I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it truly means to follow Jesus Christ. There’s gotta be more to it than showing up at church on Sunday and going to Bible studies. Yesterday, I was out shooting a video for an upcoming message and God began to stir me up again. We were filming in what was once a thriving community. Many of the buildings are abandoned, boarded up, and deteriorating. But, it’s not the buildings that concern me. The buildings are just a physical representation of what is happening in the lives of the people who live in that community. William Wilberforce said, “Holiness is restoring the image of God to humanity.” I believe God is calling our church to restore His image to those who have been forgotten and abandoned.
I realize what God is stirring in my heart is not the “safe” way to do church. In fact, I know many will turn and walk away. I know that this kind of ministry will be messy, difficult, and tiring. But, I have come face-to-face with poverty and it has absolutely wrecked me. My prayer is that the same thing will happen to you.
Today I was watching a video from Dino Rizzo. He pastors a church in Louisiana (you might remember him from One Prayer last year). I would love for you to join this conversation and see what God is stirring in your heart. Could He be stirring something in all of us? Watch the video and then let me know your thoughts by clicking on “comment.”
BRAD FARNSWORTH 
This vidio made me cry. Im struggling in my life and want to find this kind of purpose in my life. Im ready!!!!!
I am ready to serve. I can think of so many places that can use my (our) help. There’s this nursing home I drive by a lot, for some reason I feel the need to stop and go in. Next time I go by there I am going to do just that!
Joyce
Joyce,
I love that you think about our forgotten seniors in the nursing home. They need God’s love and the message of Jesus just as much as any other lost soul.
When I read this it reminded me of a couple of Scriptures: Luke 14:12-14, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and repayment come to you. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Luke 14:21-23, “…Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame. And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to comein, that my house may be filled.'”
That’s awesome! I’ve been praying that God will give me more of a heart for the forgotten. Someday He will move me beyond myself.
Hey wanted to let you know that for the first time I found something that made me stay up just sick. In Muskogee there are always hichhikers. Last week there was a female, so I picked her up. I heard her story of how her 22yr old son died of congenital heart disease. She spent all she had to try and save his life, she was by his side every day in the hospital and lost her job. The boys father used to beat her, so she left him, and he never paid a dime of child support. After her boy died and she paid for the funeral, she basicly became homeless, as she had lost everything and been evicted. She has a sister in Texas and she was just trying to get to her sisters house. I tried to buy her dinner, but she said that when she eats it just makes her more hungry so she’d rather not, so I took her to Tulsa and paid for her hotel room so that she could use the money she had collected that day for a bus ticket. So many of us don’t help for fear of being hurt. When we do God’s work and show mercy and compassion He protects us. I laid awake all night thinking about the dump of a motel I left her in…
Wow! Way to go Dayna!