I admit to being out of touch on the Christian music scene. The only reason that I have even heard of this song is that Sissel, a classic singer, sang this on her CD. Then, I checked youtube and this really, really broke my heart.
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Larry Who 
I’ve always loved Selah.
Thing is, does this stir at the humanism deep within our souls, or does this stir at the Truth that even tho these people, and their fathers love their sin, and are obviously suffering the repercussions of it, we must take the call that God places in us to tell them the Truth because He is worthy of the reward of His suffering? Are we stirred because of the images and the tug at our humanistic heart to “DO SOMETHING” or are we stirred because our spirit deep inside is one with the Spirit who travails at His lost children?
To act upon one stirring is sin. To act upon another is obedience.
ronni,
I don’t have a good answer for your concerns.
But I remember the night that an evangelist from Kenya laid hands on me in a Quaker Church and I have never been the same. I fell in love with Africa and its people. If I could, I would send millions of dollars and boatloads of food to Africa.
Is it my flesh? Is it my soul? Or is it my spirit tugging on my heart? I probably no longer can tell the difference in this particular case.
I hear you Larry. I too have deep passion for many in Africa. A prophet from Ghana spoke over me a few years ago and even before that I had an ache over this continent… thing is… that’s between you and God. I don’t judge peoples motives. That’s for God alone. I just caution people to avoid using “soul stirring” footage to entice people to give money, spend time, etc … especially when so few “Christians” have their hearts truly right before God. Until they get that right, they are doing it out of their own flesh and I fear for them they would hear “but I didn’t know you!” from Christ when they say “but we did all these things….”
The Lamb is Worthy! That should be our ONLY reason for doing this… obedience to HIM! Does that mean we don’t feel compassion? No. But we need to feel HIS compassion first.
Ronni,
It would be great if every Christian had a perfect heart attitude, and gave out of that attitude. But no matter what, people are hungry in Africa. So, I want people to give.
At the very least, givers will receive a righteous man’s reward for bringing a cup of cold water to the lips of thirsty people.
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To Ronni – God gives us the desires of our hearts…depending upon your understanding of that verse, perhaps God places the desires, the stirrings…if that was the case to NOT ACT would be the greatest sin. God put emotions in us, we are emotional beings, emotions are sometimes the only thing that can move us, as we often don’t hear or don’t listen to the voice of God. God can and does speak through our emotions, He put them in me for a purpose. I am made like Him, I have emotions, so He must have them as well. How often was Jesus moved with compassion, let compassion move you…
If compassion moves you to help the needy in Africa, will that some how be counted as sin…? No, never. If compassion moves you, doesn’t it also move God, so can it be sin? No. Compassion could often be the Holy Spirit speaking to us and we just interpret it through our emotions.
You have a passion for Africa…are you there yet, are you saving souls, feeding dying children, saving lives (maybe you are, I don’t know you at all), but if you are not, come on, the world (maybe even God) is waiting for you to move, get involved. Maybe God wants to spark a revival in the land through you, or maybe He wants to use you to save one solitary life, perhaps a little baby who will go on and become a great man of God…who knows what God could do through you.
Ronni, there are not enough missionaries in the world, become one…
Mark I understand your heart on this more than you know but I also know that God asks for our obedience before He asks us to move out on emotions. Yes emotions are a gift from God but with everything we are to live a life of balance.
I spent a few years at Bethany college of missions and have friends all over the world, and I am moved with compassion for many, but I have directly asked God my part in this and He has lead me to two manners in which I can participate. I feed and clothe two in Ghana and I spend time in intercession for a few as well. Point is, I asked God directly and instead of letting my emotions rule my decisions I chose to let the voice of God.
Also, I have a call on my life, on this continent, to be a catalyst for true revival! I will be a woman of God who speaks the Truth and makes Jesus famous on the hearts of men!
I have much respect for those of you out in areas of the world I am not, and I stand with you to write the gospel on the hearts and minds of men and women all over the world!
Ronni, I meant no offense in anyway. I wrote my comment knowing nothing about you at all and I was trully inferring nothing about what you either do or don’t do as far as your own missions endeavours. If you know where you are called to and what you are called to do – that is so good.
My dilema is “the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few”, so I take every opportunity to either encourage or challenge people to get personally involved in the harvest. “Win Souls, have a go, step out, believe – YOU CAN DO IT” – these phrases would be a summary of my lifes message, other than simply preaching Jesus, I desire so much to see others preaching Jesus as well.
Bless you Ronni, and thank you for your reply.
Mark
Mark, you didn’t offend me.
I appreciate your earnestness, I’m just concerned about the fact that so many do go, and try to win souls, but have no personal knowledge of Christ, or are a bunch of immature believers with no roots chanting mantras and believing they can go out and save the world when they haven’t ever heard the voice of God for themselves.
We have a church full of infant Christians thinking they are leaders, when they are running full bore across this planet and messing their diapers and there aren’t enough Fathers and Mothers in the faith to wipe their butts. It’s making us look stupid to the world.
Yes, people CAN do it… problem is, they try to do it without God. I know. I did. I was “successful” in my own right. I think the saddest thing I ever heard was the quote from a Chinese Christian after visiting the US. “It’s amazing what Americans can accomplish without God”.
That’s our problem. We’ve built entire ministries on “you can do it!, just follow your heart!”… and it’s WRONG.
You CAN’T do it. Not without Christ. You are not supposed to follow your heart, your supposed to follow HIS voice and commands. Yes we are to be compassionate, but not without knowing intimately the heart of the Father. We are to work in LOVE, and so often we try to be saviors of people who LOVE their sin, and are merely reaping what they’ve sown. How is that love? It isn’t.
We need to change our mindset as a church and start showing people that until you have that intimate relationship with God and hear His voice, and dwell in His Spirit… your going to be one of those who labored and labored and labored in His name, but He never knew you…
…and that is the whole point to salvation. That is everything. Us dwelling in Him and Him truly transforming and saving us.
Mark I’m sorry but I’m not picking on you… I just have seen this in the church for so long and it breaks my heart. I’m tired of the “God wants you to be happy” and “You can do it!”…. it’s humanism. It’s wrong.
God isn’t so concerned about your happiness as your obedience. I can do all things THROUGH Christ.
Forget that and well, you have forgotten everything.
Blessings brother, do what God has called you to do, and do it well! You are in my prayers!!
God isn’t so concerned about your happiness as much your obedience….
sorry… I’m typing too fast… 🙂
I agree so completely with you, a Christless christianity is nothing at all. Towzer, once said, “if the mission of the church is to reach the world, then the greatest responsibility of the church is to be spiritually worthy and able to do it. To spread a Christless form of christianity is to spread nothing at all”.
One of the challenges that faces christians and christian leaders, is that the majority of christians would admit that we have become stuck in, and are even developing a dysfunctional church system, that does not release people and is not producing a very good product as far as Godly, Spiritual Christians go…but that cannot stop us from trying. I hope that I am trying to get people to both hear God and then do what he says, but for me, hearing God must eventually equate with “Going to win the lost”.
I appreciate your comments, they make me reconsider what I am both saying and doing.
Thank you – Mark
Do you mean Tozer? Can you tell me where to find that? I’ve read most of his stuff and I can’t find that anywhere…. I’d appreciate a footnote if you can remember… thanks! 🙂
Let’s put some figures down. Something like 100 billion dollars comes into Christian churches and ministries every year in the form of offerings and tithes. Another 150 billion dollars is held in fixed assets, such as property, buildings, etc.
Now what percentage of this is being used in the kingdom examples given in the New Testament, such as helping the poor, needy, widows, orphans, backing church planters and missionaries to bring the gospel to the lost? 0% of the money held in fixed assets. And maybe, 10% (Barna Report) of the tithes and offerings.
What is the offering and tithe money used for? Salaries of clergy. Salaries of staff. Mortgages. Maintenance and upkeep of buildings.
Our American church system is a lot like our Federal Government in that it is bloated and wasteful. Not only is the church system financially dysfunctional, it is basically irrelevant when it comes to helping the poor, the needy, widows, orphans, backing church planters and missionaries.
So, I can look at the hungry people in the video, and I’m upset. To argue over minute points of whether people are moving in the flesh or in the spirit is silly. How many people act like lemmings every Sunday and drop a check in the offering plate, just because it seems right? Not because it’s of the Spirit. Not because it’s scriptural. But instead, because it is traditional.
I admit to being a radical, especially on this issue. If I had my way, we’d sell all the church buildings and use the money to help the poor, the needy, the widows, the orphans, church planters and missionaries.
And anyway, isn’t that what Jesus said to do? “Sell all your possessions and give to charity, and make yourselves moneybelts that will never wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where thieves do not come hear and moths will not destroy.”
Larry, you can go back to this as often as you like, and it will work for a minute to distract from the biggest problem in “Christianity”… and it’s like trying to fix someones nosebleed who has just been in a horrid car crash and is hemorrhaging…
If we never get to the root SPIRIT and SOUL issue… we are going to just have loads of talking heads with a lot of great intentions still going to Hell.
I bed a good majority of the “Christians” I’ve met in my life are quite possibly going to Hell. THAT is what keeps me up at night.
I’m not saying I don’t care if they are cold, if they live in a slum, if they have AIDS…. I do. I’m just saying that until we ALL get THIS right… the rest is just pointless. So we make their stay on planet Earth a little less hard… but they STILL go to HELL.
AND… unless those of us who KNOW BETTER start teaching TRUTH instead of “feel good” lets “do this” methodology…. true Revival can’t come. I want it to come. Desperately. I want people to walk in the Spirit truly, because we can do only so much on our own accord. God can take little and make it much! I don’t need the worlds millions! I have GOD’s POWER. Without that… it’s all for nothing.
People are tired of the church throwing money at stuff and saying that is their salvation. That hole deep inside their hearts tells them that isn’t the answer!
JESUS IS!!!
I can tell you this… those who have truly experienced Him… would willingly suffer with leprosy, AIDS, hunger, to KNOW HIM.
Out of THAT desire, we are to go forth and take care of the widow and the orphan… and God will bless it, and then amazing things will happen!
I’m sorry but we are getting the cart before the horse and God’s about to derail us in a very big way.
ronni,
I am passionate about helping the poor and the needy. So what does scripture state?
1 John 3:17-18 “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brothers in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”
James 2:15 -17 “If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
Notice that it does not tell you to first get your act together and then do something. Also, it does not say that we need to check out their lives first. But it does say, to help them.
I understand where you are coming from… but remember the Word of God is a book of principles and not rules that we check off at the end of the day.
Heck we don’t even know what the true Gospel is anymore in our churches. We think it’s saying a prayer and you got a magic key to the pearly gates.
We are so far off Larry.
I know too well because I was too.
Again, get what JESUS said right first… then work on Paul. Get the foundation right or the building will crumble.
Point at the doors, the windows, the bricks in the wall… shout that we must have bricks! We must have doors!
YES! BUT FIRST THE FOUNDATION!
Our foundation is wrong! Don’t build until you get that right! Don’t tell me “but if I don’t do this someone will starve…” Really? You thing God doesn’t know? You think in His infinite power He doesn’t care or know? He does…
…but He still tells us to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth…. then what you speak of will be the fruit from that… fruit without it… is bad fruit.
ronni,
Well, we obviously disagree.
For me, the revelation that Mother Teresa had is still good enough for my life: “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matt. 25:40)
So, I plan on spending the rest of my life helping the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the naked, the sick and those in prison.
I don’t think we are disagreeing, rather looking at it differently.
But think of this… everything I just said… Jesus said.
Foundation. Then fruit.
Every person must spend time building His foundation before becoming hands and feet… otherwise when the winds come, and the seas toss…
…yeah you know.
Sorry, that was a shocking para-phrase from Tozer as I did not have the book on hand, and the spelling…oops, blooper.
The quote is from “Of God and Men”, and goes like this…
“The task of the church is twofold: to spread Christianity throughout the world and to make sure that the Christianity she spreads is is the pure New testament kind. Christianity will always reproduce after it’s own kind. A worldly minded, un-spiritual church is sure to bring forth on other shores a Christianity just like her own.
The popular notion that the first obligation of the church is to spread the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth is false. Her first obligation is to be spiritually worthy to spread it.
To spread an effette, degenerate brand of Christianity to pagan lands is not to fulfil the commandments of Christ or discharge our obligation to the heathen. Increased numbers of demi-christians is not enough”…end quote.
There is another line from Tozer that I love, “the character of the witness determines the character of the convert”.
One of my fears is that the people under me, in our churches, the leaders we are training will grow up to be like me…Lord change me.
NICE! I love that! So amazingly true… That’s one I have not read and I will have to find it! Thank you for sharing!
mark,
As conversation via comments often do, this particular one has moved from the giving of money to the poor to the sending of missionaries to the lost.
So, do I agree with your quote from Tozer? Yes. Absolutely.
In fact, send America some missionaries from BASECO with fiery messages that will break our materialistic hearts. We need them!