Speaking Up

Sorry about that. I fully intended on writing again for Friday but other stuff happens (i.e. life).

To bring you up to speed, I've been writing about giving blessing bags to homeless people. What to pack in one. How every single homeless person affects me. How it can be such a chain reaction.

I can't stop. 

I have to say something.

I worry that when I write about giving a blessing bag that you might think I'm bragging. Ugh! No. In fact, I'm so humbled in giving one I can barely look at them without tears streaming down and choking out something. 

But I think I'm moving beyond the initial emotional response.

I truly, truly believe that we are to help the lost, destitute, distressed. It isn't a matter of a "calling". When I hear that term "calling" I get a little nauseated. It isn't being called to help a homeless person in whatever way you can- giving a bag, or gift card, or helping them to a shelter and more- it is obedience. YOU DON'T GET TO AVOID HELPING if you are a Christ-follower! I don't see it anywhere in Scripture. The Bible is jam-packed with helping others; I believe it's called "Love your neighbor as yourself". 

Do you get to judge like that? That man or woman, just like the orphan, just like you is in need of mercy. In need of compassion. In need of love. And while God is a God of love, He is also a God of flesh. Jesus reached out his very hand and healed sick, dying, disease-ridden, outcast people. Somehow we've come to believe that we can heal the same people today by judging and avoiding them or saying we aren't "called". Oh, we are more than called. We are to be obedient.

We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 

The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him.

This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

1 John 2:3-6

Homeless people fit the poor and helpless bill. Orphans fit it. So do widows. So do many other people. So when I write about this, I don't want to come across as finger wagging "If you don't help the homeless people specifically then you are disobeying God." This is what God is giving me words to share with you. This is my life lived out. Where I've seen the Living Word become life.