James 1:22 “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
A little fellow in the ghetto was getting teased by an older boy: “If God loves you, why doesn’t he take care of you? Why doesn’t God tell someone to bring you shoes and a warm coat and better food?” The little lad thought for a moment before replying with tears welling up in his eyes: “I guess he does tell somebody, but somebody forgets.”
Shane Claiborne did a survey on people’s misconceptions of Jesus. He asked participants who claimed to be ‘strong followers of Jesus’ whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80% said he did. Later in the survey, he sneaked in another question to those same people. Did they spend time with the poor? Less than 2% said they did. He concluded: “I learned a powerful lesson: we can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the Church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.”
Many a church pastor knows about the 80-20 rule. Briefly stated, 20% of your congregation does 80% of the work. He might be too charitable to say that 20% of his people cause 80% of his headaches as well! Here’s a direct invitation to being a positive member of the 20% club. We may lead busy lives with multiple demands on our time, so all the more we need to be strategic and disciplined to prioritise what we do. What will that look like for you?
Lord, I agree today that something needs to be done, and that I’ll be the somebody to do it. Amen!
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