Life Up Your Eyes

Today I read that 6% of Orange County is born again Christian. It broke my heart.

After the Jesus People movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s and 50 years of Mega Churches dominating the landscape…6%. We have been weighed, we have been measured, and found wanting.

I obviously began wondering, what did we miss? How is this even possible? Who and what are we not paying attention to?

But then I turned my heart to what God was saying….He wants these people to find him. One of our values as a church is that God desires all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

But why?

The #1 human need is to belong; to be known and accepted in intimate relationships. The kind of relationships where you can talk all night or be silent and you still get to know each other. The kind of family with blow up arguments and crying laughter at a table…but that still stays a family.

Imagine a scenario where you had multiple children safe in your home and one is kidnapped and taken from you. If you went and woke up all your kids and told them, “we all need to go and look for your lost brother, now!!” Then they lie back down, or said they needed to get “fed” first, they wanted to pray about it and see if God wants them to go look, that it wasn’t their “gift” to track down lost people….How do you think you would feel as the father of that house?

God desires to bring his lost kids back home. It is his #1 priority. That’s why Jesus command to make disciples is so important.

We aren’t just out teaching people how to do “stuff”, we are teaching people how to obey Jesus, their new head of household.

A new Father in Heaven
A new brother in Jesus
A new guide and teacher in the Holy Spirit

A brand new identity.
A brand new belonging.

This is why Jesus says we must be born again to see the Kingdom of Heaven. He wants everyone to BELONG, to BELIEVE, and to BECOME like him.

What’s all this motivated by? LOVE.

But not the wispy, limp-wristed, run away at the first sign of trouble kind of love. The kind of love that died for you, the kind of love that lives for you in the resurrection.

This is the kind of news that needs to be shared. Jesus loves you and that’s not ever changing. But if you experience that kind of love, you certainly will.

So let’s reach the lost.

Yes, our generation is leaving the church. Yes, our generation is basically choosing pagan and hedonistic values. BUT SO WERE THE ROMANS WHEN THE GOSPEL TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN.

I’m not concerned people are leaving the church, they are just being honest, and we can deal with that. I can deal with honesty.

What concerns me is that we don’t see the abundance of the harvest around us. Lift up your eyes!!! Hedonism and paganism and consumerism will fail this generation.

Are you ready to reap?

Father God, give us workers.