Yes and Amen!

"I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel ..." Romans 1:14-15

"Paul - because he is owned by Christ, he owes Christ to the world.

Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.
We owe Christ to the world - to the least person and to the greatest person, to the richest person and to the poorest person, to the best person and to the worst person. We are in debt to the nations. Encompassed with this debt, though, in our contemporary approach to missions, we have subtly taken ourselves out from under the weight of a lost and dying world, wrung our hands in pious concern, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm just not called to that."

The result is tragic. A majority of individuals supposedly saved from eternal damnation by the gospel are now sitting back and making excuses for not sharing that gospel with the rest of the world.

But what if we don't need to sit back and wait for a call to foreign missions? What if the very reason we have breath is becuase we have been saved for a global mission? And what if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actuall selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which He created us?

Maybe the most common response that arises among Christians regarding the global purpose of God is "What about the needs here? Why do we need to be involved in other nations when there are so many needs in our nation?" I often hear this statement, "I don't need to go to all nations, because God has given me a heart for the United States." Others might say, "God has given me a heart for {my city"}." These statements sound spiritual, but when we probe deeper, they seem more like smoke screens.

They are smoke screens because most of us really are not very concerned about the needs right around us. Most Christians rarely share the gospel, and most Christians' schedules are not heavily weighted to feeding the hungry, helping the sick, and strengthening the church in the neediest places in our country.

But even if we were doing these things, we would still be over-looking a foundational biblical truth when we say our hearts are for the United States. As we have seen all over Scripture, God's heart is for the world. So when we say we have a heart for the United States, we are admitting that we have a meager 5 percent of God's heart, and we are proud of it. When we say we have a heart for the city we live in, we confess that we have less than 1 percent of God's heart.

Certainly there are great needs here. But must we insist on an either-or proposition? Who told us that we had to choose to have a heart for the United States OR a heart for the world? Based on the purpose of God we've seen in Scripture, shouldn't every Christian's heart be ultimately consumed with how we can make God's glory known in all the world?"

David Platt