Outlasting your Outreach

This is the 2nd piece of the 3 part series. The focus here is to address outreach vision. The title is fitting because it connotes that the individual who did the outreach continues thinking in the same vein afterwards. In sum, the heart still is burdened for the lost long after the specific outreach event is long gone.

The reason why outreach fails I am thoroughly convinced has little to do with how the specific outreach was organized. Now, don't get me wrong. If you go whipping pamphlets in rage at people's heads, and don't bother listening first and only desire for you yourself to be heard, then your results will most likely be failure. But for most other situations, 9 times out of 10 the reason for failure isn't the particular method employed. It's rather what Jesus always said, the issue is the heart.

Now when I say that the issue is the heart, I'm not talking about the heart of the person who is being witnessed to, I'm rather talking about the heart of the one who is witnessing. The Christians' job isn't to change the other's heart, rather their job is to make sure their own heart is faithful to God and a true witness carrying the pure light of God. God's job is to change other people's heart. We simply are to do godly witnessing and leave the results up to God. Our concern is our own heart.

So how is your own heart? Where is the drive to witness? Why do Christians witness, and why should Christians witness? Why did Jesus witness? Jesus came to earth, because the Father wanted to enter into relationship with humanity, and wished to redeem man and bring him out of darkness. God loved man, and so the Father sent His sent. Jesus loved us, and commanded us to tell others about His love. Jesus spoke about how the Holy Spirit would empower us so that we could be godly witnesses.

The reason why God came down to man, is wrapped up in how God viewed man. We were sheep without a shepherd. It is a tender love to love clueless sheep. Lost sheep that didn't know which end was up. And still despite our backwardness and our sin, the Father came to us. Lost sheep don't know their way home. Therefore God came to us.

He came because of our need. We couldn't do it without Him. The worst thing about us sheep, is that we were so lost we didn't even recognize our sickness. We wallowed in sin for so long, we didn't remember that there was a God searching and seeking us.

Jesus' passionate pursuit of us doesn't diminish in strength. He pursued us because He loved us. So will we love others with the same intense love? Will we see lost sheep as Jesus saw them, and seek to be a part in bringing them home, or just judge them with venom? Our duty is simply to love fellow man, and tell them about our Father's great love story.

How much love does your heart have for lost sheep? Do you even seek to associate with them? Do you want to reach out when your organization has an outreach event, and forget about God's command at all other times? If we want to be about Jesus' heart, we must be about the lost. After all, the lost were the reason Jesus came!

Mark 2:16-17 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, "Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?" 17 And hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."