Lost People

As Christians, that is what we call people that don't know Jesus as Savior, Lord and friend, right? We call them "lost". Sometimes I think we have a lousy attitude toward the "lost". I know I can anyways. We see or perceive them in a bunch of funny ways. One of the funniest is that we see them as "them" and we are "us". That pretty naturally places a huge dividing line between "us" and "them". We also attribute all kinds of reasons to why they are still "lost". Be it their pride or arrogance, or their stubborness or stupidness or evilness, or laziness, or their indifference. Whatever it is we blame them with it causes us to say things like if they only...fill in the blank..., then they would finally see how right we Christians have been and how lousy their lives have really been without Jesus. Then we begin to imagine the sweet scene when they finally are humbled and broken before God and their lives radically change and they begin to act more like you and me. Oh, we might not say it so bluntly, but in a very candy coated sweet way it gets said never the less. I've seen it in myself and in others. Our intentions are good but to a world that needs to know God's love, we instead come across as arrogant and dare I say as jerks. The world does not need to see that we are right. They need to see that we care about them enough to become engaged in their lives.

Check out Luke 15 in the Bible and see what God has to say about lost things. As you read try and hear the heart of a God that longs for the lost to be found, and for the disoriented to find their way.

I'll leave you with this thought from author Jim Henderson. He reminded us that "The Lost" don't have a book that tells them to go find a church but the Church has a book that tells us to go find them. Hmmmm...Interesting.