Day 20: God's Plans

Day 20
Theme: God’s plans
Verse: Jeremiah 29:11

I'll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. Jeremiah 29:11

Our Journey is just beginning. We have spent the last 4 weeks looking at how Christ set the example to LIVE out our faith as a call to missions in our lives.

As I write this, we are experiencing the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that came on land and virtually wiped away an entire culture in New Orleans. At the same time, we read of hurricanes that are bearing down on us.

What if you lived in the next French Quarter? What if where you live, your entire city, county, or even state were to experience a disaster that wiped away everything you own? How would you respond?

What if the churches around, in nearby states said “We will pray for you”, but did nothing to send a team to help you with your house? Or to pay for a hotel while your house was being worked on? Or even supplied food or clothing for you and your family?

Would that not cause you some major heart burn to the church? Would you not begin to question the ‘realness’ of their hearts when they talk about feeding the poor, clothing the needy, supplying water to the thirsty? Of course it would.
Friends, you are the church. The church is YOU!

What we fail to do, the church fails to do.
When we fail to act, the church fails to act.
When we fail to love, the church fails to love.

Beware of blaming the church for not responding, when you yourself have yet to do anything.

Let’s end this epic pre-journey with a thought from David Platt in his book Radical:

“One Evening I was meeting with an underground house church overseas, and we were discussing various issues in Scripture. A woman who lived in the city and knew some English shared, “I have a television, and every once in a while I am able to get stations from the United States,” she said. “Some of these stations have church services on them. I see the preachers, and they are dressed in very nice clothes, and they are preaching in very nice buildings. Some of them even tell me that if I have faith, I too can have nice things.”

She paused before continuing, “When I come to our church meetings, I look around, and most of us are very poor, and we are meeting here at great risk to our lives.” Then she looked at me and asked, “Does this mean we do not have enough faith?”
In that moment I realized the extent to which we, as churches and Christians across America, are in some cases explicitly and in other cases implicitly exporting a theology that equates faith in Christ with prosperity in this world. This is fundamentally NOT the radical picture of Christianity we see in the New Testament.
Further, when we pool our resources in churches, what are our priorities? Every year in the United States, we spend more that $10 Billion on church buildings. In America alone, the amount of real estate owned by institutional churches is worth over $230 Billion. We have money and possessions, and we are building temples everywhere. Empires, Really. Kingdoms. We call them houses of worship. But at the core, aren’t they too often outdated models of religion that wrongfully define worship according to a place and wastefully consume our time and money when God has called us to be a people who spend our lived for the sake of his glory among the needy outside our gates?......

Like the Rich Young man in Mark 10, every Christian has to wrestle with what Jesus is calling us to do with our resources as we follow him."

So God has a plan for you… Will you allow him to show you this next week what it is? Where does he want you to put your Time, Talent and Treasure? In some newer, larger and bigger building? Or does he want you to give of your excess to help the needy? I pray that you will allow God to speak.

Let us end our 4 week journey with a song that says it all…

(Listen to it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrF3_Saubc8)

Speak to Me by David Lubben

I want to be, where you are.
I want to know, Lord, who you are.
So when you call my name,
I'll say to you "here I am."
I'm listening Lord, speak to me.

I want to see, how you see.
Change my heart Lord, and make me holy.
If there's anything in my life,
That doesn't honor you tonight.
I'm listening Lord, speak to me.
Speak to me...

I want to be, where you are.
I want to know Lord, who you are.
So when you call my name,
I'll say to you "here I am."
I'm listening Lord, speak to me.

I want to see, how you see.
Change my heart Lord, and make me holy.
If there's anything in my life,
That doesn't honor you tonight.
I'm listening Lord, speak to me.
Speak to me...