Reaching The Lost - Ilze Hofmeyr

I've got a very simple message today and felt from God that this is the message that I must bring today to this church here.

And the title of my message is simply the following, Reaching the Lost, Reaching the Lost.

Luke 19.10 says the following, And this is Jesus speaking, for the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.

It says that Jesus came to this world to seek and to save lost people.

In Acts 1 verse 8, it says the following, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

And then it says, and you will be my witnesses.

telling people about me everywhere.

And then it outlines four areas.

It says in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

So it says that Jesus came, to seek and save the lost, and then we got empowered by the Holy Spirit to actually be a witness and tell people about Jesus everywhere.

The great evangelist of old, Reinhard Bonnke, said the following, The church that does not go after the lost, lost itself.

Come on, I love that.

The church that does not go after the lost, lost itself.

So it's clear from these verses that the God that we serve, Jesus, that his heart is somewhere, and his heart is with lost people.

And if I can tell a quick story, at the start of the year, I'm obviously most Sundays at our church in Stellenbosch.

I always stand in our evening services at the top auditorium door, welcoming people to church.

And we have an overflow of students and young people coming to the evenings.

And for weeks, I'm not joking, probably about 10 weeks in a row, I stood at the top door.

As students come, I ask them always, where are you from? And some will say, you know, I'm from Limpopo, or I'm from Nelspreit, or Mupumulanga, or I'm actually studying here from Johannesburg.

And I would always ask them, who invited you to church? Who brought you to church? And many will say, oh, it was a flyer or I saw an Instagram ad.

But many people week after week said to me the following.

I'm just going to call a Sally for obviously privacy.

Sally invited me to church.

The following week, I would send her, I would ask, who invited you to church? And they would say, no, Sally invited me to church.

So I was waiting, and I even asked Zika and Aggie, our 1825 pastors, who is this girl? I need to meet her, and one day, I was standing at the door and a girl and a boyfriend came and I said, who are you? And she said, my name is Sally.