How Can Writers Love the Lost?

Before His Ascension, Jesus told His Disciples to make disciples of all nations. He also said we would receive power from the Holy Spirit to witness for Him in Jerusalem and all Judea, in Samaria and to the ends of the earth, i.e. to anyone and everyone, including to our enemies. The Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’ time hated one another.

Jesus told us to love our neighbor. When asked who our neighbor was, He told a story. He loved stories and so did His audience. He understood how powerful they were.

The story was of the Good Samaritan who helped a Jew, beaten up and left for dead by thieves. Priestly Jews, well aware of the command in Jewish Law to love your neighbor, had passed him by on the other side of the road.

Jesus told Peter, on whom He would build His church,

“If you love me, feed my sheep.”

He wasn’t just thinking just of soup kitchens.

If we are to love the lost, even those who are against us, we have no choice but to reach out to them and feed them.

Our aim has to be to grow the Kingdom, as Jesus did exponentially by:

• witnessing about God,
• acting out of goodness,
• praying, in particular to know the Father’s will.

I have to admit that, when I first came to faith, there was much talk of the Kingdom and I didn’t understand what it meant. I thought it might be heaven. But, then, surely we wouldn’t reach it until we died?

It’s not a place, I’ve discovered, at least not as we usually understand geography. The Kingdom is a feeling, a way of thinking and a lifestyle that is full of gentleness and peace. It’s an attitude that’s non-judgmental, that doesn’t condemn and is forgiving.

In the Kingdom, we trust that God has it.

It’s highly desirable real estate to live in.

What kind of spiritual fodder can we, as writers, deliver to bring people into the Kingdom?

Surely it is the sharing of our personal experiences of what Jesus has done in our lives? Our faith stories have the power to evoke an emotional reaction and evoking emotional reactions is the writer’s stock-in-trade.

It is much more difficult for our readers to brush off or deny a personal story than any theological argument we might present.

Think of the power of the testimony of a man born blind to whom Jesus gave sight. Interrogated by the Pharisees, who were angry that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, the man suffered a barrage of theological questions, that led him to exclaim,

“Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25)

When we tell a personal story, we receive an unexpected bonus. We also get fed: our own faith is reinforced by revisiting the things Jesus has done for us.

Exactly who are the ‘the lost’ we need to reach out to?

They are not just the down-and-outs most of us first think of when hearing the word. They are the arrogant all around us, those who labor under the misapprehension that they can do everything in their own strength.

They are our own kids, brothers, sisters and parents.

We can write for them and to them.

If they were in a burning house, we wouldn’t run out to safety without telling them about the escape route from death that we had found. We wouldn’t abandon them to the flames.

Would we?