It’s 6 AM at the Dubai airport and I’m among several thousand people, waiting to board their flights to the Middle East and Africa. Almost no one “looks like me”. That can be disturbing if I let it but I pretty much got over those kinds of emotions long ago. Instead, I’m struck by the vast range of humanity before me, Yemenis, Tajiks, Somalis and so much more. I wish I could get into a deep conversation with every one of them, get to know them, their lives, their hopes, their fears, their needs and their faith.

And the thought came to me of how it may have been for Jesus when He was before a vast multitude. Such a moving, significant verse from Matthew says this. “When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion upon them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36) Jesus didn’t feel intimidated by, or alien to, the multitude, even those of distant nations and cultures. So true to His nature, He loved them; He was moved with compassion.

I’m so thankful that somehow the Lord has put in my heart a love for people, even people who are “different” from me. The heart of man is the same the world over and what everbody needs is love. On this present trip I’ve been two weeks in China and now two weeks in Lebanon and it’s been a wonderful time. It’s been taxing physically, especially with some of these overnight flights. But it’s been tremendously rewarding and encouraging to see how much the Lord has been answering prayer and doing basically miracles to bless my activities in these times.

Twice on this trip I’ve seen the Lord raise up out of nowhere exactly the right person to work with me on these recordings I’m doing in foreign languages of the Prophecies of Daniel videos. First in China and then in Lebanon the Lord brought me in contact with men I never met before who were so perfectly what was needed to be the Chinese and Arabic voices for the videos. Men who not only spoke their native language but also were equally proficient in English and who had a real heart to go the extra mile and do all they could to work with me on the recordings. I don’t take this kind of thing for granted at all. It was the hand of God bringing me in contact with these ones. And again it goes back to the love of God, His love and desire to have us “feed His sheep”.

So often it’s true what the Word says, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. (Hosea 4:6) They just don’t know. “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not heard and how they shall hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14) I’ve had times where I have been in a crowd like this and I had a stack of gospel tracts. So I’d go about passing out those, at times by the thousand. I wrote about one experience like that that happened a few years ago on the Macedonian/Serbian border. Or when I was in a refugee camp in Berlin not so long ago.

In more recent times, the Lord has made a way for me to reach multitudes by posting my videos on YouTube and Facebook and I’ve had some extremely encouraging responses from some obscure places from people who’ve been able to view the classes on the book of Daniel.

But it’s easy to think, “What can any of us possibly do when the world is so big, there are billions of people and we’re just tiny little insignificant individuals?” It is a daunting thought and it can be discouraging if we let it get a hold of us. But it’s just not a thought from the Lord. We are called to do what we can. And actually we can do a lot if we let the Lord lead us and guide us.

Like the verse says, “the love of Christ constrains us” (II Corinthians 5:14) , that’s how it should be. We should be moved with compassion like Jesus was and is. Sadly, when confronted by the peoples of the world, many Christians are not moved with compassion. They are moved with nationalism or racism which results in various forms of hatred. It so greaves me when I hear words of hatred from fellow Christians when foreign nations and peoples are mentioned. It’s so contrary to the love of God that Jesus showed and that lived so strongly in the early Church.

Well, my flight is leaving soon. I’m off to a country I’ve never been to before, with people who don’t look like me. But there’s a tremendous spiritual vacuum there, a spiritual hunger for the things of the Lord and the Lord wants me to go there and to be an instrument of His peace.

It’s a wonderful life. It’s a little tough on the flesh at times but it’s extremely rewarding in the things of the heart.