In the five minutes it takes to read this letter, 535 people on planet earth will die. By the most generous estimates, 53 of those people are born again and will be ushered into the glorious presence of their Savior. However, 482 will not be born again and will enter into an eternity of hell in agony and torment, separated from the presence of God. What is even sadder is that the Lamb who sits on the throne will not receive glory from their praising him as their redeemer.
That is 482 people going to hell while you read this! We know that God loves the lost – he gave his Son to bear our sins on the cross of Calvary. Likewise, he cared by giving the task to his church to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. He has empowered us for this mission and promised to be with us always, even to the ends of the earth.
So why is there such apathy about the Great Commission? We had a GCR task force that asked churches to give a measly 1 percent more to the CP, yet many churches will even buck at that request. Our real problem is not the economy, it is the hearts of God’s people and the leadership of our denomination and churches. There is almost no call to live radically for the kingdom of God. I have wondered why our denominational leaders rarely call our people to sacrifice for the cause of the kingdom of our Savior. Why do they almost apologize for asking for money for missions? Why do our pastors not take leadership in the Great Commission instead of leaving it to the ladies of the church?
SBC Lottie Moon giving averages about $10 per person for the whole year. This is a shame. We could have a foreign mission force of not 5,000 but 50,000 overnight if Southern Baptists would learn to sacrifice just a little.
But the call to radically give for Christ rarely goes out. Our giving is too often lukewarm. And revival is not happening in our midst. Is it because our leaders have grown accustomed to the American Dream lifestyle and can’t call the church to sacrifice because they don’t model it themselves? And yet there are those few precious saints who have rearranged their entire lives so that they can live meagerly and give abundantly for the kingdom of God. But don’t look for too many of these people in the leadership of most churches or our denomination today.
This is not a call to a vow of poverty, but to repent of the sin of materialism. We all know this is a problem – for someone else. But we still embrace the American Dream, forgetting that greed is idolatry – and God hates idolatry. This is also a call to give, not just from our excess or disposable income, but from a life rearranged to sacrifice for the good news that a Savior has come to take away the sins of the whole world.
If only 482 people had known that Savior five minutes ago.
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