Have you ever been given a task which seemed impossible to fulfill? Consider this one. There are, according to the latest census information, 1,286,461 people in Palm Beach County, and the Lord wants us to tell each one of them about the cross. How much time would it take to teach them? The only time referenced in the Bible to the conversion of a lost person is the one hour it took Paul and Silas to teach the jailor. Do you have the 1,286,461 hours remaining in life to do this (that’s 146 years)?
However, you are not alone in this responsibility to teach others. Suppose every active member at Palm Beach Lakes would devote one hour per day to talk to a lost person in Palm Beach County? (This is not to say our responsibility ends at a county line.) How long would that take? The answer is an astounding ten years! Now the reality is that not every member will do this, and that a single hour with a lost person is not usually long enough. Sounds like an impossible task, does it not?
There is another matter for us to consider. Not every person in this county will take the time to spend an hour with us talking to them about the Lord. We already know this from experience when we have tried to say anything to them about their spiritual life. You can remove them from the calculations above. That certainly allows us more time to talk to those who are interested who will give us more than an hour to tell them about Jesus. So the actual number of hours may not have changed that drastically. Sounds like an impossible task, does it not?
Before you get overwhelmed with this task, just remember that the Lord is greater than our trials. What He asks of us is nothing compared to what He asked of the apostles in the first century. A dozen men were told to preach the gospel to the entire world. Sounds like an impossible task, does it not?
Yet, they accomplished it because He was with them. Beginning at Jerusalem, the gospel went to Judea, Samaria and then to every creature on the planet (Acts 1:8; Col. 1:23). Oh, that we had hearts as devoted as theirs!
A very special opportunity lies before us with the upcoming gospel meeting with Sam Jones. The presence of visitors during that week is directly related to the number of individual invitations which are given. The more we invite, the more we will have in attendance.
As you think answering the question how do we teach every person in this county, think of the pigmy who was asked how he ate an entire elephant? His answer was, “One bite at a time.” Our answer is, “One soul at a time.” It is not impossible!