Are We Living A Gospel That’s More Than Words?

This is National Adoption Month. Did you know that?

People from around the world are sharing their stories of how children were found, lives were changes, families were expanded through the miracle of adoption.

This past, “Orphan Sunday”, I have been praying desperately for the Global Church to grab His heart and run with the things that moves His.

I think we all know what James says, “Perfect religion is this”, and often times we will be touched, or even moved to tears by plight of the Orphan…

But as I was praying, God was prompting my heart….

He wants people to do more than cry over the orphan. He wants a people who are touched, changed, will fearlessly engage and boldly set out to fight for the redemption of His children.

I pass a lot of hungry people where I live…especially when I used to live right in Seattle.

But can you imagine, walking right by someone hungry, no…really starving…

Looking at them. Shedding a few tears. Then, eating your lunch and walking away?

Yet, church, have we forgotten….We have the Savior who multiplied bread and fish, within us.

He feeds those who are hungry, and He did more than say, “I pity you for your sin”…

Instead, He climbed up on that cross and hung there and bled for me and you.

And what if he hadn’t given us anything?  What if He passed by Zaccheous, or the begging woman?  What if Christ walked right past the leper? Or said, “I am too busy to meet the needs of those I am seeing?”

Oh friends, I hope you don’t take this harshly…

But the truth is, I have just been so burdened by that fact that Jesus not only healed me…but He sets the perfect example of what it means to be a servant as a believer.

I open scripture and am reminded of how He took the most despicable position in John Chapter 13…

It says, He got low, like a true servant, and washed the disciples feet.

Yet, why is it we can’t even throw the hungry homeless a piece of meat?  Or do more than look longingly, or “feel sorry” for the broken He puts around us constantly?

It’s like me, you, our culture has because blind or calloused to suffering.

It’s like hurt and poverty, and brokenness have failed to move us but worse yet, we can use our efforts like some badge we gain for sympathy and popularity.  When let’s face it, most of us know nothing about true suffering.

Broken-ness, poverty, humility…We have become almost immune to these realities...Until we have washed the feet of the hurting, cleaned the wounds of the beaten, carried a dying baby somewhere  in China in your arms, only to have to pray for strength and wake up and do it over and over again…

How can we talk of broken-ness?

How can we even know what it’s like to have a husband who beats and rapes us, or have to scavenge through the dump to find some crumbs for your sibling and your grandma?

How do we know the true cost of following Christ until we have modeled the ultimate sacrifice, and can attest with more than words, but with the fullness of our lives….I am willing to die, that He might be glorified.

Of friend, I am not asking you to run out and adopt an orphan, or that you radically change the world with some rally for justice…

I am simply asking for you to check your heart, get low before Jesus, and ask the God of the Universe to show you His heart…

I am asking that you might plead for more than tears, but for Him to honestly show you what it means to live selflessly, servant-like, counting the costs, then baring your whole life for His Great Name.

Won’t we use this month, National Adoption month, to shed off our rags of apathy, and carelessness…

Stepping out of the tomb into the light of His healing, truth, and purposes…just like Lazarus.

Can’t you almost hear Him trumpeting, “Rise, I say rise”? Can’t you see the Father’s reflection as you look into Jesus eyes?

Letting love do more than simply walk numb throughout this life…

He is calling us to rise, be His light, go out and touch lives in humility, and with the heart and mind of the one who gave His life,

“Jesus”.

Now, let’s go change the world.

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:18