It’s easy to get lost and not even realize it or what you need to do in order to be found. Ultimately, our job as “inviters” is to challenge people to accept the truth about Jesus (“believe”) and then to re-orient their lives to that truth (“repent”).
When lost people are cynical about the claims of Jesus, the best response is to invite them to come and experience Jesus and decide for themselves. In our world today, surprisingly enough, that means inviting them to spend time with Jesus’s followers, who embody Jesus’s presence and carry out Jesus’s will in the world.
Our investment in the lives of lost people really accelerates when we intentionally develop authentic friendships with them and, in the process, listen long enough to discover their stories. After that, God asks us to discern their next step and then offer whatever resources we can to help them take that step.
We gain the right to be heard when we choose to invest in the precious lost people around us by doing good deeds to enrich their lives! God saved us and empowers us to do good deeds for both the lost and the found, for when people see our good works, they can’t help but…
When you are truly burdened for lost people, it’s only natural to pray for them, that they would be rescued by God and receptive to His Word. Even though we can’t overcome their barriers to faith by our schemes or strategies, we refuse to become hopeless or cynical, for God can do the impossible in…
If we want to reach lost people, we need a plan. The plan must start with prayer – prayer that God will motivate us to reach people, that He will give us opportunities to speak up, that He will help us find the right words, and that we’ll say them boldly and clearly.
Before we can effectively reach lost people we need to prepare ourselves by directly engaging the lost people around us, learning to look beneath the surface to see their needs, and opening our hearts to be moved by what we see, just as Jesus did.