What Now?

What do you do when you stare abject poverty in the face for two weeks and then you hop on a jumbo jet and fly to the land of plenty? What do you do with the experience of watching some of the most cheerful worshipers of God dance and sing in Jesus name with nothing more than a glorified karaoke machine for a sound system and then a week later you watch a group of begrudging people reservedly worship even though the lights are designed and amplifiers are cranked and the crescendos are applied to illicit some sort of response and… the response is little?

Tell me please what I should make of this? If it is ok with you to dismiss real worship in the face of adversity as merely “fanatical” and if you can justify how football or yard work or shopping gets more blood flowing and a more passionate response than a meager hand clap for what Christ did on the cross… if you are ok with these seemingly huge obstacles that I am staring at… then please counsel me and bring me back to planet earth. Or better yet how about we start praying that God would incline our hearts to worship him. That somehow he would be of more value than anything else this world has to offer. That we would view him as more valuable than our families or our finances or our comforts.

These are rhetorical questions. The answers are quite obvious. And although you might read frustration written all over this article, I feel a great deal of hope. I see so much potential! If it pleases God then I know He desires to take us deeper and to awaken a remnant to His truth. I know that His Spirit is stirring and that He is calling forth Lazarus from the dead. He is taking our dead hearts that get excited for worldly things and He is calling us from the grave to bring us real life and excitement and worship and praise for the things that matter. He is grabbing the hearts of many in our community and gently drawing them into a deeper and more intimate experience with Him. What am I doing with my experience from Africa? I am leveraging it for the Kingdom! I am contrasting slum life with mediocre casual Christian living. I hope your eyes are opened to the fact that many who are invited to feast opt out of coming because of their many distractions. So, the servant is ordered to go quickly into the streets to bring the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame (Luke 14).

Let me finish by quoting James… “Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the the eyes of the world to be rich in faith… (James 2:5)”
I want to be rich! Don’t get me wrong! But let me be rich in the mercies of God! I would rather go hungry for days but feast on the bread of life than nibble at the table of this world and have my appetite curbed for the things of God.

God please minister to those that read this. Please help us to be a people that are more concerned with your ways than anything that this world has to offer. Please help us to desire to be poor on this earth if it means we will be rich in the things that really matter. Please continue to open our eyes to what you are doing globally and don’t let the great deciever trick us into a small mindset of viewing only what is happening in Beliot Wisconsin, but instead let us look globally at the work you are doing. Don’t let us justify a casual commitment to you. Help us to be disciples of Jesus that are willing to sacrifice because He layed down His life to purchase ours. Amen.