The weight of Urgency

I had this horrible dream. In the dream I found myself in a huge cathedral with hundreds of people and the cathedral was going to blow up in one hours time. The people inside the building were all aware of this and were attempting a mass suicide. Some of them were people I knew in high school, some from college, and many I did not recognize. I was hit with the reality that if they went through with this they would be separated from God forever. 

 

In my dream the hour started to fly by and in a panic I ran around the room trying to convince various people not to go through with it and to get out of the building. I begged and I cried for them to listen to me and go outside. I tried to tell them about Jesus and how much he loved them. I tried to tell them how valuable their lives were. I cannot express the urgency I felt as the hour began to run out. I was so desperate for them to see and get out of the building. I woke up right before the building exploded still in a sense of panic and desperation. 

The past couple of days I have not been able to stop thinking about my dream. I can still feel the excruciating sense of urgency. I was so desperate for them to listen to me. After dwelling on my dream for a couple of days I have come to some personally convicting thoughts that I want to share. 

 

How desperate am I for people to know Jesus? If I am so serious about my faith wouldn’t I be telling people about Jesus intentionally every day? (In actions and words) If you were on a plane about to crash and knew where the parachutes were, would you not be telling everyone else on board? 

 

While working with women and men coming out of the sex trade I have seen how weighty the gospel is. If there is not an inner healing and freedom that comes from Christ they will still be trapped in bondage. If I am not telling them about Christ and his love for them I am doing them a major injustice. Now, God does not need me to show himself to others, he is perfectly capable of doing that without me. If we simply lift our eyes up from the ground we can see evidence of him in creation and the world around us. There is also evidence and accounts of his working through dreams. No he does not need me, but he wants to use me. 

 

Tozer writes, “The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God  high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.” 

 

The question I have been asking myself lately is do I understand the weight of the gospel? Do I even understand the weight of my own sin and what I have been saved from? Tozer also writes that if we cannot comprehend the weight of our own sin we cannot comprehend the joy that comes from God’s salvation. I want so desperately to walk in that knowledge and reality of that weight. I want that urgency to tell everyone about this glorious love that I know and don’t deserve. I want to be desperate for the captives to be set free and to see them walk in that freedom. 

 

As the days go on and my dream becomes more and more distant, I don’t want to forget that sense of urgency. I want to keep my eyes on Christ and my heart secured in him. I want others to know Him. In a sense we are in a building that is set to explode; we just don’t know the time yet. Shouldn’t that affect the way we live today? Does it affect you?