart was changed. I was no longer running on empty. Once again the strength I was receiving was not my own, it was from the Lord, and the meetings that followed were different somehow. I could tell that despite the inconveniences, the tiredness and the discomfort, my heart was in focus once again. Within the past decade the world has experienced events that no one dreamed about. We've stood by in amazement. While whole countries were reshaped practically overnight, world systems crumbled into the pages of history books, and political maps changed faster than cartographers could redraw them. For all this to happen, there must have been a tremendous confrontation of spiritual forces in the unseen world. We can see the effects of it on the cutting edge of missions. The hand of God is moving in an unprecedented way. People are hungry for the living God in a way that we did not see even 10 or 20 years ago. We may not understand all that's taking place in the spiritual realm, but this one thing is clear. The coming of Jesus Christ is very near. Right now the possibility to reach our generation with the gospel is better than at any other time in history. The opportunities are unlimited, and the church has the resources, but what I see happening in Christian circles concerns me deeply. Believers are being bombarded from all sides to invest their time, efforts, and finances in everything but a lost and dying world. Material things, trips, social gatherings, building projects, the comfort of their families, all these and more may come at the expense of souls who are lost for eternity. And believers who have already committed their lives to reaching the world with the gospel are in danger of losing their focus. When emotions are down and times are difficult, it's easy to focus on self and want out of the battle. Ultimately, two major forces influence what happens on earth, the living God and the powers of darkness, Satan and his demons. The Lord, through his mercy, is seeking to bring as many people as possible to repentance so they might know him and reign with him forever. Satan, on the other hand, is seeking to take as many people as possible with him into hell. One of the most successful ways he does this is by causing us believers to forget our purpose. He wants to get us so wrapped up in who we are and what we are doing day to day that we are no longer able to answer the questions why am I here and what am I living for? Why are we here on earth? What is the purpose behind our lives? It is for the multiplied millions of people, more than two billion of them in fact, who have not yet been reached with the gospel and are on their way to hell. They're not rats or snakes or monkeys, but human beings like you and me and just as precious in the sight of God. If you were inside your home and suddenly heard someone outside yelling, your house is on fire, get out, get out, would you stand there and talk it over with your family? Of course not. You would find any way possible to get out. The situation in the world is much worse than a house on fire. The souls of more than two billion people are at stake and we have an opportunity to take countless ones with us to heaven instead of allowing them to die in their sins. So how can we live comfortably for ourselves while millions slip into an eternal hell? We can do it because the enemy has managed to replace our focus on eternity with a focus on other things. Gail Irwin, one of the board members for Gospel for Asia and a very dear friend, shared with me a modern-day parable that sheds light on the condition of the church today. On a dangerous seacoast, where shipwrecks often occurred, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves, they went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved and others in the surrounding area wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little life-saving station grew. Some of the members of the life-saving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge for those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. The life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as sort of a club. Fewer members were now interested in going out to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do the work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in the club's decorations. There was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin, and some of them had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower built outside the club, where the victims of the shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside. After the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's life-saving activities because they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted on life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. They did. As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another life-saving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but now most of the people drown. Our purpose in life, according to the obvious moral of this parable, does not consist of hobnobbing with our friends, going to school, graduating, finding a job, getting married, having children, sending them to school, and so on. If we see only these parts of life, we will bog down continually. We need to see beyond all that. When William Carey heard the strong call of the Lord to go to India in the late eighteenth century, his wife Dorothy resisted his decision and refused to go with him. He knew he could not disobey God, so he chose to go on even if she would not. The ship pulled away from the dock and sailed away, leaving her behind. Then something on board broke down and the ship had to return to port for repairs. During the delay, Dorothy reconsidered and chose to go to India with her husband. Later, however, she lost all ability to cope in India and suffered a mental breakdown. Carey was left to care for the children alone. William Carey spent many years in India serving his Lord, and they were not easy ones. He paid an extremely high price to follow Jesus. His list of personal problems went on and on, but he saw beyond the pain and remembered the purpose of his life. Carey, whose challenge to the church helped to found the Baptist Society for propagating the gospel among the heathen in 1792, later the Baptist Missionary Society, and with his extensive contributions in linguistics and Bible translation, is known today as the father of modern missions. Throughout the Bible, human beings are compared to sheep. Do you remember what one of the predominant characteristics of sheep is? They stray quite a bit. If left to our own devices, and if we do not watch our hearts diligently, we too will always head the wrong way. It may take months or even years, but eventually our actions will follow the direction of our hearts. We will find every reason under the sun to justify our actions and choices until finally we are out of the battle, no longer serving or even following the Lord. They say cars are designed with a built-in obsolescence factor to run well for a few years, then begin to break down and become obsolete. Manufacturers hope the consumer will return to the dealership after a few years and begin the process all over again. In the human heart, there is a built-in obsolescence factor too. It does not matter how powerful and influential you are, how much education you have, how self-controlled or holy you consider yourself. Your heart, if you do not guard it, will break down. I have seen this principle played out too often in individuals' lives and in the church at large. Many churches have drifted from the heart of the one they call Lord and Master. Now, instead of making it a priority to rescue the lost millions of the world from a Christless eternity, their programs revolve around themselves. They put their own agenda, whether buildings or staff or special programs, as first priority in their budgets. Missions falls somewhere down the list. I met with a couple recently who talked with me about their calling as missionaries to France. After sharing in churches for two years, they were still unable to raise even 70 percent of the support they needed to enable them to get to France. Proverbs 24, verses 11 and 12 warns us, Rescue those being led away to death, hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, But we knew nothing about this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done? Not long ago I spoke in a church that was involved to a limited extent in missions. After the meeting, I had a bite to eat with the couple who had been our contact for this meeting. Our conversation lasted well into the night. You know, Brother K.P., the husband told me, I never really understood what's happening in the church with regard to missions until I read your books. Our church offers solid Bible-based teaching. In fact, it's one of the best Bible-teaching churches in the region. But with all this knowledge, I'm sad to tell you we're spending more money on our own social programs than on missions. I do not want to make a big case out of this or pass judgment on anyone. Much less the church at large. But I do want to ask one question. Have the hearts of the members of the body of Christ wandered so far from the reality of what is happening that they are impossible to bring back? Our tendency as horizontally oriented humans is to forget the war going on behind the scenes and interpret everything in our lives through the filter of our five senses—what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Anything that has to do with these senses is our first approach to solving problems. Circumstances dictate how we feel and what we do, and we think in terms of ourselves rather than in terms of the purpose God has given us as believers. We have strayed from the focus of our hearts. But we are not created for time. We are created for eternity. Our lives right now are little classrooms in which we are learning to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Romans chapter 8 verse 29. And why did Jesus come into the world? What did he live for? It says so there in the Bible in Luke chapter 19 verse 10, to seek and to save what was lost. Everything else in life becomes incidental when we gain this focus. Clothes, food, hairstyle, makeup, bank account, education, degrees, plans, ambition, spouse, children—none of these can possibly be the most important thing in life. The more we become like Christ, the more we, like him, will make world evangelism the top priority in our lives. Shankar, a native missionary in North India, was born in a leper colony to parents who were themselves stricken with leprosy. In order to save Shankar from contracting the disease, Brother Thomas, one of the Gospel for Asian native missionary leaders, raised him in a home he had built for the children of lepers. Shankar received a good education and with it a chance to make a better life for himself. But during his time with Brother Thomas, Shankar gave his life to the Lord and received a call to full-time ministry. Just before Shankar's graduation from Bible school, he told Brother Thomas, I will work among my own people, the lepers, and tell them how the Lord has changed my life. I will tell them how he can save them. Today, Shankar has laid down everything he has gained, his education and chance for a better life, to live and work as a missionary in the leper colonies of India. He did not lose his focus, but set his heart on being a follower of Jesus. I urge you to examine your own heart. Look at the things you do and the activities you are involved in for the sake of the Lord. Ask yourself honestly, why am I doing this? Search your heart. Be real with yourself. Apart from the things of the Lord, I believe there are two things we value most in our lives. One, we want to feel important, and two, we want to be part of something important. No one wants to waste his or her life. But when we are involved in any work for the Lord, it becomes difficult at times to keep sight of how our investment in His kingdom is making a difference. Satan can use those busy times in our lives to breed discouragement and bitterness and render us ineffective in the work of the Lord. We need to see the big picture of what the Lord is doing so that the enemy will not use our immediate struggles, frustrations, disappointments, or the demands on our time to cause us to become discouraged. Let us not become sidetracked or myopic, our vision fogged. I plead with you to remember that life on earth, no matter where you are, has its struggles, conflicts, and discouragements. Ask the Lord for the grace and maturity to look beyond the immediate, which tends to take precedence over everything else, to the lives of those you are influencing through your obedience and service to Him. Joseph had done nothing wrong and walked in purity and commitment. He was obedient to his parents and his brothers. What did he do wrong to be sold into slavery and thrown into prison for 13 years? What did he do wrong to lose everything he called his own? The Bible gives no reason. Those 13 years were crucial, though, for Joseph to be able to reign as governor over Egypt and save the Israelites and his own family from starvation. The body of Christ reminds me of an elephant. Did you know that the elephant is the only creature who does not know how big his body is? His eyes are too small, and he has two huge ears sticking out right behind them, so he walks around like a little animal led by a small boy with a stick. We are not able to see all that results from our efforts for the Lord, but let me encourage you to pursue what He has given you to do. What you are doing is more than just work. We can be encouraged, knowing by faith that God, in His mercy, is able to use His body to make an incredible impact on the world. During the heat of the Gulf War, I was as glued to the news as anyone. I kept my radio on as much as possible, straining for any new piece of information. Usually, I spend my early morning hours preparing for my daily radio broadcast, but during the Gulf War, I had a hard time concentrating. As believers committed to reaching the lost, you and I are given more information about what is going on in the world today than ever before. We know more about Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other religious groups than the generations of believers who went before us. But let me ask you a question. How seriously do you take this information? The war we deal with on a daily basis, the battle that rages for the souls of men and women like you and me, is infinitely more serious than any war on earth. When a Scud missile hit a military barracks during the war, killing twenty-eight soldiers and wounding hundreds, America was shaken by the news. It shocked and moved the White House. The media could talk of nothing else, but does it move us to think that more than one billion Muslims living in the world today do not know the love of Christ, that eighty thousand people are slipping into hell every twenty-four hours? I remember a particular victory won by the anti-Iraq forces. After hearing the details, I walked calmly back to my desk to resume my studies. Then the conviction of the Lord came on me so strongly that I had to sit down. The reality of what I had heard hit me with full force. It was more than jet fighters and a few missiles. It was the fate of thousands of Muslims whom I saw suddenly, as the Lord did, desperately lost. Is it nothing to you that these people are dying and going to hell? the Lord asked me. Then I realized that I had not thought about the eternal implications of the news I had heard, or spent even one minute to try and pray that these people would have a chance to come to the Lord. Although I had heard news of the deaths of some of them, still I had gone about my business. The Lord spoke strongly to my heart that day. I could only repent of my attitude. Somewhere along the way, many of us have become so familiar with certain kinds of information that our hearts have become hardened and cold. Here are the questions we should ask ourselves. Does my heart still beat with the same tenderness and passion for the dying world? Are there tears in my eyes for the lost and dying millions? When I hear news of the world around me, does my heart break for those who are going to hell? Do I get up in the morning to spend time with the Lord and pray for the lost? I have to come continually before the Lord and ask, Lord, am I getting too used to it all? Do I simply get up before congregations and say the same things over and over? Or are the burden and vision still fresh in my heart? This is the end of side one. Please stop your machine at this point and turn the cassette over to hear side two.