Devotion 1: Over Our Dead Bodies

There is a quote that I heard a couple of years ago that often runs through my head. It is by the late, great pastor Charles Spurgeon. He said, “If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.” This is one of those quotes that, at least for me, makes me wish I was as smart as some people to come up with something as good as this. In all seriousness, though, I think this quote sums up perfectly what our urgency in reaching the world should be. 

As we are going through our Reach, Gather, Grow series again, it can be easy for us to dismiss these lessons and think we do not need to pay attention because we might have heard this series preached a million times now. I want to plead with you not to do that. Pay attention and be motivated again to fulfill our mission as the church. Beginning in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul lays out the condition of fallen man by saying in verse 1, “And you were once dead in your trespasses and sins.” He continues in verse 3, saying, “Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath.” This is the desperate state all of us were in before the grace of God came into our lives. This is the desperate state that everyone in the world is in if they have not surrendered to the Lord Jesus and put their faith in Him as Savior. The only way they can be saved from this desperate state is through the Good News that all of us now have. 

I heard it said before like this, “If you had the cure to cancer you would be telling everyone about it and going into every hospital to make sure all cancer patients get healed. Yet, as a Christian, you have something greater, you have the greatest cure for the greatest disease in this world. What are you doing to bring that cure to people?” This is the challenge all of us should have. We have the only cure that can save people from their desperate state. We need to have the urgency that men like Charles Spurgeon had. To go back to his quote, “If people are going to go to be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies.”