The vivid experience of sorrow felt driving down Independence Avenue gripped my heart with untold anguish. Tears soon blurred my view of the desolate and decaying street, as an unknown fury began to rise up out of my belly. Anguish had turned to weeping and weeping to anger; anger had then led my weary heart into groaning intercession with the Almighty.
I cleared my eyes and continued to survey the avenue. Prostitutes stood far from discreet at various vantage points, drunks stumbled disarrayed throughout the littered alleys, mothers dragged along numerous children who since birth were sentenced to the cycling mentality of poverty, and at every corner I drove by there stood a church.
God’s grief and longing for humanity had become mingled with my own angered discontent with society’s brokenness and bondage. I began to cry out to God, asking Him why He was doing nothing about the state of my city, and why He continued to leave the people hurting and without a Shepherd. My fury at the injustice I was viewing, lead me to come all but close to accusing God of doing nothing to save the lost.
And that’s when He spoke, gently whispering into the depths of my being, “Child, where is My body? I can do nothing apart from My church. She is My hands and feet. She is My voice that speaks. Where is My church? I am in the midst of My city doing My work, but who is there partnering with Me? She is a spider without legs. No change can be wrought and no souls can be saved, without the hands and feet of My body going forth with My name.”
I sat silently stunned; left unable to move, unable to speak, and unable to even weep. When I got home I opened a phone book and began to count the number of churches and ministries throughout the city. I stopped at 943.
I closed the phone book and prayed. I asked God to send forth laborers to His vineyard, and to give us a heart-you and I-for the lost ones He loves.
The other day I stumbled across a ministry that shed a glimpse of hope within my soul. The ministry is called the Pocket Testament League. Their main goal is to lead souls to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and to equip others to do the same. Not only does the site offer free devotionals to strengthen and encourage the believer, they also offer the necessary evangelism tools that we as believers need to be His hands and feet to a lost and dying world. The ministry encourages every believer to carry a pocket sized gospel of John, to daily read and share with those we come into contact with. One believer with God’s heart for the lost and adequate training in evangelism, can be the tool He needs to set just one soul free.
Let’s be His hands and feet.
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