As we near the end of our week on loving people, today we shift to loving those we don't know.

We are all so busy, and most often unaware of those around us, becoming too focused on ourselves to notice others.

Perhaps today God would shift our focus upward

to seeing the faces we pass on the streets or on the elevator. How much could a kind word

or a smile help someone out having a rough day? Let's try to take our eyes off ourselves

and see those we pass every day and don't seem to notice.

Could God want to use you to minister to someone you don't even know?

Let's find out.

Welcome to the First 15 podcast.

Matthew 2534 through 40 gives us insight into God's passionate love for the lost, broken, and alienated.

Scripture says, the king will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared

for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, and I was

thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me.

I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Then the

righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you

drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothed you? And when did we see

you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king

will answer them, truly I say to you, as you did to one of the least of these, my brothers,

you did it to me. The world around you is living every day apart from the saving and freeing knowledge of God's love for them.

They try to find hope in the created, rather than the creator, and discover that the world contains

nothing to help them. Relationship with Jesus is the sole source of hope for the earth,

and God longs to use us to love the strangers around us so that they might enter into relationship

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