evangelism by prayer

There are over 2 billion people, by some estimates, that have never heard the salvation message that Jesus Christ died not only for their sins, but became the sacrifice necessary so that each one of us would have erternal life with our heavenly Father. What then, should our responsibilty be? Often times we see this type of staggering number in print and believe that these people can only be found in far out of the way places, where one can only travel primitive style to reach them and bring the Gospel message. It comes as a great surprise to many of us that the ones we can most effectively reach is our neighbor next door. Vast resources flow out of our country to bring the Light to a lost and dying world, while our neighbors in our community are never even spoken to. I continually am amazed to find that in the community where I have lived for almost 21 years, people still do not know each other, and most times the distance that separates them is less than a mile. Yes, Jesus command in the Great Commission is to “Go and make disciples of all nations”, and he does instruct us to travel to the utmost parts of the earth to do this, but many times we walk past our neighbor to take this journey. I have often suspected that this long distance discipleship ministry allows us to keep ourselves from being held accountable, while establishing and developing a relationship with our neighbor exposes more of our own shortcomings and undermines our mantra of “that’s just who I am.” We fear the failure of exposure, for no one truly wants to live in a glass house, especially when we find that our neighbor is armed with a hammer. The commitment to establish a daily prayer life is a daunting task, and yet their are many Scriptures that encourage us to do so, and explicitly point out the benefits of doing so. How many of us can say that we personally have led a neighbor and friend to Jesus, that we followed up with a commitment to them, that we would walk with them in this journey, just as Christ did for us? Have we taken the time to bend our knees before God and lift our neighbor up in prayer, believing that Christ died for all and that none should perish, and believing that our continued intercessary prayer would make a difference in their lives? Yes, there are many left to be reached with this incredible “Good News” but more often than not, the center of a lost and dying world is right next door.