I want to change.
I want us (me, you, my team, Christians, America, my generation) to change.
I want the world to change.
I want to help the poor, the widows, the orphans, the prostitutes, I want to help them all. But I also want to help the rich, the people who destroy families, those addicted to sex and pornography. I want them to stop. Those who waste with no care for others, those who murder parents and husbands before the eyes of children and wives, those who desperately seek to fill the void in themselves through young girls treated as nothing but objects. I want them to understand that they also are children of God. They may be even more broken than the people they are hurting. I want them to stop because they are destroying the lives of others. But I want them to stop because they are destroying themselves. I want to help them because I understand them. I am one of them. So are you.
One day two years ago the chamber singers of my school headed to a maximum security prison in the middle of Pennsylvania to sing to the prisoners. It was Halloween. Nobody really wanted to go. But that weekend changed our lives. We met there several of the strongest, sweetest men of God I have ever encountered. Those men had nothing. Not even their freedom, and most had nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of staring at the bars on their windows. Literally nothing, besides the clothes on their back, a Bible and a love and passion for God that soared miles above what I could imagine. I have never witness more genuine worship and love for God. Not on Cape Cod, not at PBU, not in Wisconsin, not in Kenya, not in Poland, nowhere. Why? Because they understood, accepted and relied soley on God's grace. It was at the prison I myself began to really understand God's grace for the first time. As our director, one of the people I admire most in the world, spoke to the men, the words spoke to all of us in the choir. They may wear prison uniforms and we may wear tuxes and gowns, but underneath there is no difference between us. None at all. They have sinned and we have sinned. It is utterly and completely by God's grace alone that He has saved any of us. I deserve to be in chains no less than any of those men. And if circumstances in my life were any different, perhaps I would be. But I'm not, by God's grace. God's grace alone.
I had never been more convicted. Days after we returned, I sat in my apartment and cried and cried. How could I go on living my life the same after I had seen the face of God through those men? I listened to a murderer with a double life sentence stand up and testify to the Grace of God. Through his eyes shown the gentleness and peace of God's love. HOW COULD I, WITH A FAMILY, AN EDUCATION, A JOB, A HOME, CLEAN WATER, A CUPBOARD FULL OF FOOD, A CLOSET FULL OF CLOTHES AND MY OWN PHYSICAL FREEDOM NOT ALSO SEEK TO LET GOD'S GRACE SHINE THROUGH MY LIFE IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE.
So do I go out in the world as a shining light of righteousness, "save" the destitute and condemn everyone who put them there?
NO.
Because:
"Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread."
It's by God's grace alone that I come from an affluent country, from a family who has been wise with their money. It's by God's grace that my life has brought me to where I am today, rather than to a place where I am stuck alone in my depravity.
All I want to do with my life is share that same Grace of God to all people that He puts in my path. To humbly share the blessings God has given me to the poor, the lonely, the desparing, the empty, the broken, the deprave, the untouchable, the unforgivable, the forgotten, the sinners. The prostitute and the unfaithful husband, the widow and the murderer, the fatherless and the addict, the people in the slums and the people in the palaces.
I want the whole world to change. I want help the broken. And I want to help those who are creating the broken, because they themselves are also broken. I want to help everyone.
