Are We Prepared to Get Our Hands Dirty for the Kingdom of God?

A lady dressed in silks and satins was standing on the curb of a Paris street when to her horror a ring with a very valuable jewel dropped from her finger into the filth of the gutter. She stooped instantly. With the bent handle of her elegant umbrella she searched the gutter for it but could not find it. Then, as the astonished crowd looked on, she slipped the glove from her dainty white hand and with her delicate fingers searched through the water and mud until she found the lost jewel.

Are we prepared to search through the mud and get our hands dirty for the Kingdom of God? Do we see alcoholics, drug addicts, and prostitutes through the eyes of love and faith as potential “trophies of grace”? If the love of God dwells within our hearts, we will strip off formalism and begin to search the gutters of society for the lost gems of humanity as God searched for us (see Malachi 3:17). If the fields are white unto harvest, we need to get out of the barns and into those fields.

God has given us the key (God’s Word) to bring conviction to the heart of the sinner, and once he is convicted we can, with the help of God, convert him. Many of us have the philosophy of “Go ye into the world and get a sinner to come to church so that the pastor can preach the gospel to him.” The church should be a pulsating, dynamic, explosive, mighty army of dedicated soldiers who have gathered to feed the troops and check it weaponry. Once fed, we must go out into the dying world, preach and live the Word – be salt and light. Jesus mixed with prostitutes and tax collectors, and yet He remained untainted by their sins.

I once saw a well-known pastor sitting right in the middle of the crowd of hardened sinners. On inquiry, he told me that he was almost “drying up” because of his constant fellowship with Christians and only Christians. He had come out to remind himself of the world, to hear rough talk, to mix with sinners before he matured into stagnation.

[From Ray Comfort’s Hell’s Best Kept Secret (New Kensington: Whitaker House, 1989) Pg. 168-169]

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.