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I have heard of and read about a stretch of the Outer Banks of North Carolina that is known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic," but I did not know until just recently about "The Life-Saving Station" along that treacherous coast. I understand that the people who man the "Life Saving-Station" have shown incredible heroism on many a rescue mission .

One interesting observation: never in the history of the Life-Saving Service did a drowning person come to the door of their station and ask to be rescued. In every single rescue, the rescuers had to leave the safety of the life-saving station and go out into the surf and the storm to keep someone from dying; the rescuers had to leave their "Comfort Zone."

I have always admired, best known as: Colonel Jimmy Stewart, squadron commander of B-24 Liberator Bombers over Germany during WW2. On one of his most dangerous missions, he admitted that he was afraid, and once again he opened a letter he had received from his father, a WW1veteran, and read again the letter of assurance; "Everyone is scared during war." His father included a copy of the 91st Psalm: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and fortress, my God; in Him will I trust" (V.2).

It's the nature of rescue. You have to leave the comfort of the life-saving station to save those who are dying outside. The life-saving station is a great place to get rescuers strong enough to go out into the storm to bring people in. And it's a great place to bring people after they have been rescued. But if we wait for dying people to come into the life-saving station to be rescued, most of them will die without a chance.

That's the nature of spiritual rescue. Over the years it's been known by many names - evangelism, soul-winning, witnessing. But have we lost the urgency of what's really at stake. Every lost person you know who has never begun a personal relationship with Christ, every lost person within the reach of your church is, in the words of the Bible, "without hope and without God," [Ephesians 2:12] and ultimately, someone who will be forever, in the Bible's words, shut out "from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" [2 Thessalonians 1:9]. They are spiritually dying people, and their only hope is rescue by someone who is close enough to save them.

Sadly, we've been waiting for them to come to one of our meetings, our programs, our religious places, our life-saving station; but Jesus shows us that we have to go where the lost people are to rescue them. You have to seek them if you want to save them. The plan of God is for someone like you to be the one to rescue the perishing, to care for the dying. Don't let them go on dying, leave Your Comfort Zone.