I’m not here to convert, make you feel guilty, or to judge your actions; but I am going to do my best to listen to what the Father is saying about my experiences and relay them to you. People aren’t always going to like what I have to say, or even what the Scriptures have to say on things like the poor and the needy.
Because the Scriptures do convict.
They are offensive.
It makes people uncomfortable.
But that’s what I like about it. It doesn’t always sit well. Its not all Jesus loves you and pretty flowers. There is righteous judgment, wrath, death, anger, poverty, illness, and wiping out of entire people groups. But you can’t leave out the parts of the Bible people don’t like to make it more appealing to an audience. It cheapens the Scriptures and cheapens God’s grace for us through Jesus Christ.
I mean the whole Old Testament is like an NC-17 movie, but it provides a context for how extreme the love of Jesus is to wipe the slate clean through attonement of sin.
I have more subscribers than I have readers these days. I’m learning to be ok with that. Not everyone wants to hear some of the things I say like, “get off the couch and go impact your community, neighbors, or the poor.â€� Nobody likes to feel convicted.
I never really wanted to blog. Felt kinda forced into it by the World Race…but now I do love it. I’ve lost readers and that’s becoming ok with me. Although, I’m hoping it’s not cause my blogs are starting to suck and that’s why my sister is the only one commenting on them. I don’t want to be self-centered though. I don’t want to act like I have it all together when it comes to subjects of poverty or community. I also don’t want to tip toe around subjects that may convict, be offensive, or cause people to be uncomfortable.
People don’t want to hear things like, “we need the poor more than the poor need us. Recovering an important insight from the ancient church, John Wesley wrote that works of mercy are a real means of grace. We tend to think that we draw closest to God in prayer and Scripture reading, in fasting or at communion. But works of mercy (such as feeding those who are hungry or visiting the sick and prisoners) are equally important as conduits of God’s grace.”
All of this pretext is to set up these two next paragraphs.
At some point we must move beyond our nice prayers and quaint quiet times to move into actions of what the Bible has already told us to move on.
1 John 3:16 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.�
“How can the love of God be in him?�
Man convicts me to action. That’s hard to swallow. I overlook and miss those opportunities a lot too. But I don’t want to skip over that verse just cause its hard to swallow.
