I used to think that God has a special place in His heart for the poor and needy, the widow and the fatherless – and He does. But actually it is more than that. When God says to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the outcast to your home, to spend yourself on behalf of the poor (Isaiah 58) it is not just that He is being kind, it is because this is the very essence of WHO He is. This is God Himself, reaching down to us in our poverty, our need and our sin. When God came to earth as the man, Jesus, this was the ultimate act of sharing with the poor, serving the needy and clothing the naked. He could have stayed where He was, in the light and worship of glory, but He didn’t. He spent Himself on behalf of the poor, by coming to this dark, sin-sick, broken world. He not only identified with humanity by becoming clothed with human flesh, He went further. By His death on the cross He was numbered amongst the transgressors and although He never sinned, He took the punishment in the place of the transgressors of His divine law – you and me. This was the ultimate act of intercession. This was the ultimate act of giving.
Even a cursory reading of the Bible will show God’s heart towards the widows and fatherless, the oppressed and needy. Although we can never atone for the sin of humanity, that was His work alone, He does call us to share the burden of those who have been forsaken, trampled and broken. To allow ourselves to see suffering and need and not to walk on by. As Jackie Pullinger says “love looks like something”. Love can be sharing your food with the hungry, helping out a single mother, even inviting someone in for a coffee.
God is not interested in self-serving religion or religious activities that are devoid of His heart. In Isaiah 58 He condemns those who fast because “in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and exploit all your labourers…Would you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen; to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; when you see the naked you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?” (verses 3-7)
Of course it’s not easy. It’s not easy and it’s rather uncomfortable to allow yourself to see and identify with human need. It wars against our fleshly nature which is constantly crying out to us “Comfort! Convenience!”
It’s been hard for me. I am not going to pretend that I have found it easy. The hardest part for me has been the intrusion upon my own time. I am naturally a bit of a hermit at heart. I like my own time and space, and my own company. But because we have a food
pantry that is operated from our garage we do often have people turn up unexpectedly and at inconvenient times. In particular God has used one lady with serious mental health issues to crucify my flesh. It has been painful. From the start the Holy Spirit told me to never reject her, even in my heart. That has been hard and I admit, I have not always been able to do it.
But today again she came. I invited her in for a coffee. We spent a lovely time together and she ministered to me by singing songs the Holy Ghost had given her.
“I refuse to give up
I refuse to give in
I keep hanging on to the King of Kings
The Lord of Lords…”
As she was leaving my home she turned to me and said “Thank you for always making me feel welcome. Don’t’ ever lose that. It is so important to people who have been rejected.”
OH God, help us to hear the cry of your heart and to do it! To become people of action, rather than just of words! To do something, anything!
Reflections of headlights flashed on the puddles as twilight set in.
I walked from the car-park looking for the others.
When I got to the corner where I was supposed to meet them, they weren’t there.
Where could they be?
I crossed the busy intersection to the other side, but they weren’t there either.
Hmmmm….
So down to the tunnel I went, the rain drops falling on my hair.
The entrance to the tunnel was busy but I made my way through.
Gosh, I didn’t realise how long this tunnel was. Past a busker winking at me, past the jostling crowds, out the other side.
I walked a little along the river, looked around, but, no, they weren’t there either.
Now I really don’t know what to do.
I stop to think. I turn slightly and that’s when I see Evie.
Although it’s not until later that I learn her name.
Sitting at the end of the bridge begging. Her head in her hands, behind the scrawled sign “Please help”.
She looks so young.
I go over and sit with her, behind her sign.
“Hi”
“Hi”
“What are you doing here?”
She is homeless, spent the last few nights on the street.
She tells me that everything has been stolen from her as she had slept, her purse, her jumper, even her sanitary pads.
She says that she has a permanent place to go into on Monday, but it’s Friday and she needs help to get through the next two days.
I sit with her. I tell her about Jesus. She says, “That’s funny, everyone keeps telling me about Him.”
Even as we speak someone walks past and drops a gospel tract into her begging container.
She points to a man begging in the middle of the bridge.
“He’s mad at me, I have to watch out for him, I’m in his patch and taking his business from him. He’s a druggy.”
We have dinner together and afterward I put her in touch with a women’s shelter, I say that I will pray for her and we part.
I walk back along the river, back through the tunnel.
Back to where I was originally meant to meet with the other street preachers.
And I see them. Right there. They have been there all along.
I had walked right by them and not seen them. Somehow.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Tuesday night I pray. I pray for Evie and other stuff. I wait on God.
He says to me, clear as anything, “Go to Evie.”
Huh?
“Go to Evie.”
But Lord, she moved into a place yesterday, she is fine now.
“Go to Evie.”
But Lord, she’s not there at the bridge anymore
“She will be there, go to Evie.”
Ok. If you give me an opportunity to go, I will go to her.
Thursday afternoon.
My parents drop in and say they will mind my son.
I drive into the city.
The whole way there I think that I must be crazy, what am I doing? I could be sitting child-free in a café somewhere…
But I go anyway.
The car parked, I get out, walk. Then, for some reason, I start to run. I run and run to the bridge. I come over the crest and look to see if she is there.
She is there. She is begging.
I run to her, out of breath.
“Evie! what are you doing here? You were meant to move in to a place on Monday!”
She looks at me and says “Why are you running?” as only a teenager can.
I laugh, embarrassed, because I don’t know why I’m running myself.
Then she says “The place didn’t work out”
We have lunch.
Turns out she had gotten to the bridge five minutes before I arrived.
Another time she met my husband and we went out to dinner.
She came to my home once.
She said she was bringing someone for me to meet.
(Please God don’t let it be a man.)
I go out to meet her in the drive-way and she’s carrying a baby girl.
18 month old Rose.
Rose had been removed, but was now returned to her mum, Evie.
Because, Evie tells me, a house has become available for her.
Her boyfriend is getting out of jail
and her mum is coming to live with them too.
They stay for a while. Rose is so sweet. Evie is too.
That’s the last time I see her.
She moved into the house with her daughter, boyfriend and mum.
It’s far from here.
But she texts me and tells me that they’re doing well.
…….God didn’t let me see the friends I was meant to meet that night
Instead He wanted me to meet Evie,
A young mum,
homeless
daughterless
penniless
hopeless
But He knew.
And He had His eye on little Rose the whole time.
Truly His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.
I would like to share something of urgency, which God has put on my heart today. Firstly though I need to do a little background on the Feast of Pentecost, which, so happens, is today.
Today (from sundown May 14-15) is the national observance of the Feast of Pentecost, or Shavuot, in Israel. Shavuot is considered to be the time when God gave Moses the Torah on Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. The giving of the Torah to Moses was by God Himself coming down to meet with him on the Mount in a cloud, accompanied by smoke and fire and a blast of God’s trumpet. This was to establish His covenant with His people and so Shavuot is celebrated as the biblical birth date of the nation of Israel.
The basic theme of Shavuot is “the harvest” and of giving thanks to God. Passover marked the beginning of the Spring harvest and on the Feast of First fruits the first fruits of a sheaf of barley was required to be presented before the Lord, as a wave offering in thanksgiving for the harvest. From the next day, seven weeks were counted until wheat harvest. This is why Pentecost is also called the “Feast of Weeks”.
Why is this relevant to us? Because God works by His prophetic calendar. In the year AD 30, on the day of Pentecost, something else of great importance was birthed. At Passover Christ had died as the Lamb of God, at Feast of First Fruits He rose again, then 50 days after His resurrection, on the Day of Pentecost, the Church was born.
“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Acts 2:1-4
God once again used fire, wind and other demonstrations of the Holy Ghost to establish a covenant with His people. This was also a time of great harvest, with many thousands of people being saved and brought into the Church at once.
So this leads to what the Holy Spirit has impressed on my heart this afternoon. Over the centuries since the Church was born at Pentecost there have been other times of great harvest and the ingathering of souls. As Peter said, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” (Acts 2:17, 18) Times of the outpouring of God’s Spirit have been recorded through history. There was the Great Awakening traced to the Moravians in 1727, there was Whitefield in 1742, John Wesley in the 18th century, Finney in the 1830’s, DL Moody in the late 19th century, the Welsh revival in 1904, Asuza Street in 1906 – just to name a few.
But will God do it again? Will there be another time of a great outpouring of His Spirt, of revival, before the end of the age? It is my wholehearted belief that it will be so.
(It is not my intention here to prove that God will once again bring revival. I can recommend the following books if you would like to pursue this question further. One is Leonard Ravenhill’s “Why Revival Tarries”, the other is “In the Day of Thy Power” by Arthur Wallis.)
The scripture that God impressed upon me today was this:
“And he said, ‘Thus says the Lord, make this valley full of ditches. For thus says the Lord, you shall not see wind, neither shall you see rain, yet that valley shall be filled with water…” 2 Kings 3:16, 17
God required Judah and Israel to prepare for the coming outpouring of the water which He was to send by making the valley full of ditches. This was so when the water came it would fall into these catchment areas and not simply run-off and be lost and wasted. This is what God is speaking to His Church even in this day. It is no secret that water can be a symbol of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. He is saying to prepare for the coming outpouring of the Spirit – by making ditches in the valley to catch the water as it flows through.
I guess the Israelites must have dug into the desert floor with some sort of spade instruments. It can’t have been an easy task to make a valley “full of ditches”. But while it was probably hard, it wasn’t impossible, and they did do it.
How do we make ditches today? We need to dig into the hardness of human hearts with the instrument of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The hardness will be confronted with the power of the gospel and pride will be broken down when met with the Word of God.
Jesus said in Matthew 9:38 “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few, Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.”
God needs labourers to go out into the harvest once again and gather in the lost. God needs us to warn them that without Him, they will die. I am not being melodramatic. One thing God impressed upon me today is His urgency to have sinners turn to Him. He says :
“Say unto them, ‘As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” Ezekial 33:11
This is serious. If we truly believe that we are in the last days and if we truly believe that Jesus is coming back as the Lion of the tribe of Judah to judge the world in a Day of wrath, then we need to warn people. It is God’s heart that none should perish. But He has entrusted to us the precious task of preaching the gospel, of warning, of being watchmen. And He actually, really expects us to do it.
“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 8 When I say to the wicked, ‘You wicked person, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways, that wicked person will die for[a] their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 9 But if you do warn the wicked person to turn from their ways and they do not do so, they will die for their sin, though you yourself will be saved.” Ezekiel 33:7-9
This is not a call for an elite set of evangelists, or for someone with a special anointing, this is a call for every Christian. Jesus Himself said “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Mark 16:15
I am sorry if this makes you uncomfortable or if it bursts your happy bubble, but God’s heart breaks for the lost every single day. And ours should too.
Of course, the very first thing that occurs when we are confronted by a hard truth, me included, is our sense of inadequacy. That I am unfit for the task, that I am too weak, too female, or too imperfect hits me most of the time. But God says we are not inadequate, we are not incapable. He has called us for this very reason and He will put His words in our mouths.
Listen to this: Ninevah turned from their sin when Jonah got over himself and warned them of their impending judgment.
They turned.
And they lived.
God is calling for someone to “make this valley full of ditches” in these last days.
Will it be you?
“The fact is, Christians are more to blame for not being revived, than sinners are for not being converted. And if Christians are not awakened, they may know assuredly that God will visit them with His judgments. How often God visited the Jewish church with judgments because they would not repent and be revived at the call of His prophets.” Charles Finney
Most of the time when I preach with the microphone people have one of four reactions as they walk past:
1. they laugh
2. they roll their eyes
3. they scream out blasphemy or
3. they yell at me to shut the f*#k up
Ha, good times.
(Actually to add another element to the mix is the Black Magician that seemingly only comes out when I am there. In his black clothes, make up and top hat he stands across from where we preach and moves his hands and legs around constantly in snake-like movements, as if he is casting spells on us. If you go close to him you realize that he is mocking us and repeats everything we say. He does that for hours – he doesn’t stop).
So anyway tonight the second time I preached the anointing came down. When the anointing of the Spirit falls everything changes. My preaching changes, it becomes powerful and the words flow easily. Under the anointing I could preach for hours, I don’t want to stop. I feel Jesus there with me SO real. I feel He is pleased with me.
But the BIG difference is that the people’s reactions change. Instead of walking past ridiculing and mocking, they stop walking. I mean they literally stop dead. One man stopped tonight in the middle of climbing the steps up to the station. The police officers stopped dead as they were questioning a drunk and listened. Crowds of people just stop and stare and listen. It’s like they are rooted to the spot.
So I kept on preaching as long as I could. Then when I finished the Holy Spirit told me to go straight to that man who was still stopped mid-way on the steps.
So I did. He saw me coming over to him, but he still couldn’t move. We started talking and he said :
“I was walking past but I had to stop. You captured me.”
That’s the Holy Spirit – hallelujah to the Lamb!
He was under conviction for his sin but as he spoke it was obvious that he was utterly amazed at what was happening.
“I’ve never done this before,” he said his eyes wide in surprise at himself. God bless him.
Anyway I just wanted to share 3 points with you
1. that under the anointing ANYTHING is possible.
2. that God will always honour the preaching of His Word and
3. that if you are seeking God’s presence in greater measure – look no further than the streets of your nearest city.
“For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching.” 1 Corinthians 1:21
“ Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2:5-8
Woe betide the person that truly follows his Lord even to the point of no reputation! Or so I had thought. Over the last few years I have become a spectator to the total destruction of my own reputation. While I did recognize that this was at the Lord Jesus’ initiation and that He was slowly leading me in a crucifixion of my flesh, it was still an excruciating experience to say the least. I did try to hold on to my extremely important reputation as best I could, but it just didn’t work. Following Jesus will do that to you.
Last night it was revealed to me that I have now officially become of no reputation.
To the world I am an intense, religious, street-preaching nutter.
To the churches that I have left (in obedience to His leading) I am a rebellious infidel.
And to most Christians I am an over-zealous, inexplicable, street-preaching freak.
LOL
Literally. When I realised this last night I laughed and laughed.
And then I cried a bit.
But then I laughed again.
Because suddenly I saw it – I WAS FREE!!
If I am already considered a crazy, too-spiritual, infidel, nutter then – I might as well keep going!
And I will.
I have nothing to lose.
Hooray!
I can wholeheartedly recommend the hilarious and humble link Pineapple Story, by Otto Koning, if you want to hear more about surrendering your reputation and other rights to Christ.
God has no concern about our organisations. When their purpose is finished He allows them to be swept aside, and if we are attached to the organization, we shall go with it. Organisation is a great necessity, but not an end in itself, and to live for any organization is a spiritual disaster. Oswald Chambers
“Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season?…” (Luke 12:42)
Following on from Being Fed, after the revelation of my own true state of spiritual starvation, through the depression I suffered, something very interesting happened. I would like to explain the spiritual principle that has been revealed to me.
God opened my eyes to see my true state of starvation. I was shattered by the knowledge that I could no longer rely upon myself –in any way. My body let me down, my mind let me down, with all my own resources at an end all I could do was cling to was Him. But this knowledge led me to a deeper relationship with Him, one in which I knew I needed to be fed and in fact that was the only hope left for me. He fed me with the Bread of Life and kept feeding me as I spent time with Him.
Then what happened next is the interesting point:
Godthen led me to start feeding others.
Because pride in my self, my abilities and strengths had been broken, I began to have a greater sense of compassion for others whom were struggling. A desire rose up in me to help others because of what I had been through myself. Out of that desire our food pantry ministry was born four years ago, in which we give out food parcels to people suffering food insecurity both in the Body of Christ and in the community.
And then, after some time, another hunger began to take hold of me, that was to “feed the multitudes” through street-preaching. This one came as a real surprise to me as the thought of preaching the gospel on the street to passersby absolutely terrified me! I remember the first time I went out there. I was so scared that I was shaking and I wondered why I was doing this to myself. Through the terror though there was a fire burning within me. I was so well-fed, I just had to share some of this food with others.
It somehow didn’t seem right for me to keep feasting when I knew there were others
pastorsponderings.org
out there who were starving. Just as Christ broke the bread and poured out the wine as a symbol of His life being poured out for us, He also calls us to be as broken bread and poured out wine for others. Being broken bread and poured out wine hurts. It’s not easy and it’s certainly not comfortable. Often it is difficult and something we would not typically choose to do ourselves. But Jesus is still moved with compassion for the great multitudes and just as He said to His disciples then, He says to His disciples now: “You give them something to eat”. (Mark 6:34 & 37)
If we look at the Apostle Peter’s life we can see this spiritual principle at work. Peter, at first, couldn’t see his own spiritual bankruptcy. Even though He had been with the Lord for about three years, seeing Him minister, learning from Him, Peter still didn’t really know his need of God. Self-confidently he had declared “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:33) When the moment of truth came however, Peter betrayed Christ and denied Him three times as Jesus had foretold he would do. Peter was heartbroken. I believe in that moment his own true state was revealed to him. He saw the emptiness within, the starvation of his soul-poverty and he was broken by the knowledge. The revelation of his impoverishment caused him to retreat and return to the career from which Jesus had called him – fishing. In John 21 we see Jesus in His amazing mercy seeking out Peter in his failure. He calls out to Peter and the others with him, and look what He says, “Children, have you any food?”
Jesus immediately gets to the heart of the matter – do you have any food? Are there any inner resources left in you on which you can depend? Or have you come to the end of yourself? Have you seen your need of me yet?
The disciples are, of course, thinking merely in the physical realm, but nevertheless their answer is true both physically and spiritually – “No”, they have no food.
So what does Jesus do next? In His grace He provides the food they weren’t able to provide for themselves, and, as is God’s way, it is in abundance. “…and now they were not able to draw …in (the net) because of the multitude of fish.” (v 6).
He feeds them. “Come and eat breakfast,” He says (v12), and He “came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.” (v13) He came and fed them – but only after they had seen their need of Him.
Immediately after they are fed Jesus seeks to restore Peter. Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him three times and each time after Peter declares his love for Him, Jesus says “Feed my lambs”;”Tend my sheep” and “Feed my sheep”. Why would Jesus single out Peter, the disciple whom had been the one to verbally deny Him, to feed and tend His precious sheep? It’s because of this spiritual principle – Peter had now seen his own bankruptcy and been broken by it. More so than any of the others he had seen his inner emptiness and it was because he could see it that he was ready to be used. Jesus could not entrust His sheep to merely anyone. He needed someone who had seen their own need, and therefore would be sensitive to need in others. He needed someone who knew that without God they could do nothing and would therefore be utterly dependent upon Him. Peter would not be a harsh and unfeeling shepherd, He would now truly love and care for the Master’s sheep because his own pride and independence had been broken.
Watchman Nee said “When once your back is broken you will yield ever after to the slightest touch from God.”
So to sum up:
Here in the West we are spiritually starving. Starved of eternal relationship with our creator, the source and sustainer of all life, we seek temporal satisfaction elsewhere. We often don’t know that we are starving. In some cases this revelation can only be achieved through painful experience.
Once we see our true state of starvation, through God’s intervention, we then naturally seek to be fed.
God then uses us to feed others through the broken bread of our lives
It is my hope and prayer that this post has encouraged you to seek after the only true source of life and satisfaction –Jesus Christ, the Bread of life. If you already know Him I pray that you will seek Him in greater measure and that ultimately you will share Him with others wherever He may lead you. I will conclude with a quote from D.T. Niles:
“Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.”
Yesterday, as I was leaving the fruit shop, I saw an anorexic girl staring at me. She kept right on staring at me even as my gaze met hers and I looked back at her. It was rather disconcerting to be so openly stared at and I was momentarily caught off-guard. Eventually I smiled at her and she half-smiled back as she turned away. I don’t know why she was staring at me, but I felt God’s heart of compassion for her and she has been on my heart in prayer ever since.
Then last night as I spent time in the Lord’s presence He opened my eyes to see something. As I cried out to Him for my own hunger, I saw that our plight in the West is starvation. Yes, starvation. Here in the West, where we have an amazing variety and abundance of food available to us, we are spiritually-famished skeletons.
“The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. Then He caused me to pass by them all around and behold, there were very many in the open valley and indeed they were very dry.” Ezekiel 37:1, 2
Whilst much of the non-developed world suffers from food shortage, dire poverty and even physical starvation, the malnutrition in the West is of a different kind. We are surrounded by food, by comfort, by fast-moving technology and by science and its benefits. Even the poorest of us are rich compared to most of the world’s population. Yet, in general, we are starved. Starved of life, starved of love, starved of meaning and starved of the presence of God.
What is the reason behind this starvation? I believe part of it has to do with our society turning away from God and increasingly to humanism and its related philosophies. The outcome of this is that our lives have become empty of meaning and purpose.
It’s not surprising.
To accept the premise that human beings are nothing more than the product of primordial slime would logically conclude that we are of no greater intrinsic value than that slime. And a product of primordial slime could have no possible purpose to its existence either. The relatively recent rejection of the age-old belief that we have been wonderfully and purposely made by the hands of a loving Creator, ultimately leads to a meaningless existence, in which our lives become de-valued.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophies of the early 20th century have had a profound impact on the Western world, intellectually, politically and existentially. He (in)famously stated that “God is dead” and saw “nihilism as the outcome of repeated frustrations in the search for meaning. He diagnosed nihilism as a latent presence within the very foundations of European culture, and saw it as a necessary and approaching destiny”. (Source: Wikipedia, Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche). Nihilism “(from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.” (Source: Wikipedia, Nihilism)
A society that rejects God accepts nihilism, and within that society a sense of meaninglessness is experienced individually. As human beings, we have been made in God’s own image and this is the basis of our inherent value. Each of us is valuable because we have been created in His image. There is also a purpose to each human life that God creates and that is to have fellowship with Him and to serve Him. We were created by Him, for Him. We were created to know Him, depend on Him and draw our very life from Him. To deny both the source of our life and the purpose for our life is to both deny the value of humanity and the meaning of life, which creates a vacuum within our very souls.
Actually this is nothing new. In fact it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when man chose independence from God rather than dependence on God. From that point humankind has been estranged from God, cut off from our Creator, the true meaning and purpose of our lives obscured by our own defiant, self-willed independence. To be cut off from the Source of life, even while we may have physical breath in our bodies, is to create spiritual deadness and emptiness. However, as nature abhors a vacuum, something must fill that emptiness and there are many ways that we seek to do this – consumerism, chemical substances, religion, food, pleasure-seeking, causes, materialism…just to name a few.
Unfortunately much of the church has not escaped this Western malady and is also starving. It’s all too common to find that worship has been replaced by entertainment; that prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit has been replaced by liturgies and programs; that the presence of God has been replaced by emotional manipulation and that the preaching of the Word has been replaced by motivational, self-help talks. Even as Christians it is possible to turn away from dependence on God, and once again go our own way in self-willed independence, even when what we do is under a “Christian” label. Once we stop relying on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, we again cut ourselves off from God, and become starved of His life and His presence. AW Tozer said it like this: “The blight of the Church today is spiritual starvation. People are famishing on rationalism, socialism, sensationalism, on lifeless bonds and bank notes and unwholesome pleasures. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?… eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness” (Isaiah 55:1,2) Are you living on the bread of God or starving while in the Father’s house there is bread to spare?”
I think the BIG question is – do we actually recognize that we are starving? We may in fact be completely unaware of it because we are surrounded by food, technology and material goods in abundance. We are rich, in material terms, compared to the rest of the world. We don’t really need God, we depend on ourselves, on science, on man. We believe that independence is the way to go and that we can make it on our own. Like the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3 we “say ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’”. We do not know that we are really “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked” (verse 17).
In undeveloped countries it is rather different. 25% of the world doesn’t have enough to live on, and 33% are destitute. A person suffering shortages in food, shelter, clothing and medicine is confronted with their own vulnerability every day. Their neediness is well- known by them because it is felt every day through physical hunger, thirst, cold or pain. So whilst much of the world is poorer than us in the West in material terms, I believe they are richer in one important way. They know their need. Once you see your need, of course, it is much easier to turn to God.
I have a friend who moved here from a struggling African nation. She explained to me that back in Africa she had had to get up at 3am every single morning in order to line up for six hours to get a loaf of bread for her family for the day. There were times when she would get to the front of the queue, after lining up for hours, only to find that the last loaf of bread had been sold. They then would need to drive to South Africa – another country – in order to find bread.
She knows what it’s like to need. She has had to cry out to God to provide her family with bread. She has had to depend on Him in a way that I never have had to.
Actually it is no different for us – spiritually we NEED Bread every single day. The difference is that, surrounded by our gadgetry, clothes and hair products, we cannot see that we are in desperate need of bread. Otherwise would we get up at 3am to seek for our Bread for the day? Would we miss out on sleep so we could find the living Bread to feed us and also our families? You see it’s hunger that drives us. It’s not hard to know why my friend would make the sacrifice to line up every day for 6 hours for bread, when both she and her family needed to be fed. I have kids, I understand the driving need to provide for them. But what about the spiritual bread? Is it less important? Would I make a similar sacrifice for the sake of mine and my family’s spiritual nourishment?
Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6). We don’t hunger and thirst after righteousness if we don’t know that we are empty. Until we see that we, in the West are poor, wretched and empty, we won’t hunger and thirst for the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
However, once we see our need of Him it is much easier to hunger after God and to learn to depend on Him for our nourishment. But our eyes have to be anointed “with eye salve that we may see” (Revelation 3:18). Unfortunately it usually takes some sort of personal crisis for most of us to turn to God in desperation and to cry out for help. Essentially this is what happened to me. Although I was wonderfully born-again and saved (see Passover), I still hadn’t learnt how to be utterly dependent on God, or to hunger after Him. It took a crisis in my life to actually be able to clearly see that I could no longer depend on myself. I was brought to the point of being unable to trust even my own thoughts, let alone my own self.
The vehicle God that used in my instance was depression.
And yes, I was a Christian, truly born-again and in love with Jesus. (God-willing, I will write about this episode in detail at a later date.) CS Lewis said “Suffering is God’s mega-phone to a world hard of hearing.” And that really was what suffering was to me. My experience caused me to rely on God and to hunger after Him in a way that I never had before – simply because I had no other option.
To be in a place where my own thoughts frightened me, suddenly awakened to me the truth of my own vulnerability, and I clearly saw my need of Him and His ongoing presence in my life. My independence and pride had to be stripped away from me so that I could see I was starving, in order for that hunger to be born in me. Suddenly I saw that I needed Him, not just a doctrinal knowledge of Him, but a hunger for Himself. When I saw how “poor in spirit” I truly was, then “the kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3) became mine.
“Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us…. There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.”
Grace and Truth 