Compassion for the lost is a high and beautiful motive for missionary labor. Without it we lose the sweet humility of sharing a treasure we have freely received. But we have seen that compassion for people must not be detached from passion for the glory of God. John Dawson, a leader in Youth With a Mission, gives an additional reason why this is so. He points out that a strong feeling of love for "the lost" or "the world" is a very difficult experience to sustain and is not always recognizable when it comes. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost." You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed through a photograph, let alone a nation or race or something as vague as "all the lost people."
Don't wait for a feeling of love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. The Bible says in Ephesians 6:7-8: "With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free."
Humanity does not deserve the love of God any more than you or I do. We should never be Christian humanists, taking Jesus to poor sinful people, reducing Jesus to some kind of product that will better their lot. People deserve to be damned, but Jesus, the suffering Lamb of God, deserves the reward of His suffering.
I have often thought of my love for people far from God. It is really that I deeply love people, even when they hurt me, want nothing to do with me, or overwhelm me; I have an undeniable love for people. Of course, sometimes, many times it is hard to show it or feel like I love certain people, but when I think about what a life is worth and how much God values each person I cannot look at a person without compassion. It is in those remarkably unbearable moments of pride and selfishness that I forget what real love is. Love is not self seeking, it believes all things and hopes all things. Night after night my soul longs for people to know God, to be restored. It is not my love but the love I receive from God that I am able to beg Him for the salvation of others. With a great hope I constantly go before Him and request that He make Himself known to people I know very well, those I've just met, and the unnamed.
The last paragraph of this Piper excerpt reminded me of a great truth: Grace is that we get what we do not deserve, but what Christ does. Jesus deserves every single soul that repents and turns to Him in faith; we do not deserve the salvation and complete joy that He gives. I look around me in this world and see a generation that just takes. Believing that it deserves everything that it lays its eyes on, it steals and rapes the world of humility, conviction, and love... real love. Its plain to see that this generation is seeking itself, so what can we offer it when it is blind to want or need? That is why, here in Australia, there is much apathy. There is no desperation, at least an apparent one. But a starving soul is screaming in pain, buried deep beneath the complacency. How can we remove the rubble? With a love not my own.
