Luke 15:8-9 What woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin I lost!’

Today I lost one of my hearing aids. I was lying on my back under my boat wiring in tail lights and turn signals, and I was swatting mosquitoes that were annoying me, and somehow one of them fell out. My hearing aids are Bluetoothed with my phone, and I noticed I was only hearing stuff in one ear, so I reached up to check it, and it was gone. I backtracked everywhere I had been and found it under the boat. It was tough to see in the grass, but I suspected it would be a likely place, so I looked for it thoroughly. I rejoiced greatly when I found it, and I texted Patty, and she rejoiced with me.

The point of Jesus’s story was that lost people need to be sought after and brought to faith in Jesus with at least as much earnestness as a hearing aid or a lost coin. A key way to develop a passion for influencing people is to pray faithfully for a list of people you know who don’t know Jesus. Praying for them every day will cause us to be more and more attentive to opportunities to invite them to church or share our story with them. Try it.