One hot August day I got a phone call from one of my Corps buddies asking me if I could run over to the emergency room because one of our freshmen had collasped from heat exhaustion. I quickly headed over and when I arrived he was getting an IV to rehydrate him and was doing just fine. The doctor stopped by to check on him and was calmly talking to him when the intercom came on and he heard “Code Blue! Code Blue!.” A man was dying of a heart attack. I don’t think that I even saw the doctor take off, I only saw the curtain flap after he had gone running through it. The dying man took precident over my recovering cadet.
Triage is a concept where in a medical situation you give the person with the greatest need attention first. If you work in an emergency room and different people come in with a stub toe, a small cut, a broken arm, and a gun shoot wound to their artery the last person would obviously get treatment first. If you treated anyone else first the gunshot victim would bleed to death as he waited.
Its an obvious concept in the world, but unfortunately not one that is adopted by followers of Christ when it comes to the souls of men. Currently 2 billion people are gunshot victims quickly bleeding to death with no one tending to their needs. While we minister to the genuine problems of the body of Christ and the the lost who have access to the gospel, we almost completely ignore the unreached.
They are dying at a rate of 45,000 people a day never ever having had access to the good news of the salvation found in our Lord Jesus! The Lord loves His church, as do I, but we are overly concerned with ourselves as billions perish world wide. On average we give 95% of money to ourselves, 4.5% to ministering to the reached, and .5% ministering to the unreached. Need should tell us that we need to prayerfully reconsider our priorities and do much more to rescue those held captive by the god of this world, who have no way of hearing of the freedom Jesus offers. We need to take stock of the world and rethink who’s needs are the greatest and require immediate attention.
How will you reorient your life to see the gospel get to those who do not have it? You can pray for the Lord to raise up laborers, give to those trying to reach them, or even consider going yourself. May the Lord draw us near to Him and give us His heart and priority for the world. He is so worthy!
