Luke 10:11 –
‘We wipe even the dust of your town from our feet to show that we have abandoned you to your fate. And know this—the Kingdom of God is near!’
This chapter starts with Jesus recruiting 72 more disciples and then giving them marching orders. If you remember he gave almost the exact same order to the 12 the chapter before. I would like to focus on this one since there is some debate of when to “cut and run” and when to “persevere.” Jesus is very clear in both instances, if someone is not receptive move on. There are two aspects to consider here and neither choice is pleasant.
First is do as Jesus said and move on. If you spend too much time focusing on one “stiff necked” person you will miss out on sharing with others. He was comparing this to a harvest where you pick the ripe and ready for market fruit. You leave the ones not ready and discard the rotten ones. Also as I have found if you drain resources on ones not interested you burn yourself out easily. So to continue to make progress and walk away from those not welcoming you since it’s better to save many than waste time on one lost soul and miss saving others.
Second view actually rejects this instruction from Jesus. If we just give up and move on then there is another soul lost for eternity, so persist on helping save this one. How many times have you heard “if they hadn’t kept working on me I would have never seen the light”? It’s hard to turn your back on someone who you know is destine for an eternity in a fiery pit. So is it a waste of time or is it necessary?
You can debate this from now until you die and not really come up with a right answer. I think God will never give up on the person and keep putting people in their path to nudge them into His family. Therefore our task is to do what we can, share what works and move on if we hit a major obstacle. Reason for this is it tries our faith if we work on hard hearted people too much. You can easily start questioning your faith and resolve if you are not grounded in scripture. So caution on working too hard on lost souls. Do what you can and move on, Jesus said so!