Focus: Go For Souls

Text: Lk.9:6

"They DEPARTED and WENT THROUGH the towns, preaching the gospel and healing EVERYWHERE."

The assignment of the church has everything to do with souls. Until we have succeeded in bringing souls to Christ through the preaching of the gospel, it cannot be said that we have succeeded in our calling. A church or Christian that has succeeded in everything else except win souls has really failed in the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The command of Christ is not really about 'going,' but about preaching and teaching. But you cannot preach or teach if you do not go. You have to go; you have to reach out. You have to go public with your faith. You have to go to where the souls are. It was in going that the four lepers in 2 Kings 7 discovered food and other stuffs, which brought about the fulfillment of Elisha's prophecy of abundance in a land that was ravaged with scarcity and austerity.

We can see from our text that after Jesus empowered and employed His disciples in the work of spreading the gospel, they immediately "departed" and "went everywhere" preaching and healing. Let me emphasize that they did not only preach, but they also healed the sick everywhere they went. The gospel involves both proclamation and demonstration. And proclaiming and demonstrating only take place when you go. In Matthew 28, Jesus says, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations." In Mark 16, Jesus says, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature… And they WENT FORTH, and preached EVERY WHERE, the Lord working with them." The Lord Jesus gave His disciples a working plan or job description. He says, "You shall be witnesses unto me both in JERUSALEM, and in ALL JUDAEA, and in SAMARIA, and unto the UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH" (Act.1:8). Instead of spreading their tentacles and breaking into new frontiers, they decided to abide still in Jerusalem. Then the Lord allowed a persecution that chased them away from Jerusalem, except the Apostles. Luke reports, "Therefore they that were scattered abroad WENT EVERY WHERE preaching the word. Then Philip WENT DOWN to the city of SAMARIA, and preached Christ unto them" (Act.8:4-5).

The church must stop entertaining and start evangelizing. It is good to do good works, but it is possible to do good deeds without winning souls into the kingdom of Christ.

Human body without a soul is a corpse. Let us care for souls, not just for the physical or social needs of man. The psalmist says, "No man cared for my soul" (Ps.142:4). An old preacher once said, "If a man has a soul, and he has, and if that soul can be won or lost for eternity, and it can, then the most important thing in the world is to bring a man to Jesus Christ."

Someone noted long ago that the church is the only organization that does not exist for itself, and he is right. We are the living, doing all we can to rescue the dying. We are the saints of God commissioned by Christ to bring sinners to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are the light, and our job is to shine, dispelling the moral darkness of ignorance and sin, and bringing the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, which is in the face of Jesus Christ. We are called both to be winsome and to win soul. John Blanchard captures our problem so well, where he said, "It is one of the greatest tragedies in the church today, that so many Christians are reluctant to witness for Christ and it is an added tragedy that they can find so many excuses for not doing so."

I pray that we understand the plight of the souls we seek to save or win. Paul says, "But if our gospel be HID, it is HID to them that are LOST: In whom the GOD OF THIS WORLD hath BLINDED the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them" (2Cor.4:3-4). The souls of men are sin-sick, depraved at heart, blind and bound by Satan, trapped, lost, marred or ruined, doomed or damned, and dead in trespasses and sins. That is why it is not possible to win them through mere flashiness, fancies, entertainment, socializing, and pop psychology. 

It is by prayer that we can break their yokes and lift the blinders off their eyes. Preaching alone will not do it; prayer is required too. Prayer precedes and succeeds preaching. We pray before preaching, and pray after preaching.

The clock is ticking. The urgency of soul-winning can never be overstated. It is now or never. A certain poet wrote a long time ago, "The days are dark, the work is great, and the time is slipping away, So whatever we think of doing for God, we had better do it today." The gospel is still today the power of God unto salvation. Go forth and preach it and let souls be saved in Christ Jesus. The greatest gift any person can give to God is the gift of a soul. Let the church win souls. Let the believer win souls. Winning souls is our main mission on earth. Let's go for souls!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter