If you are like me, I’m sure you have relatives, friends, and acquaintances that come through your mind from time to time, and when they do, it brings a moment of sadness over the fact that they show no interest in the saving gospel of Christ. There are some people that our hearts deeply groan for, desiring that they might come to a knowledge of the Savior. Oh! if He would only reveal Himself to them. We feel so helpless because we know that salvation is totally in His hands, and not in ours. But for all those who know the experience that I am talking about, let’s take comfort in these two things.
The first thing is this: Our Lord said in James 5:16 that“the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”We know that there is only one Righteous Man - Christ Jesus the Lord! But in Him, the scripture says, “as He is, so are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17) And in His name, we can make our request to God, and He said He would hear us! The most effectual, fervent thing that we could do for those that we are concerned about is, bring them before the throne of the Savior in prayer.
The second thing is: Our Lord said in 1 Corinthians 1:21 that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” That means, as long as the gospel is being preached there is hope! Only the Lord knows who are His, but if the Lord has burdened our heart for a particular person, and opens the door for that person to hear the gospel of Christ preached, then that soul has been place directly in the path that God uses to call His people to Himself.
So may our comfort and exhortation be, while there is time, while there is breath in our bodies, while the gospel is still being preached, let’s tell the ones that we love and care about who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Let’s invite them to come and worship God with us. Send a message from Sermon Audio to them or copy a CD for them. And then let’s effectually, fervently pray to The Father that if He is pleased, He might bless it to their hearts.