Urgent Need (Titus 3:14)

And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need and not be unfruitful.
– Titus 3:14

This is the final exhortation in the book of Titus. Paul is saying to this church leader help people to devote themselves to doing good works, and then he uses this phrase in Titus 3:14, “so as to help cases of urgent need”. Let that soak in, an urgent need. Think about your life. Where is there urgent need around you in your life, in your family, in your church, in your community, in the city around you? Just kind of broaden it. Where is there urgent need in the world?

Titus 3:14 Reminds Us That There Are Urgent Needs

God in his word is calling us to open our eyes to urgent need. He’s telling us to devote ourselves to good works in order to help in cases of urgent need. I certainly see on a global scale, so obviously I don’t know what’s going on in your specific life and your specific community, but on a global scale when I see places where there’s no gospel in the world, that’s urgent need. There’s people right now that are dying and going to an eternity separated from God who’ve never even heard about the gospel. That’s urgent need. People who don’t have the gospel, people who don’t have water, like clean water, that’s urgent need. I was just seeing statistics about epidemics in different country due to lack of clean water. That’s urgent need.

I think about places where there’s no food, where starvation is a reality. People don’t just say kind of casually, “Oh, I’m starving”, because they want a meal. That’s actually a reality. People are starving to death. That’s urgent need. I think about orphans who don’t have a family. That’s urgent need. I think about people who are slaves around the world and every day being abused, mistreated, broken. That’s urgent need. Just to think about, we can obviously get overwhelmed thinking about urgent need, but the picture is there’s a sense in which we should be and a way that drives us to devote ourselves to good works in a world of urgent need, to not be unfruitful.

Praying for Fruitfulness

Let’s pray. God, we pray that the commentary on our lives in a world of urgent need right around us and then on a global scale, that it would not be said of our lives that we were unfruitful. Lord, we want to be fruitful in a world of urgent need. Lord, help us to be fruitful. We want that to be said of our lives and of our families. Help us to devote ourselves to good works. God, we pray for that in your church today. We are so tempted, we’re so tempted to use so many of our resources in our lives, our families and our churches on ourselves, so we pray for a devotion to good works in the world around us to mark our churches.

We pray that we would be a fruitful people who are helping cases of urgent need for the glory of your name. Urgent physical need and urgent spiritual need. We know that the most urgent need anyone in the world has right now is to hear the gospel, to believe in Christ, and to receive salvation from sins. God, help us to devote ourselves to that good work, sharing that good news. Then as we do that, God, help us to devote ourselves to all sorts of good works. To help cases of urgent need so that it would be said of us, oh God, may it be said of us that our lives, our families, our churches were fruitful for the glory of your name in a world of urgent need. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.