God's Practical Call

I'm continuing my foray into the community, tracking down the resources available to those who are in need. I've started to list the resources at equalsharing.com/dc-help.

Today I visited five "low-income housing" apartment buildings. What that means is that people apply to live there as a part of some sort of government rent-subsidy program.

Lots of working, handicapped, disabled and retired people depend on government help. There is no shame in that. But what is a shame is when Christ's church people tend to leave it to the government to care and reach out to those in need.

My prayer is that we will dare to step in to share practical help and Christ's love with people no matter what their circumstances. I believe this is a part of the call to "choose life" that we're introduced to by Moses:

"Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." (Deuteronomy 30: 19-20 NLT)

Graeme Sellers picks up this theme in the last chapter of his book The Dangerous Kind. The chapter title is "This Is the Key to Your Life." Through Graeme, God calls us to do more than "build churches," whether church buildings, institutions or close church "families." God calls us to plunge into the darkness of need and complicated lives, bringing the good news and bringing LOVE. That's what it means to be the DANGEROUS KIND.

Graeme says:

Does becoming the dangerous kind matter?

As Moses told Israel when laying out the blessings of obedience and the curses of disobedience, this is the key to your life.

It is an invitation to live far beyond the tempered aspirations of institutionalized religious life, where the highest and best we can hope for are modifications in our behavior, membership in a local church, and a memorialized connection to Jesus in which we remember who he was and what he did for us two millennia ago.

The Father's offer catapults us into the ongoing, unfolding ministry of Jesus and the fulfillment of his promise that we will do even greater things than he did; it obliterates niceness as a Christian value and establishes reckless, perilous following of Jesus as an assumed non-negotiable.

Responding to the Father's offer transports us from low impact Christianity to high octane kingdom living. (from p.160 of The Dangerous Kind by Graeme Sellers)

I'd write more but it's time to meet with our youth! Let's do God's "dangerous" work, piercing every darkness with Jesus' love.

www.equalsharing.com