James 1:27
27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Mathew 25:37-40
37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
John 21:17
17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”
My question is this, have we lost focus from that goal? I like how James puts it, this is what is acceptable religion to God, caring for those who need it and keep our selfs pure. Yet in our church today we seem to working so hard to make things nice an easy for us we tend to forget about all those in need.
What if instead of buying the best chairs and building the nicest building and buying the nicest coffee machine and the news game station for the youth. What if we let all that go and we used that money to pay for those who are in need.
What about the money christian spend trying to do research to prove that Evolution is false and God created all things. I think we need to be taking that money and using it more wisely and instead of trying to prove that God created all things just know he did. The bible says he did why do we need proof. I truly believe that the only thing these studies have done is given me doubt, I do much better when I just believe on Faith that God created all things rather than trying to prove to my self that it is true. Because sure Evolution makes sense but if I simply believe on faith that God created all things it will be much easier.
I believe if we did this church’s would drop in size dramatically. All those boarder line Christians who many more conservatives Christians would say are not Christians at all(a whole other topic for another post). But after the church had been weeded down to those true Christians that are there even if it is not convenient(see What is church?) I think the church would grow like crazy because when someone would think about Christians they would think about those on fire for God and I know God would move if we were more focused on him.
I believe we need to start letting go of the things that we love, we need to use the money that we so commonly throw in to little things for ease at the church and start using that Money to pay for the poor and need both here in the US and around the world.
Well said! I have thought very similar things before, but I also believe that buildings, games, coffee, are all still important for our ministry. What about our lives? How much do we spend on each other, or things, or gas, or ….. I think we need to make sure we are doing our part to obey scripture and then fire up others to do the same.
Good post, been thinking about it a week on and off.
I agree 100%.
One (or a few more) thing. I wish we could just look at just money … but it strikes me that how we use our more limited resources is a very telling thing. The things we have abundance of are tempting to look at … to the college kid over summer “see I went on a missions trip for a week” …. to the wealthy “see I paid for the college kid’s missions trip” …. It’s so much easier to give what we have lots of, then those things that we value so much and have little of.
The poor woman’s penny. The time of a over-scheduled burnt out exec. These matter more Biblically, because the most meaningful offerings are those that are sacrificial. Right?
So in the rich United States where we have it so good …. it would be very easy to sit back and think how good we are because we take care of our poor. (when many of our poor are rich speaking globally!)
It’s also tempting to ask “who is my neighbor” … stopping when people around us are all good and well.
I guess I’m saying, we have to look holistically at our lives, I wish it were easier to only focus on one thing. It would be so much easier.
As you say, we have to strive for the Goal, keeping focus, and unfortunately in this fallen world we will continually find new opportunities to stretch ourselves.