The Top 3 Places That Need the Gospel

Across the Tracks

You will be my witnesses … in Samaria …

To many of the Jews at this time, Samaria was off limits. They considered the Samaritan people compromising half-breeds (half Jew/half Gentile) and did their best to avoid them. That’s why the Samaritan woman was shocked when Jesus talked to her in John 4:7-9. But Jesus shattered the racial prejudices of his time with a simple question and a powerful extension of grace to this promiscuous and curious Samaritan woman.

Jesus calls his disciples to do the same by taking the good news to Samaria. But, as my friend Derwin Gray seriously.

What’s it going to take for us? Yes, we need to reach our own communities, but we also need to go “across the tracks” in some way to share the Gospel with those we aren’t like and may not normally like. Racial prejudice, economic separation, etc. are roadblocks that must be obliterated in light of the cross and empty tomb. Jesus died to obliterate them (Ephesians 2:14) and calls us to walk in the new reality he died to create.

I thank God for a church in the suburbs that reached across the tracks to the tough part of the inner city to reach my family for Jesus! The members of this church had a heart for their own “Jerusalem” but were willing to reach into their version of “Samaria” (my hood) with the message of Jesus!

Are you reaching across the tracks in your city in some way? Are you building relationships, serving the broken and sharing Jesus in your version of Samaria?

Across the World

You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.

You can do this in three ways: Pray, Give and Go! I encourage you to do all three! Pray for global missions in your family prayers! Pray for the persecuted church! Pray for the Gospel to saturate unreached people groups! Pray for missionaries!

Give financially specifically toward global missions! Make it part of your pattern and passion! This will keep missions on your radar and give you a bigger heart for God’s global plan.

As my friend Dave Gibson always says, “If you have a heart to reach America for Christ, you maybe have 5 percent of God’s heart because his heart is for the world!”

And, finally, GO! Go on a short-term, evangelistically-focused mission trip and watch God break your heart for the lost. Some of you may even be called to go full-time into missions. This is a huge and amazing privilege, and I am convinced there is no higher privilege than to take the good news to the ends of the earth. We need to re-heroize missionaries in the church, especially to the next generation.

So let’s get going. Let’s take the gospel of Jesus across the street, across the tracks and across the world!  

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