I’ve got a friend who’s gearing up for med school here in the next year or so. As we drove home from a wedding last weekend he was talking about the future of medicine and what that field will look like in the next 15+ years. A point was made that even though law schools are pumping out recording numbers of applicants, those job opportunities are drying up.
When the question of was posed of whether or not it’s similar with the medical field my friend immediately jumped in saying, “no way, we need more people!”
With all the new healthcare laws and legislation being passed we’re only just beginning to see and understand the lasting effects of what all this means for the future of medicine. Apparently doctors are now having to squeeze in 5-6 patients in an hour instead of the normal 3, allowing less time for checks ups and diagnosis. Thus our doctors are getting overworked and burned out from the sudden influx in their workload due to the new healthcare reform.
Hearing my buddy say “we need more people!” with that much gusto really got me thinking about the urgent importance of discipleship and evangelism. As Obamacare ushers in a new generation of healthcare reform we can see that we are facing issues and culture changes that we have never seen before. With the rise of the internet, social media and everything else we use to “stay connected” with our world, there are even more opportunities to shine a light in dark places that have ever been available to us.
Everything is changing around us. There is nothing new about sin, however, we’ve just found new ways to do it.
As humanism continues to take root in the heart of man we turn inward to answer our questions and solve our long-trevailed problems.
And therein lies the core issue: we turn inward.
To what?
To whom?
We cannot rely upon our own inward wisdom or tendencies to lead us in the right direction. Jeremiah 17 reminds us that:
9. The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
But praise God for His promise that:
10. “I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”
Since we cannot trust ourselves to fix our problems we continue to fall upon Christ at the foot of His cross daily in reverent prayer that He would lead us and push us on towards a pro-active, sanctified life.
Again we are reminded of the urgency of our mission as believers. According to americanvision.org:
“The statistics are staggering, 80% to 85% of young people leave the Church, never to return. As evolution, humanism and atheism continue to infiltrate our schools, theaters, magazines and television, our young people are faced with hard questions. If we send our children out into the world, unequipped to answer the hard questions and lacking a solid foundation in God’s Word, we should not be surprised if they fall away.”
See more about this article here.
In Matthew 9:37-38 Jesus “said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'”
Those words “we need more people” are also true about the future of the church. Though the above statement is true about much of our young people in the church I look at the church and see a new generation of believers who are pushing forward, seeking Christ and hell-bent (ironically) on making a change for the kingdom.
To fix those staggering statistics and keep our young people in the church we don’t need more programs, more youth events, more culturally relevant topical lectures. The answer is not more of what is driving them away.
We need the gospel. We need it to be lived out through our lives and to pursue and disciple those young people.
We have our work cut out for us. Whether we be doctors, lawyers, legislators, pastors, or landscapers, we are to be disciplers of Christ.
The harvest is plentiful but “we need more people!”
Will you answer the call?
The Real Deal 