Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

All the Broken, Hurting, and Struggling People

MATTHEW 9:35–38 – And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

THEME OF THE DAY: ALL THE BROKEN, HURTING, AND STRUGGLING PEOPLE. They are everywhere. Do we see them? Do we hear their cries for help? They are everywhere. Really. They will be found in our neighborhoods, communities, workplaces, churches, even our homes. They are broken, hurting, and struggling people who are in the grips of the consequences from the Garden of Eden. When sin entered the world, it broke the world, and that includes every human being who enters the world.

But really, who are these people? These are the emotionally broken, physically hurting, and spiritually struggling people our Lord Jesus proclaimed are the ones He came to rescue – And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:16-19).

I must ask again, perhaps not for your benefit, but mine – “Do we see them? Do we hear their cries for help?” because it is so easy to have tunnel-vision and be deaf to them by focusing our views of life on ourselves.

Friends, these people long for hope and a love that believes all things, endures all things, hopes all things and never gives up when trouble and tension arise. They are also crying out without words for a source of strength outside of themselves to handle life and all its pain. The answer for all these broken, hurting and struggling people? It is the only answer – the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. And the way the gospel gets to them is by us who have been changed by the Gospel. Such truth begs the question — are we being God’s instruments reaching broken, hurting, and struggling people with the only answer for them? It is why we are still on this earth. We cannot keep silent with the only message of hope in a hopeless world. But to be those instruments starts with a prayer . . . something like this, “Father, help me see people, all people, through the heart and eyes of Your Son, the Lord Jesus, that so grips and moves me to be that compassionate instrument to all the broken, hurting, and struggling people in the world.”

PRAYER: “Father, help me to see people, all people, through the eyes and heart of Your Son, my Savior, Jesus.”
QUOTE: “Christians are left in a broken world to live and proclaim the only Healer of brokenness – the Lord Jesus.”

Because of Him,
Pastor Jim