Monday: The Hurting Place
As Christ made His way through Jerusalem, Capernaum, and other cities of His time, the sick, disabled, and poor crowded around Him, the Healer. His heart went out to suffering humanity.
Image © Standard Publishing from GoodSalt.com
In the city, there is more of everything-more people, more buildings, more traffic, and more problems. This presents a real challenge for churches. Those sharing the gospel cannot simply ignore the massive human needs around them and concentrate on the message alone, because to do so discredits the message. If our actions do not demonstrate the compassion, grace, and hope of which we speak, then what we speak will be powerless. It will be heard as just another one of the many voices competing for ears of the masses.
Read Exodus 2:23-25, Exodus 6:5, Psalm 12:5, Romans 8:22, and Job 24:12. What’s the message found in these texts for us?
Our world is a hurting place. It groans under the weight and suffering of sin. None of us, no matter who we are, escapes that reality.
This pain also offers us powerful opportunities for witness. But we also need to be careful here. When it comes to how a church is perceived by nonmembers in terms of its neighborliness, it is important to understand the difference between community events and an ongoing service that actually meets needs. There is a difference in the minds of a community between a church that delivers food to families once a year during a holiday and one like a particular Adventist church plant in a large city.
What does this church do? It meets in a community center that operates on a daily basis. People can go there any morning and get a hot breakfast! And it is not even that large of a church. It has only about seventy-five members, but they are fully committed to meeting the needs of their neighbors in an urban neighborhood. This is a great work but one that takes dedication and a sense of obligation to help those in need.
Imagine the impact on our communities if all our churches were doing something to help to respond to the groans that are surely rising up in our neighborhoods.
(34)
Would it be ok to offer counseling and medical diagnostics in an outbuilding next to the main church every sabbath and put in loud speakers so that attendees, if any, also listen to the goings on inside the church?
That sort of activity depends largely on the culture surrounding you. Right idea though. Our interaction with others, and indeed with one another should be a foretaste of heaven.
All of heaven is actively meeting the needs of humanity daily. Christians ought to do the same here on earth. May our minds and hearts be willing to do God's commandments daily.
The whole earth is moaning and groaning for deliverance. It seems as if the Angels that are holding back the winds of strife are loosing their grip. "But soon and very soon we are going to see the King. Hallelujah, hallelujahs, we are going to see the King". But until then there is a work to do. These lessons are stressing the importance of going to every highway, byway, cities, rural areas, every nook and cranny, "by any means necessary" to invite everyone to come and hear about a man (God) who died to save them. Who hears their cries, feel their pains, and wants to spend eternity with them. We need to be God's hands, His feet, and His heart to everyone we meet in these terrible times we live in now.
Its a wonderful lesson, however we need to be very careful. You know people may flork to our churches as if they like our teachings yet they only come their physical needs.
If we go to church just so that we are assured of going to heaven, how different are we from those who come to have their physical needs catered for. There is the potential for us all to be quite self-centered about church and hopefully this set of lessons have encouraged us all to think of chuch as a place where we can serve others.
If they are only flocking to the church for their physical needs, and they keep coming every week, eventually, they will hear something from the message, which will stir their hearts to accept Yashaya.