by Lance de Ruig

Keir Tayler and I have just come back from the country of Montenegro, after having met (literally) all the Christian leaders in that whole country. There were three. One guy has been there for 25 years and has only 30 people in his church. Another guy has been there for 15 years and only has seven people in his church. He has just suffered a church split where his deacon took a whole lot of people with him, but they have nowhere to meet so they don’t even fellowship together.

That’s not easy. But caring means nothing if God doesn’t change our hearts.

Here’s how this motivates me. Montenegro might be on the other side of the world but I ask myself this question: What is stopping South Africa from being like that in a hundred years time? What is stopping our city from becoming like that?

I’ll tell you what’s stopping that from happening here: you and I telling others about Jesus.

You might never get a chance in your life to go to Montenegro or send money for the people there or do anything along those lines, but what you can do is care for your city, the people around you, and ask God to work on your heart. You can make sure that your children and your grand-children and your grand-children’s children grow up in a country where Jesus is loved and praised.

We can ask God to give us a heart for the lost simply because it’s something we say, or we can really let the reality of that sink in and mean it. Here’s a reality: 99 percent of Montenegro’s population right now is going to spend an eternity without Jesus. There are only three men giving up their lives to try and stop that from happening. So the question is, what are we doing?

Let’s open our heart to God and ask him to give us a heart for the people in our city, for the people in Montenegro and Eastern Europe, and the people of this world. This is about this world – this is about the fact that so many people are without God and hope. What are we doing? There are millions of people in Johannesburg right now without God and hope. We have a mission before us.