It’s almost 1:00 a.m. and I’m still up. That’s not good for a fellow that loves to be in bed before 10:00 p.m.

I’m preaching on Sunday and the message is tearing me up. I no longer preach with any regularity, other than when I’m in Brasil. So I’m out of the habit of getting into “the zone,” that unique state of mind that enables you to see with a clarity the message the Spirit wants you to bring.

The funny thing is, I know what I’m supposed to say, I just don’t know how to say it. I’ve spent the last two hours looking at pictures from our last two trips to Ubaúna and looking at some statistics that I found to be staggering:

If you were to stare at pictures of people in the northeast of Brasil at the rate of five pictures every second of every minute of every day, without blinking, it would take almost two and a half years just to see all of the lost people of the northeast of Brasil. If you include the millions more that would have been born in that time, it would take even longer. If you slowed down the rate of looking at the pictures to one face per second, just long enough for you to say “Jesus” to each one, it would take more than 91 years to look at every picture.

In the face of such staggering numbers just in the northeast of Brasil alone, how do we begin to be obedient to the command of Jesus to go and make disciples?

That is the dilemma I face — conveying this to an audience that lives contentedly in the U.S.

What is ironic is that I’m absolutely convinced that the task can be addressed and a significant impact made on the lives of the almost 50,000,000 inhabitants of that desolate, desert region of the world. God made sure that I understood that on this last trip to Ubaúna.

How do I paint the need in a manner that can be grasped and not come across as raving lunatic?

That is what has me still awake at this crazy time of the night.

I wonder if John the Baptist ever had to face this kind of dilemma?