the poorest of poor

In a book I'm reading right now it says this: "I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."

Do you read the Bible? If you do, you'll know that it is filled with direction for us to love the poor, the needy, the lonely, the widows... God never says, 'when people make you feel uncomfortable or hurt your feelings, walk away. they're not worth it.' Just the opposite. Jesus tells us that we should take in the lost and be the love that they need.

How often do you see a homeless person and just pass them by? Be honest. How often do you have three dollars in your wallet and think, 'they'll just spend it on booze anyway' and you pass them by but then you go to the store and buy a soda or a magazine or a hamburger. Which is more nourishing, booze or a soda? If you said soda, I say you're wrong. It's when we're feeding our desires and our flesh that we're living outside the will of God. And if you're annoyed with me right now, then good. God says that if you agree with everything I said then I'm just as good as the false profits.

It's time that we push each other. It's time that we're real and honest and we get out of our comfortable pretty Sunday clothes and start being the hands and feet and eyes and ears of the One who created us. The One who gave us salvation and entered inside of us a covenant, his spirit, so that we would die - WE WOULD DIE. Jesus didn't say that our old self would sort of stick around. No. He said that our old self would die...that we would be made new in Him. That just as much as he is in the father, so is He is in us. We are Jesus walking. When we accept Jesus as Lord, we aren't supposed to sit in front of our tv's and keep the secrets of eternity to ourselves.

When we see brother Will on the street, lonely, grumpy, angry, hating life, down and out, dirty...we are to extend love. So what if he spends his money on booze or cigarettes or worse. I don't know about you, but God loves me right where I am. And I've done some pretty disgusting things. Haven't you? Wasn't it us who hated our husband, wished we hadn't gotten married, smoked cigarettes, dabbled in drugs, ate obscene amounts of food just because we wanted to, lived with our significant other before marriage, were intimate before marriage, went out and drank ourselves drunk with friends and called it 'good fun', drove our friends around drunk and felt righteous because we were the 'good one'? Wasn't it us who did all of these stupid things that could have killed us or destroyed the very relationships we adored? And wasn't it our God who loved us and continued to call us to Him despite our hard hearts and hard heads?

So tell me, why then do we put ourselves above the person who is destitute on the streets, addicted to drugs? Why in the world do we think that we're an ounce better than them? Because our sin seems cleaner than theirs? Because our sin hasn't gotten out of control like theirs? Or because we're just so stinking comfy sitting at home that surely we're the blessed ones who have gotten it right and those people will just have to figure it out and work as hard as we have... Because after all, we earned all this stuff that we have? We went to college, got our degree, busted butt to get our job, climb the ladder, save our money...

How self righteous have we become? Didn't we read Job? Don't we know the character and heart of our God? Don't we know that as quickly as he can give life, he can take it away? Don't we know that when we choose to walk, he'll let us walk. Away or towards Him. He will LET us walk.

What a blessing to be financially stable. And what a blessing to have money stored up. But we're deceived if we think that the money we have stored up should stay stored and not shared. God doesn't want to force us to give him our money - he wants us to get it into our hearts that the money that's ours was never really ours but only his and it was he that gave it to us. So why then are we so scared to give it away? To give it back? Don't we want to be a blessing? Don't we want others to come to Christ?

Tell me something - if brother Will walked up to me and was drunk and said he needed money, what should I do? I think you listen to the Spirit's prompting. And if you don't know how to hear God's voice, ask him. Ask God, the one true God, to help you to have eyes for just Him and ears for just Him. He won't hold back. But brother Will, he'll stand there looking you in the eye and he'll wait. And you can deny this or you can chew on it - but he doesn't want your money so much as he wants life breathed back into the places of his heart where it's dessolate. He wants the breath of life - he wants Jesus. And so what if it costs you $3.00 or your entire fortune...if ten minutes of your time with Will costs you everything, then so be it. What if those ten minutes you took to tell him about the love of Christ were the final seeds that needed to be sewn so that Will would surrender?

I had a boss who reached out to me when I was hurting. He invited me to come and give to others. But I was grieving a lost relationship. I didn't understand how me giving to others could help ME. I wanted someone to give to ME. I didn't go. But his words stuck with me. It was years until I knew what he meant. It's Christ in us, the hope of glory. We aren't to keep it tucked away inside for just us to sit and feast upon. It's for us to share. And share big. Jesus didn't tell us to be afraid of the faith that we received. He said to share it - but to know that because of it we would lose everything. Our old self. Our old ways. Our old life.

Oh ya'll, let go. Let's let go of our old ways and cling to the new. Let's be rich in faith. Let's quit just saying 'Amen' at church and be the Amen in the world. Let's quit agreeing with Jesus' teaching and let's be Jesus walking. Let's quit being such wimps for the cross and start moving for the sake of the one who was nailed to it! Let's quit being afraid to talk about the suffering that our Jesus endured for us. Let's share it with the world. Let's quit avoiding eye contact with the cheater, the alcoholic, the drug addict, the homeless, the broken, the poor, the grieving...they need something. They need Jesus. It may not be the moment that you love them that they're healed, but let that not stop you from loving. In your eyes they're seeing a reflection of the Savior's.

And remember: Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

Let's be bold this December. Let's step out of our comfort zones. Lock your doors still - yes. I don't deny that we live in a broken world. But let's quit being afraid to show the world the Spirit inside of us.