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Selecting Prospects

By Bill Hall

God chose some lowly shepherds to be the first to hear of the birth of Christ. Jesus chose an immoral Samaritan woman to be the first person to whom He would identify Himself as the Messiah. It was to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils, that He appeared first after His resurrection. God is no respecter of persons. He wants the gospel to be preached to the good and to the bad, to the rich and to the poor, to the mighty and to the lowly, to the religious and to the irreligious, to the red, yellow, black, and white. "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15).

We tend to be selective. We look for the one who in our judgment will be most receptive, for the influential person who will be a "help" to the church, for the middle-class man who will fit in socially, for the morally good who won't be a problem to us in the future. We tend to avoid alcoholics, unwed mothers, homosexuals, hippies, and dope addicts. While we might have looked on Lydia as a good prospect, we would have certainly overlooked Saul of Tarsus or Simon the sorcerer or the Philippian jailer. And in our selectivity, we may be overlooking our very best prospects.

The gospel shines most brightly when it turns the alcoholic to sobriety, the immoral to purity of life, the filthy to cleanliness, and the infidel to faith. "And such were some of you, " Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). Let us not underestimate the power of the gospel to change men.