The Riches of Your Love

"Poverty is about relationships that don't work." 

I have been learning quite a bit about the problem of poverty over the last few days. Wendy McMahan has done a wonderful job of outlining everything in her podcast - Poverty: Unlocked. For instance, she explains how there were four main relationships established at Creation: 

1. Relationship with God (Spiritual)

2. Relationship with Others (Social)

3. Relationship with Nature (Physical)

4. Relationship with Self (Mental)

All of these relationships were broken in some way when the Fall took place. You can find each of these - the blame, banishment, painful toiling, and wandering - in Genesis 3:11-24. 

We see the results of this in the causes of poverty:

1. Lack of resources (Physical)

2. Lack of education (Mental)

3. Social injustice (Social)

4. Hopelessness of God seeming to not be near (Spiritual)

Poverty is about relationships that don't work. But Jesus came to do more than just save us from our sins. He came to reconcile all these relationships. Colossians 1:19-20 - "For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross." 

Unfortunately, the church tends to focus primarily on just one of these relationships - the Spiritual - when we should be practicing "whole-ism" and focusing on all parts of Jesus' redemption. Sometimes we go into countries as missionaries and care more about getting people to pray a prayer than developing and growing them as disciples over time. Please note that I am not bashing missionaries in any way. This is definitely not always the case. But sometimes we fail to give people the whole foundation. 

After learning this, I looked at my own life and asked how I am serving in ways that promote long-term discipleship. This caused me to look at other areas of my life and realize that I haven't been doing a very good job at serving others. I have two jobs right now that involve me leading a group and establishing a plan for how things will be done. It has been very hard to motivate myself to do the work outside of our meetings when no one is standing over my shoulder asking if I have been doing it. My laziness is becoming a large obstacle in the way that I serve. Am I giving 100% to those that I am leading, or am I leaving everything to the last minute and arriving unprepared? I made a firm resolution to become better in this area of my life and to not let laziness overtake my resolve to do my best in everything. 

Jesus came to save us and reconcile everything to God. His blood reverses the brokenness that happened at the Fall.  

You tore the veil, you made a way

When you said that it is done

...there's no greater love than this. 

- Hillsong "At the Cross"