We are growing here, as we gather, to enable us to be effective on the highways and the byways.  It is not just a periodic tract.  It is a love that follows you home at night, the Holy Spirit brings them back to your remembrance, and you become an intercessor for their salvation.  That is real goodness.  The option is to become legalistic.  “We have an obligation.  Well, I am obliged to witness.”  People can tell if it is obligatory or not.  People can tell when you genuinely care about them and minister from your experience.  How about those times when you begin to pray for someone you just witnessed to, you grab their hands, and you baptize them in tears as you intercede for their lost soul?  Your heart is broken.  You may be their last opportunity.  A good heart–it is a heart with faith that will stop you in your tracks.

Jesus had places to go.  He was being drawn on from every side.  He was weary.  He was tired.  He had a business appointment, and the woman touched His garment in faith and stopped Him in His tracks.  He said, “Who touched me?”  What a sensitive heart!  To have those in need draw the grace out of us, the anointing, the power of God to where we are poured out for humanity, just as He was poured out for us–how can we have so freely received but not have a heart changed?  How can we not have goodness, kindness, and grace manifesting as we look to others?  We can do it legalistically.  We can do it in the natural.  We can set up orphanages.  We can set up food banks.  Those are all very viable ministries when they are ministered through the church.  It is not some parachurch organization whose main goal is to feed them.  Our goal is to feed them the Word of Life; amen?  Our goal is to give them a drink that when they drink, they will never thirst again.  And, yes, a few biscuits on the side are good.

I ministered at rescue missions over the years.  For some reason, after all these years, I can still see it clearly: one man I was ministering to.  I had spoken one evening.  As I was milling around, ministering, and talking to the people who were there, there was this man.  He was very wealthy at one time.  He was a highly respected engineer and architect, but he was now living on the streets.  He had lost his wife and his family.  He was under the power of alcohol.  Doesn’t it break your heart when you are ministering?

Some of us have had such people in our families.  We are trying to help these drug addicts and alcoholics.  Tragically, it has now gone over to people addicted to pornography.  Pornography has become more available, and drugs have become more powerful.  And all your love, counsel, and availability will be thrown away in a moment for that fix.  Our goodness cannot reach them, but God’s can.  We keep bringing the Word.  And we keep bringing the Word.  Paul told young Timothy that it would enable us to bring forth the works of God.  No one can come if the Father does not draw them.

We have a sure message.  It is the same message that every one of us is bringing: Christ and Him crucified.  There is no other answer, and there is no other hope.  We look for these opportunities, the Scripture tells us here.  He says, “Yes, these are ministries I want you to have and to experience.”  See Luke, Chapter 10.  The twenty-fifth verse starts the story about the Good Samaritan that we are familiar with.  Did you notice that he was not reached by a parachurch outreach for those who were mugged and left in the streets?  They came on him in the manner of life.  They were going about their business.  Let me tell you something:  we do not have to seek people to minister to.  They are already there, and they are looking for us.  Many do not even know it, but God will bring them across our paths; amen?