East Flatbush Writer

I gave my heart to Jesus for the first time at the age of seven years old. Subsequently, I re-surrendered my life and heart to him a dozen more times since then.  Against the backdrop of others, my testimony is quite boring. Besides a few bumps in life’s proverbial road, I have never left the church nor ministry to those in it. But friends, my ardent loyalty in no way means that I have been practicing the true faith of Christianity all those years.

The Lord has been speaking to me lately about a specific group of people in  our society that he wants us in the church to be most concerned about. Amid the rapid pace of our lives and the urgent demands of life and ministry, we many times overlook them. 

The hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, the widow, the alien and the orphan. As we are intensely giving of our time and resources to important visible needs of our local assemblies there are large groups of invisible individuals who will never benefit from our care or God’s character.

James addressed this in his writing as he speaks to people just like us…Christians. He says, religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27)

I don’t know about you but those words humble me. They highlight something about the way God looks at what he considers important and the stark contrast to my own viewpoint.  As if to add insult to our own injury, the Lord further reminds us that at the end of our lives, he is judging us based on a very few actions; feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing those without and visiting the prisoner. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’ (Matthew 25;34-36) The question that followed God’s review of their actions was one filled with confusion, Lord when did we see you needing help?

The Lord’s response suggests that when we engage in those actions to the most needy, we are in fact and in some way doing those things for him, the God of the universe. 

It’s a spiritual mystery then that God lives among the most vulnerable and when we serve them we are serving him. That this is what true christianty looks like.

I have been challenged by these verses to actively seek opportunities to serve the Lord among the weak, the poor and the discarded. May the Holy Spirit also give you the will to practice true christianty.