🏳️‍🌈✝️ Seeking the Lost

The Apostolic Faith Church

01/16/2018 

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For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. – Luke 19:10

 

My heart gave a lurch of fear as I observed the open car door and the empty seat. Where was Jeremy? I ran to the other side of the car. No sign of my toddler. Instantly, fear settled around my heart with a vise-like grip. How could he have disappeared so quickly? I had carried his sleeping sister into the house, intending to come right back outside to bring him in. The phone had rung just as I headed out the door, but the conversation had lasted no more than a minute. How could Jeremy have disappeared in those few moments?

 

We lived on a dirt road in a rural area—I knew no car had gone by. I ran around the side of the house. I looked up and down the road, my anxiety mounting. Finally, I dashed back into the house and made a brief, panicky call to my mother, who lived nearby. My message was urgent: “Come quick! Jeremy is lost!”

 

That heart-stopping moment was many years ago. My son is twenty-five years old now, and has no recollection of the dreadful morning vividly imprinted on my memory. The ten minutes that elapsed before I found him contentedly examining a bug under a bush in the neighbor’s yard meant nothing to him, but I will never forget them. 

 

I have often thought since then about the urgency that gripped me that morning. Nothing was important to me except the fact that my son was lost. Everything else disappeared into the background as searching for him became the only thought in my mind. 

 

That is the same urgency I want to have in my heart when I consider those who are spiritually lost. When I look at their situations from an eternal perspective, souls around me—even people I dearly love—are in a far more precarious and “lost” condition than Jeremy was. The day will come when all hope of their being found (restored to God) will be gone forever! 

 

Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost, and He wants us to have a part in that mission. 

 

Lord, help me to really comprehend the importance of doing everything in my power to help those who are spiritually lost to be found. Please help me make this a priority in my life!